San Francisco, Here We Still Are!

Tuesday, day two in San Francisco, was a fantastic day! We caught an early morning shuttle, this time, 9:00 a.m. and we were back in China Town by 9:30.

We headed to a dim sum restaurant that our shuttle driver had recommended, as we got there we discovered that it was closed for renovation. As we were standing there scratching our heads wondering where to go next, this sweet little Chinese lady came up to us and said in broken English, it's closed, Rico asked if she knew of another place, so she said, follow me, she was grabbing Rico by the shirt, and in her short little quick steps, like all little Chinese ladies seem to take, she kept saying, follow me, and gesturing with her hands. She walked us about a block, then pointed down the street to another place. She was so cute! We enjoyed her so much! We thanked her, she went on her way, and we went and had some wonderful dim sum! Yum!

After our wonderful meal, we set out on foot again. We went to the cable car museum, that was a terrific place! We learned all the history of the cable cars. After about an hour in the museum, we walked more, and then we caught a cable car (our first cable car ride ever!) and took it to Lombard Street. That let us off about six blocks down from the famous "crookedest street", and of course it was all up hill! Boy is it up hill! So many hills in San Francisco! And we think we climbed them all!

Anyway, we, along with all the tourists, took pictures and climed the famous street. Cars go down it, it's only one way, but there seems to be pleny of times when no cars are on the street, so we were able to walk up that way, with the stroller, becuase the sidewalks on this section of the street are all stairs, they need to be, it is soooo steep! Anyway, that was a lot of fun to see this beautiful street!

From there we continued walking, we were in seach of what is called the painted ladies, they are a row of beautiful old, small victorian homes, we didn't know exactly where they were, so we were just walking and tyring to find them. We walked and we walked, and never did find them, we didn't want to run out of time, so we hopped on a city bus that took us down to the bay near the Golden Gate Brigde, we walked and we walked some more, and seemed we never got close to the Bridge, we decided it would take too long to keep going, so we planned that for the next day. So again we walked, this time to another bus stop, that somewhere along the way we found out took us to these painted ladies. So we hopped on that bus, got off, wandered through this wonderful park in the middle of the city, and on the other side, there they were, 7 pretty little houses all in a row....know as the "painted ladies". As we sat in the park for a bit admiring these pretty little houses, a chocolate lab named Phoebe befriended us. We had a good time with her for a few minutes.

By this time it was getting late and we needed to be back at our shuttle stop in China Town by 6:00. The time just goes way too fast! So we hopped another bus or two and another street car that took us back to China Town, and we had enough time left to do a little shopping. We found a little wok shop and we bought a wok and a few utensils, we also found a bakery that had delicious sweet bbq pork buns, so we picked up a few for our dinner.

By this time, it was 6:00, and the shuttle took us back to our home one more time. The day went so fast! We took lots of public transportation, but we walked a lot too! And those hills.....

We got back to our home about 6:30, I figured it was early enough to do some laundry, so I went to check out the facility where we were staying at Candlestick Park. Well, I discovered that it was $2.50 for a wash and a quarter got you only 5 minutes on the dryer! I couldn't believe it! By this time I was fed up with the place we were staying. It turns out Candlestick RV park is the only rv park in San Francisco, so they can charge what ever they want for anything. Not only did it cost 2 to 3 times more than any other place that we stayed thus far, the shuttle was $10 bucks a person, so we counted $10 bills instead of people getting on and off the bus! The worst part was the fact that it was a parking lot, and your neighbors were only 5 feet away from you! We decided that this place really blows, and we were happy to leave it!

San Francisco Here We Come!

Monday morning we left Napa and took the one hour drive to San Francisco. We arrived at Candlestick RV Park about 11:20 a.m. and were told that the last shuttle to downtown was leaving in 40 minutes. We didn't have much time to think or react, so we just threw some things together, and before we knew it, we were on the half hour shuttle ride to China Town.

We walked a great deal, down to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. Both were really busy and crazy with people, that was fun for people watching. We shared a few different cups of clam chowder at the different locations down the wharf as we wandered along. We also stopped for lunch along the way, and that was actually pretty lousy...

We did a little shopping for souvenirs and we also found Ghirardelli's, so we stopped in for a little chocolate.

Before we knew it, it was 7:00 p.m. and time for our shuttle to pick us up and bring us back home.

Papa's allergies were acting up all day, so when we got home he took some medicine and was asleep by 8:00 along with Joshua!

While the boys slept, I tried in vain to get onto the internet, but to no avail! I was so bummed!

Too Much of a Good Thing!

Well, it turns out there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Our third meal at the CIA was not all that great. The menu was the same, and we were just tired of it! Oh well, it was still delicious!

Now that I have time this evening, I will post some pictures from Napa. We were in San Francisco for 3 days and we couldn't get the wi-fi to work, I was so mad! Anyway....here we are now!

Napa Valley

We are just about up to date again. Saturday and today, Sunday we have been in Napa, and what can you say about that? We've been to several different wineries, having a wonderful time, Joshua has been so incredibly good. We've bought way too much wine, and now, for dinner we are going back for the third time in 2 days to our favorite place, the CIA, Culinary Institute of America! Lunch yesterday and today, and now dinner! The food is so wonderful why go anywhere else!

It's just about time for our reservation. As we were letting our wine from lunch wear off, we were here in the parking lot and discovered they had wi-fi, so here we are!

Well, it's about 7:50, our reservation is 10 minutes from now....talk later!

Tomorrow...San Francisco!

Elk!!!!!!!!

Friday morning, I woke up, peered out our little window as I do each morning to make sure this is not all a dream, and was taken aback by what I saw!

Less than 10 feet from our rig was this beautiful, huge female elk! Wow, how wonderful, I noticed a lady from the rig next to us looking beyond this one elk with her video camera, I had to know what she was looking at, so I jumped out of bed, ran to the other window, peered outside, and I could not believe my eyes!

In the field just beyond our camp, there were at least 50 elk grazing in the early morning sun! Oh my gosh, sweetie, you have to come see this!!!!! We jumped up, got our cameras and ran outside with everyone else in still in their pajamas, it was about 7:00 a.m. As I was taking !! WOW!
many thousands of pictures, I counted at least 50, female, some young males with small antlers and several babies! They were just there, like they owned the place! Talking to some of the other people there, it sounds like they are a morning occurrence

After all that excitement we got ready, and left around 10:00, and they were all still there, it was amazing to see people walking around and pulling over in their cars and semi trucks stopping to view this wonderful sight!

Our next stop....Napa!

Trees of Mystery!

Thursday as we were driving along through the trees we came across a place called the Trees of Mystery, with a great big 50 foot tall Paul Bunyan drawing us in. Rico had always wondered what that was all about, so we decided to go check it out.

It turned out to be a wonderful privately owned park that had huge, huge old redwoods. All along the path of these trees you learned about their history. We learned about how loggers chopped down many of these amazing old trees back in the 1950's! What a horrible thing to do, they are so old and so wonderful! The area was purchased back in the late 1960's in order to preserve them from any more logging, thank goodness! Some of these trees are as old as 3000 years! We can't even imagine that!

At the end of the mile or so walk, we took a gondola ride up a mountain, where we were just about at the tree line, what a wonderful view! We took many pictures (of course) and made our way back down.

It was very interesting to learn about the history of these old trees, and we highly recommend a trip to anyone!

We carried on down south, driving through the Redwood forest, it's very, very large, for many, many miles you drive through these beautiful trees, all different sizes and shades of green, obviously the ages of these trees vary by many, many, maybe even hundreds of years!

We stopped an an rv park still within the trees. The place was called Stone Lagoon. We were early enough that we were able to take a small hike. It started to rain on us at this time, and it got harder and harder and never stopped until some time in the night!

We did some laundry in the rain, had a nice yummy meal, and again went to bed! Another day, over already!

Oregon Coast & the California Redwoods

Wednesday we spent the day driving along the lower half of the Oregon coast, stopping now and then to take some pictures. The coast is just so beautiful!

We wound up in the California Redwoods for the evening, spending the night in the State Park. It's very beautiful there too, the trees so old, so big and so beautiful! We bbq'ed a pork loin in the evening, and went to bed, nice and relaxing. The days go so fast! Tomorrow we will explore the trees a bit...