Lee and Karen Duquette,
The Two RV Gypsies: Full-Time RVers

May 5, 2009

The two RV Gypsies visited a garden in San Francisco, California and were amazed by The Living Roof at the California Academy of Sciences.
The Living Roof - California Academy of Sciences
Assembling a 197,000-square-foot rooftop to accommodate a living tapestry of native plant species is challenging enough. Add to that the technical problems posed by the roof's extreme dips and slopes. A big problem was how to keep the plants and soil from sliding off? Rana Creek, who worked with Piano to design the roof, developed and patented a solution called the BioTray®. They used 50,000 porous, biodegradable trays made from tree sap and coconut husks as containers for the vegetation. These trays line the rooftop like tile, yet enable the roots to grow and interlock, binding the trays together like patchwork.

The Living Roof´s 1.7 million native plants were specially chosen to flourish in Golden Gate Park´s climate. After experimenting with thirty native species, the finalists were all able to self-propagate. They will thrive with little water, resist the salt spray from ocean air, and tolerate wind. The roof will provide habitat for a wide variety of wildlife. A future project will seek to introduce the endangered San Bruno Elfin Butterfly and the Bay Checkerspot Butterfly to this new habitat.

Notice that there are people on top of the roof in the photos above.

Below: A visit to a gardens in San Francisco


Below: DIFFERENT TYPES OF ALOE

Menu for the two RV Gypsies in California - April 2009
California photos are in 28 separate sections found below. Some sections may have more than one page so that the photos will upload faster. You may visit these sections in any order you choose. Each section will have this menu so that visitors do not have to keep returning here in order to continue the California adventures. There is also a link to Oregon at the very bottom of the California menu.
travel scenery	Mountain Lakes RV Park	Venice Beach
Big Bear Mountain (4 pages)	Palm Springs Tram (3 pages)	Karen's family photos
Kaweah Park Resort and a bobcat	Three Rivers and Lake Kaweah	driving scenery
Sequoia National Park (3 pages)	Kings Canyon - big sequoia trees	Yosemite National Park
El Capitan	Bridalveil and Yosemite Falls	Indian Flat RV Park
The Golden Gate Bridge	Fisherman's Wharf / Seals / Alcatraz	Armstrong Woods State Preserve - Giant Redwood Trees
Sonoma County driving tour / beaches	San Francisco and cable car ride	The Living Roof and Gardens
Chinatown	N. Petaluma KOA and driving scenery	Bear Mountain RV Resort
Shasta Lake	Mt. Shasta	Shasta Dam
	Sundial Bridge

AFTER you have enjoyed all of the above, please continue on to Oregon.