Touring San Francisco

The town of San Francisco was a cool city to tour.  If you ever get the chance, TAKE IT!!! We have always saw pictures of a hilly San Francisco, and we were really surprised at just how hilly it really is. 

This is a picture of the Bay Bridge.  We took this into the city the morning of our visit.  

Our first stop was Fisherman's Wharf of San Francisco.  It was a really neat place to walk.

On our walk we had a view of Alcatraz.  We decided not to take a tour of the island.  We met a couple that had just came off the Alcatraz tour and said that it was just not worth the money.

We were so surprised at how close Alcatraz is to the shore.  We were told that the waters are filled with sharks and is freezing cold, so the boys in stripes could not make it to the shore. It was a military prison from 1859 to 1933 and a federal prison until 1963. It is now a tourist attraction. The island has long been known as "the Rock." By the way we learned Alcatraz means Pelican.

In the San Fransisco Bay around pier 39, we were able to see Sea Lions sun bathing.  These animals are really bigger than we could have imagined.  

We stopped in the park to enjoy a chili bowl.  We just fell in love with these bread  bowls.  Filled with chili or broccoli soup or even potato soup makes my mouth water.  All I can say is, "NO SOUP FOR YOU", it's all mine! (a 'Friends' saying)

Heston thought that the pigeons needed to eat too.  Every where we go Heston makes friends with the birds . He would love to catch one and take it home with us. Pa once told him he would be able to catch a bird if he could throw salt on the birds tail.  Good thing we didn't have any salt or Heston would have had this bird!

This the Boudin Factory where they make the bread bowls. We also were able to watch them make bread alligators and other animal shapes.  Check out their website www.boudinbakery.com

Here is a famous trolley.  Look at the hills in the background.

San Fransisco is home to one of the curviest roads.  Lombard street is a one way road.  It is a very cute little road with lots of flowers.  So glad we did not come into San Francisco with our trailer.  We would not have made it through this little road.

Here is a very sharp turn in Lombard road.

In this picture look at the green hedge the road runs along this hedge.  This is just how sharp each curve is, back and forth!

Guess why I took this picture??? 

Our home back in Georgia is on Brickyard Road.

Ok who from the 90's remembers this site.  

FULL HOUSE

This is a scene from the Full House TV series.  

It's called Alamo Square.

We found out that these houses are called 'The painted Ladies'.  They are very pretty houses with lots of details, BUT there are only 6 right here.  To our surprise this street was not lined with these house. Matter of fact, the rest of this area was not very well kept.  This was a great place to get a cool view of the city. Behind The Painted Ladies you can see the San Francisco skyline. 

On one of the houses there was a sign that had in big letters, THIS IS NOT FULL HOUSE.  I guess they get lots of unwanted visitors.  

GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE

We finally made our way over to the Golden Gate Bridge. The sun was going down so it was getting a little chilly.   We took a stroll over the bridge, but because of the time of day we were not able to walk the whole thing.  We walked enough though to get the scary feel of it swaying and bouncing due to zooooooming cars.

Here Heston grabs one of the cables holding the bridge.  One of his hands would not reach all the way around the cable.  "Rather Large"

Beautiful sunset!

We were trying to find a cool park our friends told us about to see the bridge from, but we missed the exit for the park area and once you drive over the bridge going out of the city it cost 6 bucks to get back in.... Soooooo we found a little mountain road that we were able to get some cool shots of the bridge and even the city.  This little road ended up leading us to a beach where we took sun set pictures.  Sometimes it great to get a little lost and turned around.  We have found some really neat spots this way.

The coast of California is just amazing.  I'm going to have to find more adjectives to describe the view.  

Ok, looked that up, here are the words that I have found....

 incredible, marvelous, unbelievable

Those just don't do it any justice either.

  You are just going to have to plan your own trip to witness it first hand.  

 We ended our day of touring San Francisco with a night  view of  the Golden Gate Bridge. 

AWESOME!!!!

Here we are California!!

Ok so we made it!!! We just knew when we hit California we were in store for sunshine and warm weather.  But when we hit the border of Cali the only thing we saw was  MORE SNOW!  By this time we were tired  of snow.  We had seen enough of the white stuff.  We were ready for sunny warm beaches.  Although I do have to say the snow covered mountains of California are beautiful.  The snow just seemed to sparkle.   The way the snow piles up on the green tree branches is just adorable.  It looks like a perfectly snow iced tree.  Just too cute!!!!!!

When we crossed the line we were stopped at what looked like a toll booth, instead it was a agricultural inspection booth.  They questioned us on what was in our trailer and asked us if we had any plants.  I guess you can't bring your house plants into California.  Luckily, I don't have a green thumb so I didn't have any plants. 

We stopped at the welcome center to pick up lots of Cali info.  The building was an old train depot.  The whole little city was filled with old western buildings.  Have you seen those little snow covered villages that people put out at Christmas time?  That's what this little city reminded me of.  It was sooooo cute!  

But we came for sunny warm beaches!!  So on we drive toward the coast.

On into Cali the landscape was rolling hills with a backdrop of blue skies.  

These hills were sometimes covered with cows.  These are mountain cows. Funny thing, they look just like the cows we have back home.  It was kinda cool to see Holstein cows standing on the side of mountains. For those of you who do not know, Johnny's family raises Holstein cows.

Our next challenge was to find a camping spot near San Francisco.  We arrived in Cali a few days earlier so that we could visit Northern California.  Our goal was to see San Francisco and Yosemite.  We called around and found a campsite right on the coast above San Francisco.  Arrived, and got the camper parked only to find out their Internet was down.  We had no cell phone service and no Internet.  Trent was still doing school work at this time and having Internet was a must!  So we decided to pack up and  travel closer to San Francisco to find a campsite with net or at least cell phone service.  

So we took California's HWY 1 down the coast. This would have been a great drive IF it had not been a little winding cliff road and the sun was going down fast.  So again we found ourselves on scary roads.  Have you ever seen pictures of the CA coast line where a small convertible car is twisting and winding along the coast line?  Well that is where we found ourselves.  That brings a great picture to your mind, well take out the convertible and insert a Dodge Durango pulling a 20 foot box trailer.  Not so great a picture, not for us anyway it was quite a scary drive.  Although we were amazed at the view.  It was so majestic!  The sun going down made it all soooo romantic.  If only it were Johnny and I in my dads red T-top 1976 corvette! We had about 15 miles of this.  We were kinda in a hurry to get off this road before it got dark.  But there was only one way in and one way out and NO turn around spots. We finally made it to the end of this winding road!  So on we went to find a campsite.

Look at that road! Right on the edge!

This was a picture of seals on a rock out in the ocean.  Cool site!! We don't have these in the Atlantic ocean.  So it was kinda amazing for us to see.  

We did make it to San Fransisco before dark only to run in to another problem.  Our trailer did not follow the California state law stamped with a "Hud" sticker.  We went to several campsites just to be turned away.  After making several calls we found an after hour campground that would accept our trailer.  At this point in our journey this was a blessing.  We were able to stay at this campsite for the rest of our stay in San Francisco.  An afternoon wasted on finding a campground, so tomorrow we venture out to see the sites of San Fransisco!!