Given the prodigious amounts of snowfall in the Sierras this winter, were you to attempt the same hikes this year I doubt you'd be able to access any of those areas until mid-July ! As for SFO, it brings to mind my first flight aboard a 747SP in the summer of 1979. I paid $13.00 for a one way standby fare down to LAX with Pan Am. The shortest flight I ever flew aboard a 747 was with Northwest between SEA and PDX in August of 1976.

As to lounges, I remember them well, including the fact that they were generally well patronized. These days so many passengers are wired into their notebooks/mp3s or engaged in the seatback IFEs that lounges have become superfluous. I've had the good fortune to have logged 8 flights in First Class aboard Emirates' A380s and only once have I seen the nice looking lounge at the rear of the upper deck being well patronized. Emirates excellent IFE (called ICE) may have something to do with this. The screens are huge and there are hundreds of movie and television selections.



And of course, all that space dedicated to lounges in the early 1970s represented valuable revenue space. At 9-across seating, I wonder how many seats you could have put in American's 747 Coach Lounge?

BTW, I recently flew First Class from London to Newark aboard BA's 787-9. Its screens are similarly sized to the example pictured above.