San Francisco

Our motel in San Francisco was likely one of the sketchiest places I have ever stayed. But oh my, the location! It was literally across the street from the beach, right at the base of Golden Gate Park. (And it had free parking, which in San Francisco is practically unheard of.) So after checking in and heading straight to bed, we woke up early the next morning and hightailed it to the beach.

It was pretty darn chilly. Oh who am I kidding...it was downright cold! But the beach was so beautiful! Brandon only had any luck convincing Lilian to get into the water with him, and really just up to their ankles. (I did take my shoes off to dig my feet into the sand, but I kept my toes away from the frigid water.) But even more than the joy of running from the waves, Lilian was in heaven because there were sand dollars all over the place. Whole ones! Brandon and Julianne even brought some back as souvenirs.

After heading back to the room to get cleaned up and ready for the day, we took the MUNI into town. It was slow going with so many stops, but it was fun to watch the view out the window as we wound our way further into downtown. (Well, you know..when it wasn't underground.) We hopped off, got some food at a deli and then wandered our way into Chinatown...which is apparently, the largest Chinatown outside of Asia, and the oldest in North America. Which is saying something because I've been to the Chinatown in NYC, and it's pretty darn huge. Lilian was of course fascinated with it all and completely determined to find a souvenir of some sort. And every little shop had a gazillion souvenir options. Lets just say, we were good and ready to be done with Chinatown when she finally decided on the soccer ball decorated medicine/stress balls.

Fisherman's Wharf was next. Pier 39, street performers, sea lions, fish vendors, views of the ocean harbor including Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge...Fisherman's Wharf is a neat place. And oh, the sentimental childhood memories! (We used to visit San Francisco every summer as a family when I was a child..my grandparents lived in Concord, not too far from the City by the Bay.)

I talked Bryan into a harbor cruise...something I've always wanted to do, but that he and Brandon were less enthused about. We chugged our way out of the pier only to have a mass amount of fog roll in on top of us maybe 10 minutes into our cruise. It got to the point where the narration would say, "If you look to your left, you'll see the such and such building on shore where this happened..." and we couldn't see a thing. We knew we were getting close to the Golden Gate Bridge because the narration told us so, but we couldn't see it until we were right under it! Which actually was cool in it's own way, to have it just appear kind of ghost-like out of the fog. And did I mention that it was FREEZING??? Oh my. Bryan and Brandon escaped to the enclosed part of the boat. But Julianne, Lilian and I stayed on top for much of the cruise just because it really was pretty awesome...the fog making it hard to see the view, but also making it an entirely different sort of experience which was still very neat. However, as soon as we finished our harbor cruise (the fog rolled away as soon as we started back to the pier....of course) we fast tracked it to Boudin's Bakery for some clam chowder in bread bowls so we could warm ourselves back up again!

 You could kind of see Alcatraz when we got close enough...

The next morning we ate breakfast at this local little cafe around the corner from our motel right there at the beach. It was super yummy, but also a lot of fun to people watch the locals...such a fun vibe there. The place reminded me a bit of Luke's Diner from Gilmore Girls. And as we walked back to our motel, we ran into a couple hanging out in a little zen garden. They called us over and we chatted with them for quite awhile. (She may have been still a bit drunk from the night before...) ;) We exchanged FB info so we could stay in touch and then we eventually went on our merry way. After checking out of our room, we made our way back to the Golden Gate Bridge. We had driven across it and sailed under it...this time we decided to walk it. And I tell you what, it was a major highlight of the trip for me, walking across that iconic landmark. We even saw dolphins in the water below.

Eventually we got back in the car and headed out of San Fransisco. We drove down to San Mateo for some lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Because for some reason we have been keeping a kind of unofficial tally of all the different cities we have eaten at a Cheesecake Factory. I don't know why. We also stopped at a Trader Joe's for some snacks for the plane. Which is something that Bryan does on many of his business trips and he seemed rather giddy about sharing the experience with his wife and kids. We made our way to the airport and said goodbye to our trusty rental car that saw us from Seattle, down the Oregon coast, through the Redwood Forest and into San Francisco, and got ourselves on an airplane headed for Salt Lake City. Tired but happy. One more memorable family vacations on the books.

Seattle
Pacific Coast Highway and Redwood Forest

Pacific Coast Highway and Redwood Forest

In making plans and preparations we debated how many days to drive. How to balance a leisurely road trip with plenty of time to stop and sightsee, with the knowledge that the kids would likely not tolerate too many days in the car? Should we spend 3 days of less driving each, or 2 days with more driving but getting to San Francisco sooner? Two days would cut down on an extra food and hotel stays. However, would the days be too long? Would we feel too rushed? Bryan and I discussed at length our goals of the road trip and eventually decided on two days in the car, but in order to have plenty of time to stop when we had a hankering to...we made plans to start our drive plenty early each morning.

So we got our little crew up at the crack of dawn, placed all three of them in the back seat and pointed our rental car south towards Oregon and eventually California.

The kids fell asleep pretty much immediately. Which in some ways was kind of nice because it gave Bryan and me a chance to talk one-on-one a bit with the pretty Washington scenery flashing by. The kiddos woke up right around the time we hit the Oregon coast. And...oh. Just wow. You know? Driving along the coast with the waves crashing just off the right of the highway...only to then climb up into the mountains for a bit, twisting and turning and coming out on a cliff with the ocean down below. Just incredibly beautiful...I wanted to stop at every single viewpoint, but decided that the whole drive was a viewpoint and to just be alert to everything out my window. And really, if I wanted to stop, Bryan was more than willing to pull over.

When we weren't staring out the window in awe, we played a Harry Potter trivia game, read Fablehaven out loud, and listened to the Hamilton soundtrack. (Bryan sure was a good sport about it all...especially the Hamilton part.) ;)

We stopped at the Tilamook Cheese Factory for a late lunch. More grilled cheese sandwich varieties than you could shake a stick at! We sampled the cheese and took the tour, and then continued on our way with ice cream to go.

We were told that of all the beaches and cute little towns we'd pass, we really needed to make sure to stop at Cannon Beach. Umm, yes! I would happily go back and spend a week there...the town was darling and the beach was likely one of the most beautiful I have ever been to. It was overcast, windy and super chilly, but again, just...wow, you know? (And yes, Haystack Rock look familiar to you because Goonies was indeed filmed here. Admission...I've never seen Goonies so this fun fact was pointed out to me by my husband and son.)

We finished up our long, but memorable day of driving in Coos Bay, Oregon. Strangely enough, I think this was one of the kids' favorite parts of the trip. I'm not sure why, but Brandon to this day still talks about that little motel in Oregon where we all climbed into bed and watched Home Alone on TV together before falling asleep for the night. "That was SO awesome, Mom!" Maybe it was all of us together, or laughing so hard, or the idea that we were watching a Christmas movie in August...who knows. But for some reason, it was a highlight.

The next morning we left super early and continued on our way. It wasn't too long before we entered California and into the Redwood Forest. And of course no one could stop themselves from singing This Land Is Your Land...seeing as every single one of us, including Bryan and me, had learned it in elementary school:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York island
From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me. 
Because we are just that kind of family...who knows a song for pretty much any occasion.

We pulled over at a place that was called Trees of Mystery that yes, does sound rather touristy. And maybe it was. But after paying the entrance fee, we got to hike some very cool trails and see some ridiculously large Redwood trees. And then take a gondola ride up into the tops of the trees where the view was nothing short of spectacular. Then because we decided that we were "experienced" enough hikers, we decided to hike down the steep and rocky trail rather than take the gondola back. I figured all the over the top warnings were purely to dissuade older folks or families with young kids, or people wearing inappropriate hiking shoes from taking the trail...because really, how hard could it really be, right? Umm...we figured out pretty fast that they were seriously not kidding! It was intensely steep and very rocky and my poor legs were jelly by the time we made it down. But it was so worth it!

(This picture of my tree hugger Julianne, is one of my very favorites from the whole trip.)

I wish I had got a picture of it, but at one point we started seeing what looked like smoke up ahead. We debated for a minute or two thinking surely it must be fog, but then started smelling that tale tell campfire smell. It wasn't too much later that traffic slowed way down and we found ourselves witness to a forest fire. It was right on the side of the road. Flames jumping up into the trees, right there in front of our eyes. Firefighters were on site already and climbing up the bank from the road into the masses of trees to fight the fire. Cars were pulling over to the right so they could watch. Frankly, I kind of wished we had too because well, wow. That's not a sight you see every day. But we continued on...and smelled that smoky smell for a good long while afterwards.

Towards the end of the Redwood Forest I instructed Bryan to follow the signs to a place where for five bucks you could drive through the middle of a Redwood Tree. Bryan was very reluctant to make this detour, thinking it a rather silly tourist trap. And yes! It completely was! But am I glad we did it? You betcha!

We drove through wineries and farms and small towns...and finally made our way across the Golden Gate Bridge and into San Francisco right as it was starting to getting dark.

Up next: San Francisco

Recap of our time in Seattle