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Welcome to Bay Area Tours. Based in Sonoma, California servicing the greater San Francisco Bay Area and Wine Country.

13/09/2026

So clear today you can see San Francisco from the mountains in Sonoma. (Also, I love how good the zoom is on my phone)

23/08/2026

Bringing kids with you up to the w**e country but they don't want to hang out in the w**eries? No problem, I'll bring my football and we can toss the pigskin around while mom and dad enjoy the Pinot. (Yes, I recently did this)

29/07/2026

Finally getting back around to my series of the "Seven Hills of San Francisco". Last time I spoke about the shortest hill, Rincon Hill, so today let's look at the tallest of the hills, Mt. Davidson. Reaching 928ft, it is the tallest natural point in San Francisco, narrowly beating it's neighbors, Twin Peaks and Mt. Sutro. As the tallest peak it remained mostly uninhabited for many of the City's early years. Instead, it was passed on as a prize to wealthy land owners and mayors of the city (including the last Mexican Mayor when it was still Yerba Buena). The last Mayor to own the hill, Adolf Sutro, is the one responsible for preserving what we have today and planting all of the trees currently on the hill. A mixture of Eucalyptus, cypress and pine trees were planted since the hill, in it's natural state like most of San Francisco, was covered in short shrubbery. It was Sutro's desire that the hill be preserved and so he added such a wish into his will. But greedy offspring and land developers being what they are, got the California courts to overturn the will and had the base of the hill and surrounding areas developed. And so began a 50 year effort to preserve as much of the land as could be until the final borders were set by 1950. Such preservation efforts led to the naming of the hill, named after George Davidson, a charter member of the Sierra Club.
The main feature of the hill is a 103ft concrete cross as it was popular at the time to crown the tallest hills of cities with a cross. The cross was first built in the 1920s with wood but after it burned down three times they went bigger and sturdier with concrete. One of the main features on the cross were permanent lights that would light up every night. The initial lighting for the dedication ceremony was actually turned on by FDR in the White House via a telegraph key. By the 1970s residents of the city started a legal battle to stop the lighting since they felt the city should not be paying to light up a religious symbol. By the 1980s the fight expanded to the existence of the cross itself because of the seperation of church and state since the cross was on government owned land. Eventually it was decided to sell the land the cross sits on and it was purchased by a group of Armenian-Americans and dedicated as a memorial to Armenians killed in a genocide during WW1. Today, the cross is only lit twice, once on Easter and again on April 24th on the Armenia Genocide Rememberance Day.

21/07/2026

You gotta watch yourself in the dangerous city, you might bump into some shady characters.

03/07/2026

What a fun ride World Cup 2026 has been. I've been fortunate to have had multiple jobs going to the games at Underpants Stadium, including the United States knockout match and taking care of a family from Paraguay going to their country's matches. Was fun being in the middle of all the Paraguay fans chanting and singing after they defeated Turkey. Hopefully we get a chance to host again in 2038.

14/06/2026

Some days I'm in the w**e Country and some days I'm in the City and some days, like yesterday, I get the best of both worlds.

08/05/2026

Introducing my newest driver. He can't quite reach the pedals and I'm pretty sure you won't make it to your destination but he's the cutest freaking chauffeur on the planet and he has plenty of soft veggie crackers to share.

15/04/2026

Here's my first post in my series about the "Seven Hills of San Francisco"
Today I thought I'd start with the tiniest of the hills, Rincon Hill.
Despite it's notoriety for being one of the Seven Hills it is actually one of the smallest in the entire city. At 100 feet tall it ranks as the 50th tallest hill in San Francisco. Barely a nub.
It's most notable landmarks are the One Rincon Hill residential tower and the off and on-ramps for the Bay Bridge.
The reason why it's considered one of the Seven Hills is because it was one of the first hills that was settled after the Gold Rush boom in the early 1850s and all the hills in this area of Notheastern SF became part of the Seven. (See attached map for a better reference)
Rincon Hill was the first well-off neighborhood of San Francisco as it was removed from the debauchery of the saloons, brothels and gambling dens that populated the Barbary Coast at the time.
For about twenty years it remained that way until the allure of the neighborhood faded in the 1870s as the hill lost its Bayside views on the southside when the Bay was filled in to expand the industrial capacity of the city and was further diminished when the hill itself was cut to make way so Second street could reach the new filled in areas. Most of the upper class at this time decided to relocate to the new affluent area, Nob Hill.
When the 1906 Earthquake and Fire hit, it destroyed the neighborhood entirely and the city fully converted it to an industrial area. It would take almost 100 years, and another large Earthquake, to turn the neighborhood into a desirable area to live once again.

25/03/2026

Beautiful sunset from Yerba Buena Island tonight.

20/03/2026

I saw this map the other day and it fascinated me. It's a topographical map that Golden Gate University students put together about a decade ago to show all the hills in the city. It really amplifies just how mountainous San Francisco is. It inspired me to do a series of posts of some of the most famous hills/mountains in the city, starting with the famous "Seven Hills" (Which are Rincon, Telegraph, Russian, Nob, Twin Peaks, Sutro and Davidson) and then expand it to include Mt. Tamalpais and Mt. Diablo. I think the hills and mountains are the best natural feature of this part of the world and I want to give them their due.

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Sonoma, CA
95476

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http://www.bayareatoursllc.com/

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