Coco left on her mission on August 15th, but before she went we wanted to have one last hurrah with her. We decided to go on a Sisters Trip to San Francisco. Melanie was too pregnant to come and Sarah was without husband, so it was just me, Haley, Kaitlyn, and Colette. Haley took the reigns on researching fun stuff we might want to do and planned out a rough itinerary and did an excellent job. Coco and I were supposed to fly out early and rent a car to go to see the Redwoods, but instead we got to spend 7 hours in the airport waiting for our delayed airplane to arrive in SLC. We looked at funny things on Colette's phone...
...then used the vouchers they gave us to get some Cafe Rio. Colette ate too much and had to loosen the belt. There was a big swarm of missionaries that came in to eat as we were finishing up and Colette admired them from a distance.
Around 6pm our plane finally arrived and we were able to board.
When we got to San Francisco it was almost sunset, but we'd already paid for our rental car so we picked it up and decided to squeeze in as much fun as we could. We sent a message to Tanner and Wes, but they were at a baseball game that night, so I decided to take us out to Half Moon Bay State Park, because my friends that live in that area always post awesome pictures of their trips there.
The drive was gorgeous. We listened to the La La Land soundtrack and admired the scenery and breathed the sea air and enjoyed being together. Colette kept wanting to take pictures of me in the evening light, but I'm not used to being on the other end of the camera, so I got tired of it and started making faces like this.
There was plenty more picture taking to be done when we got to the beach.
Cutie Coco.
This one's my favorite.
It was refreshingly brisk, and so good to take in all the ocean sights and sounds and smells and feels.
I took a couple pictures of things we found...
...and chased a gull for a picture.
Never did quite catch him.
We watched the sun slip below the waves...
...and it was suddenly cold and the beach was closing, so we hustled back to the car.
Laura Goodrich Hogge had recommended Sam's chowder house for dinner, and we had been given a hearty stamp of approval from the rental car guy ("You girls know where to eat!").
I got an enormous lobster roll.
Colette got clam chowder and took a very hot first bite.
When we had dined we returned our rental car, then took the airport light rail back to the BART station. We happened to look out the window at the station and saw...Haley and Kaitlyn on the other train!
We were reunited in no time.
The BART was definitely more ghetto than I was expecting.
The unearthly scream of the train passing through the tunnels I could've gone without, but not the company.
When we got to the station near our hotel it was very late. We had chosen our accommodations based on price, and as we walked in tight formation through two blocks brimming with homeless people, we began to understand the low rate offered by the hotel. But we made it, and we didn't die. (This video is from a different night when we got in earlier and it was less scary, but it will give you an idea).
We checked in without issue (the issues would come later, when I had already gone home and the front desk person would tell the other three that their reservation did not include the 4th night...).
We took a rickety ride in the lushly carpeted lift...
...took a peek at the scary street and listened to the police cars go by...
...then searched our room for bed bugs. We found none.
It was a quirky place.
But clean enough, if you didn't look at the crown molding up by the ceiling, sporting a toupee of dust.
We were soon tucked in tight, ready for adventures in the morning.
The hotel had complimentary donuts for breakfast.
We bought the CityPass that got us onto all the public transportation, but for our intended destinations the first day only bicycles would do, so we took a bus down to Bay City Bike Rental and rented ourselves two tandem bikes.
We rode straight up the street and into to Golden Gate Park...
...and on to our first stop at the California Academy of Sciences.
We killed time in the color exhibit where they had beautiful rainbow birds until it was time for our Planetarium show, which was a 3D representation of the universe as we know it. They started us staring at our night sky where they connected the Orion constellation, then we zoomed towards it with the stars still connected and you could see how very far apart they are on the z axis. It made us feel very small. But despite our little corner of the universe being very small, there is still more to explore at the museum than we could ever squeeze into the time we had. There is a roof garden!
And cool rocks!
And toxic minerals!
And a rainforest!
With butterflies!
And there are also bones!
And cool plants!
My very favorite exhibit at the museum was one only I got to see because everyone else went to the bathroom. It was called "Human Odyssey" and was in the Africa hall and showed the evolution of homo sapiens: on maps, compared to other similar species (like neanderthals), by time, by developmental achievement (walking upright, bigger brain, using tools, thinking symbolically), etc. It was so cool! After the museum we hopped back on our bikes and rode through the rest of Golden Gate Park. It is big.
And beautiful. I wish my garden nasturtiums would grow as well as they do wild in San Francisco.
For lunch Haley took us to Kawika's Ocean Beach Deli.
The guy at the counter was very nice and took a picture for us. Glamour shots were needed in the nice indirect light as well. Haley's is my favorite with her blue eyes and the blue wall.
Kaitlyn had a gyro.
Haley had a meatball marinara.
I had pastrami on rye.
Colette had reg'lar ham and cheese.
Next stop was the old Sutro Baths. They used to be a huge swimming pool by the ocean.
Now they are royns.
We rode our bikes up the trail, then found a spot to lock them up and continued on foot to the Lands End Lookout.
There were ample opportunities for viewing the bay along the way.
I like this cool tree frame.
We sat here for awhile and rested.
Contemplation
When we got to the Lands End Labyrinth, a time lapse was needed.
I took it from up high. I scrambled up this rock face to get the angle I wanted and a weird guy from Utah (who had come up to where I was using the actual trail) started asking me how I got to be so good at climbing. I told him he should try it sometime and he might find it not as hard as it looks.
It's a beautiful view.
And it was very windy.
Wind makes for fun slow motion videos.
We trucked back to our bikes through the trees, then rode a little bit further to the Legion of Honor museum.
We peeked inside, but it wasn't included in our CityPass, so we just played around in the courtyard a bit instead. A Sheffield style picture:
Grecian urns
Not Grecian urns.
And slow-mo walks that I would love to put dramatic music to, but I gotta finish these blog posts so I can do something else with my life. Like my chores.
We shared a chocolate treat in the shade while we appreciated the view.
Perfect, perfect day for sight seeing.
And giant pictures.
From there we rode all the way up and around the Presidio to the northern shore...
. ..with a break for a Golden Gate selfie.
We were just in time for high tide, so we decided to go to The Wave Organ.
It is a sculpture that draws all the interesting water sounds up through pipes and amplifies them depending on where you sit.
It was pleasant, and not crowded.
The better to admire the city...
...and the pelicans soaring.
Next we went to the Palace of Fine Arts to walk around.
I love the color of the stone.
We copied the poses of the subjects in the relief sculpture on the dome.
And the ladies on tops of all the columns
Then we biked all the way down to Fisherman's Warf to return our bicycles. Wow, it was a long day of riding, but such a fun way to see the city.
Except maybe the uphills. That was less fun. We didn't actually do the down part of that first spike--the map is being weird. And the sharpest down and up spike was not part of our bike ride--that was our hike out to the Labyrinth.
Once free of bikes we walked down to the ferry terminal to take a tour of the Bay. There was a really interesting narration, but it wasn't until about halfway through the tour that we realized Colette and Haley were sitting so close to the edge of the boat that the roar of the wind was completely drowning out the speaker. We scooted down the row so they could hear.
It really is a beautiful city, Howard. So much weird history.
Look! Here we are, under the bridge.
We passed a tug boat taking an enormous ship out to sea in the sunset.
It was a fun way to get a full view of the bridge.
It was very cold, and I had stupidly left my jacket at the hotel that morning...
...so Kaitlyn shared hers, because she's the best.
For dinner Kaitlyn took us to Boudin for clam chowder in their famous sourdough bread. We walked through their little museum while we waited for a table and admired the fun sourdough shapes.
They sat us near the brick oven, which we appreciated since we were all still a little cold from our ferry tour. We had fried calamari as an appetizer, for Justin. It was a little too much squiggly leg for Coco.
After dinner we took a bus back to our hotel, hoping to get there earlier and avoid the homeless Rendezvous of the night before. The streets were much less crowded. This was the night we took the video I put above. Kaitlyn and I watched Isn't It Romantic until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore, then we went to sleep.
The next morning we woke up and it was Colette's Birthday! We decided to start with a little What's Up Doc film sites tour. On our way to the bus stop there was a cute art store that had fun posters in the window, so we went in to take a look. I found one of the world that had all the rivers and mountains lined up on the edges so you could see their relatives heights and lengths. Haley found a cat poster, of course.
Coco and Haley went back to the room so we wouldn't have to carry around our purchases all day and Kaitlyn and I went to Walgreens to buy some more breakfast and sunscreen. We passed a security guard on our way in, and while we were shopping there was a big scene between him and a homeless woman wearing no pants who he would not allow to enter the store. We waited for Colette and Haley inside the Walgreens instead of on the street where there were several other homeless people milling about, one sporting an open wound on his calf the size of my hand. When Coco and Haley arrived we caught a bus going up the hill...
...to the nice side of town where there are tidy neighborhoods full of trim mansions...
...with well manicured garden boxes...
...full of interesting plants of all shapes and sizes.
Many a photo op.
Haley took most of those artsy pictures, with her pretty braid. I mean with her camera, while wearing her pretty braid.
There were many artsy houses to take artsy pictures of. Houses like...
...Mr. Larrabee's!
We walked some more, then took a bus, then walked some more. We stopped at a fire station for a rest...
...and saw the strangest people go by.
Then we walked up and down some more hills and came to this beautiful park.
But on our way out we had to make ourselves scarce...
...because there was a pretty intense car chase. On our way back to the bus stop from here one of my favorite things of the whole trip happened. We were walking under some trees and I saw what I now think must have been a lychee. They were all over, so I picked one up and cracked it open and tasted it. It was sweet, so I let Kaitlyn taste it. We gave it to Haley, but she didn't want to taste it, so she hurled it away exaggeratedly across the street. We all stood there watching it rise...then holding our breath as it started to fall straight towards the cars parked across the street...then bursting into horrified laughter and walking swiftly away as it splattered across a car's windshield. Oops!
We caught a bus to take us back to Fisherman's warf, but I stopped paying attention to when we were supposed to get off and we went too far, so we walked back through a steep bit of Chinatown to get back up to a trolley car stop. When the trolley we wanted finally came, the guy taking tickets wouldn't let us on because he said he wasn't sure if the CityPass covered it (he was giving us a hard time, but it was so crowded and we were so stressed trying to get on that I didn't catch the joke). I said I was pretty sure the trolley was covered because there was a picture of it in the actual booklet. He took a step back and said with attitude, "What did you just call this?" and then wouldn't let us on until I called it the proper name. For the record, they are the historic cable cars. Imma keep calling 'em trollies though, just out of spite.
We walked down Fisherman's wharf...
...and we saw Michael Phelps!
It made us hungry, so we walked down Pier 39 to Bubba Gump Shrimp.
We walked in and they have Forest Gump playing on screens all over the restaurant, and it was the end of the movie, so we cried a lot.
Get back in there tear!
Our server was a super cute girl from Ireland with a rad accent.
We had a nice view of the bay, but some of us were too tired to enjoy it.
The food was of enormous proportions.
We felt like sea lions after.
We walked down to the aquarium next, because it was on our CityPass.
This was my favorite thing we saw there.
When we were done looking at fishes, we decided to walk to Walgreens (again!) to get some cold medicine for Kaitlyn, who was not feeling well. While we were there we watched two people rob it. That was fun. They did not have a security guard at their store. Then, twas time for...
...birthday treats at Ghirardelli Square! "To split! Heeheeheeehee!"
I can't remember when it happened, but I think it was here, that we tried to go to the Exploratorium and they told us it was going to be closing in less than an hour, be closed for an hour, then reopen again for adults-only night. Stymied, we went to the bathroom and sat for awhile to rest (I read about the museum's new building and all the steps they took to make it sustainable with rain water to flush toilets, AC that uses cool water from the Bay, and solar panels). Then we changed plans and went back to Fisherman's Wharf and tried to take the trolley up to Lombard street. The line was distastefully long, so instead we walked...
...up, up, up...
...to the top of Lombard Street.
It was terrifically busy. We marveled at what it must be like to live there.
Colette found a spider who built a web with a great view.
After that we couldn't decide what to do. Coco was tired and cranky, Kait was feeling gross and wanted to try to ride the trolley again unmolested, I wanted to walk a ways to catch a bus to Coit tower before heading back to the Exploratorium, I don't know what Haley wanted to do because she's White Haley. We decided to sit and wait for a trolley car. The problem was, everyone else was sitting and waiting for a trolley car too, and when they arrived, they were totally full. So, we waited a very, very long time. Kate took the opportunity to Facetime her people.
I think we finally figured out it would be faster to take a short trolley ride back to Fisherman's wharf in the opposite direction than we were originally intending to get back to the Exploratorium, and then we were able to hop on the next one that arrived (since everyone coming from the other way was getting off at Lombard). We took a very crowded bus back to the Exploratorium and extricated ourselves with difficulty and relief at our stop.
It is my only regret this trip that we didn't have more time here. Every exhibit is totally interactive and totally awesome. There were a bunch of outdoor exhibits, which were made especially exciting when the mist blew in.
Then there were exhibits sorted into all the different senses. The first area we explored was auditory. They had one really cool exhibit where there was a big clear plastic box with a metal plate covered in fine sand inside. You would sing a note into a microphone and the note's vibrations inside the box would bounce around and the sand would collect in the dead spaces. The pattern in the sand changed depending on what pitch you sang. Then there was this funny one that reversed which ear you heard things out of, so when you closed your eyes and tried to walk towards someone calling you, you walked the completely wrong direction.
There was a thing that made a crazy 3D image.
And this fun thing.
And we spent at least 5 solid minutes in this giant kaleidoscope playing the game where you look down then look up on 3 and if you're meeting eyes with someone then you're supposed to be out, but we just laughed at the improbability of one of the many of YOU meeting eyes with one of the many of someone else.
We had to cut our exploring short, because we were supposed to eat dinner in Chinatown and the restaurant was closing. The mist was really starting to move in as we walked to Chong Qing Xiao Mian.
They had delicious bowls of spicy noodles and we tried the green onion pancakes and potstickers too.
We got there just before closing and tried valiantly to finish our food before we were the last ones in the restaurant, but we were severely hampered by our poor chopstick abilities and the spiciness of the food. Colette's selective palate was the only thing we had going for us in getting out of there fast.
Everything in Chinatown was closed by this time of night, so we had a serene walk back to the bus, peeking through windows of the dark shops at all the interesting things for sale, the only ones moving beneath the strings of red lanterns.
Kaitlyn said it was the safest she felt the whole trip!
We ended our adventuring that day at the Dragon Gate.
Haley had a Mulan moment watched over by the Great Stone Dragon.
I woke up the next morning and bid my sistren goodbye on my way to the airport (I had to work that night so I had to get back to Albuquerque, but they stayed an extra day and did the Alcatraz tour). This was my last view of Coco in the flesh before she left on her mission.
The flight back was thankfully uneventful (for me--the other girls had a miserable night in the airport after the hotel denied them their room). The most exciting thing from my journey was that they had everyone going through security walk down a hall in pairs 15 seconds apart so a dog could sniff the air behind them as they went.
It was a great Sister Trip! I look forward to another one with ALL the sisters someday!
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