Photo by robh

– Doug McConnell

Here at OpenRoad.TV we focus on the big, broad and beautiful West, from Alaska to Mexico and the Rockies to Hawaii. It’s a pretty nice territory to live in and explore, and we hope you find ideas here that will help guide your travels.

But our fundamental concept is that, no matter where you travel on earth and no matter where you happen to be, if you slow down and look and listen carefully, you’ll find terrific stories, adventures, characters and experiences that will enrich your life. After wandering around all my life in search of curiousities and tales to tell, I’m convinced there are fascinating treasures to discover everywhere….and they’re usually hiding in plain sight right under our noses. I love to go to the far corners of the earth on grand journeys, but I also like to poke around my own neighborhood to be surprised and learn something new.

So it was when we shot a story recently on San Francisco’s famous Fisherman’s Wharf. The Wharf is one of the San Francisco’s most popular tourist destinations, so much so that locals tend to stay away in droves. It’s sometimes said that if you live in the Bay Area and want to have an illicit affair, just go to the Wharf and you and your partner will never run into anybody you know. Now I’m not endorsing that particularly, nor is that particularly true, but the fact is that many of us who live around here and many of you who come to visit, too, think of Fisherman’s Wharf as a to-be-avoided tourist trap. We think we know the neighborhood, but really don’t; if you watch the story, you’ll find that the historic legacy of the Wharf is being kept alive in a variety of ways by some delightful and hard-working people. You’ll discover, as I did, that if you walk a few feet off the beaten path you’ll leave the crowds behind and begin to find the heart and soul of the place. I loved my day seeing my own backyard in an unexpected and brand new way.