Ah, San Fransisco- it looks like a beautiful day! We slept in again, had a yummy breakfast and then all hit the work-out room while the laundry was washing. It is hard to get down time without it cutting into "doing" time but it has been working so far. Dave and the boys have been very dedicated to working out to get them ready for football. I think they will be pretty sore the first week of practice no matter what they do but I am proud of how they are game doing anything for a workout.
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| Josh on Lombard Street |
After checking out, we headed into the city. It is still very pleasant here in the temps- 60's. So sorry, everyone who is home and dealing with all the heat. We walked around Nob Hill some and then went down Lombard Street (the twistiest hill in the city). Dave drove down once while we all walked and then we all drove down again. It is such a pretty street. The kids had fun checking out all the streets that go straight down and straight up. There was even a road that we found that turned Dave back. Annika announced that she is going to come back to the city some day and drive down the street herself :)
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| Coit Tower |
Now we headed to the Coit Tower. The tower is located on Telegraph Hill which had been used to identify ships coming into the bay. The tower is named after Lillie Hitchcock Coit who was rescued from a hotel fire at the age of 8 and became a self-appointed fire department mascot. She donated 1/3 of her inheritance to make a memorial on top of the hill. It is a beautiful tower and we took the tour to the top. It was an old elevator and took about 3 minutes to get to the top. We had amazing views of the whole city and enjoyed seeing the places we would go to and those we could not.
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| The old-fashioned restroom. |
Outside the Coit tower, there was an old-fashioned restroom. Annika had to go so while waiting our turn, there was a man with his young son before us. Every time the door closed, it would then open again (it was an electric door). Good thing it was just the young boy trying to go to the bathroom because we all thought it was pretty hilarious (the man inside included). I thought for sure we were on Candid Camera or something. Annika and I entered with a little bit of skepticism as she did not want the door to open on its own while she was going to the bathroom. But....when we saw the facilities, we decided they were just NOT a place a young lady could go. So, while we did not get to use the bathroom, we did have a good laugh.
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| Alcatraz |
Alcatraz was a place that Jonathan really wanted to go to but we did not have tickets nor time today. Some day....we will be back. On our way to Fort Point, we did drive by Pier 39 but did not stop. It looks like an amazing place but we were excited to get out to the Fort to run around and play.
Oh, the Fort was an amazing place and we had a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge, quite an impressive bridge. The weather was beautiful today and many people said that that it had been so cloudy this week that the bridge was not visible due to the clouds. There were huge rocks the boys were climbing on and we saw starfish and sea lions from where we were. We decided to have a picnic first before exploring and set out our food. I was taking a picture of Dave and the kids when a nice man asked if he could take a picture of us all together. We asked the man if he would like to join us for lunch and he agreed. His name was Stephen and he was traveling over from Germany for 4 weeks before meeting up with his wife in Chicago. The biggest surprise was that he was an orthopedic surgeon. He was very enjoyable to talk to and we exchanged stories about our adventures. 
After lunch, we headed off to explore the Fort. It is an amazing fort and it was an engineering landmark. We had fun exploring all the rooms, the cannons and reading all about how life would have been at the Fort. There were incredible winding staircases, large arched doorways, and a huge courtyard. We had incredible pictures of the bridge above the fort- amazing!  |
| The boys running across the Golden Gate Bridge |
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| Going down the winding staircase. |
We spent a good time exploring here and then our last adventure was to run across the Golden Gate Bridge. We all jumped in the car and started over the bridge. Dave dropped the boys and I off at the toll bridge and we started our way across. It was actually pretty crowded with walkers and bikers. What a great place to run...it was 1.7 miles across! Josh and Chris would have liked to go the whole way without stopping but of course, Mom wanted some pictures :)
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| Jonathan at the base of a tower on the Golden Gate Bridge |
What a view! Dave and Annika drove across the bridge, parked the car and then started running back across to meet up with us all. We are very thankful that we have such great views of the bridge today and were able to enjoy so much about it.
We continued driving up North and finally found a campground called Sleepy Hollow in Willitz, CA. We set up camp, read some of our book, Farmer Boy, that we are working on and settled down for the night! Good night!
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| The Barretts in San Fran |
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