Detour to San Francisco

The plan had been at this point to head to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon.  This has a special place for me and Dave because we got engaged there.  But, I checked the weather and conditions.  Snow was headed over the next few days and very little of the park had been dug out from the winter.  So, we decided that that plan was out.  So, we went back to an original idea to go to San Francisco.  We stayed downtown and headed to visit the sea lions on the pier. 

The next day, we just wandered around the city a little.  We went on a tour of a old WWII submarine, the U.S.S. Pampilona.  That was actually pretty interesting to see the inside and learn about life on a sub during the war.  

We had hoped to ride the trolley cars, but there was too big a line and they moved too inefficiently for me. 

My kids were bored standing in line, and this is what happens when my kids get bored.  They find ways to entertain themselves, not necessarily smart ways!

 So, we just headed over to Ghirardelli Square to get some ice cream for lunch.  The kids liked that.  We got their 8 scoop sundae with eight toppings.  No surprise – we had no trouble finishing that. 

 

 

On our way out of town, we checked out the steep roads.  We got out at Lombard Street to see the switchbacks. 

The kids enjoyed running up and down the steps on the side, and again entertaining themselves in non-traditional ways. 

 

We went to go down the 41 degree road, the steepest in San Francisco.  It looked like we were heading off to our death.  Dave pulled up to go over and then decided he did not want to go down.  So, we backed up and went down another way.  We finished off our San Francisco tour as we headed out of the city over the Golden Gate Bridge.  We headed out through Napa Valley.  It was beautiful out there and full of vineyards.  I checked out a website to find if any of the vineyards were kid-friendly.  Surprisingly, there were a couple. One of them was in a castle.  You can take a tour of the castle, including the torture chamber.  Unfortunately, they were having an event, so no tour.  But, we could still do a tasting. That was a little interesting with 4 kids around.  We had hoped to find a nice place where the kids could run around. This wasn’t it, but the guy that did the tasting was good with the kids.  He told us that this castle was the one used in Bedtime Stories.  The wine was good, and we definitely want to get back here one day sans children.