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California Road Trip
In the summer of 2018 I took my daughter on a 9-day road trip through California. Here is our little story.
Day 2
Today I woke up in the morning at 5:30. It was starting to get lighter outside. I heard some birds flapping over our tent. Katie was still fast asleep. I was planning for the day. I got up half an hour later and started cleaning up a few things so we could be on the road quickly after Katie woke up.
She got up at 7 and said she was still tired. I told her she could nap in the car as it was going to be quite the ride to San Francisco. I didn't know exactly how long it was going to take as we still didn't have any reception. We had a simple breakfast and then we were on our way. We stopped at Grant Cove to get some coffee for me, a muffin for Katie, and some ice for our cooler. I had two bars on my phone so we called Marie to keep her up to date.
According to Google Maps it was just over 4 hours to San Francisco. Not too bad. Now I thought it was time for a hotel or motel. So I went back to Hotel Tonight which was a big disappointment. The cheapest room in or outside SF was around $300. So I went to Priceline and that was much better. I found a room for $107 per night in Mill Valley. A quick look on street view also revealed it didn't look too bad. It was only 10 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
We were on our way again. We were enjoying some magnificent views coming down from King's Canyon National Park on the CA-180. Traffic was also pretty good, except that in the Bay Area I-580 was a little busy in Berkeley. Driving through the San Joaquin Valley Katie looked out the window and said the surroundings reminded her of "... for amber waves of grain" from "America the Beautiful "; and this morning we were at "...for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain"!
Later Katie asked how much longer and I answered: “5 minutes. Also, you can see the motel on the other side of the freeway". She looked and said "What? It's next to the freeway? How loud is that going to be? I'd like a room furthest away from the freeway. You know which room also would be furthest from the freeway, daddy? A room in a hotel not next to the freeway". Yeah, yeah, it's all going to be fine. We checked in and it turned out, with the windows closed, you could barely hear the traffic. I told her I wanted to charge my iPad and got it from the car. When I got back in the room I looked in the bag with all the different cables and realized the iPad cable was not in it. "Oh no I think I forgot to pack the iPad cable", I said. "Are you looking for this?", she said with a big smile, and pulled out the cable from behind her back. She knew exactly which one to hide (it was the wider one from earlier generations).
"Who wants to go to San Francisco?" I said enthusiastically. Katie was on her iPad after she got access to the WiFi and just mumbled something. "Are you kidding? Put that iPad away, we're going!" I didn't want to drive again or deal with parking so I summoned my first Uber. We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and at that moment Katie texted Marie that we were on the bridge.
The driver dropped us off at Fisherman's Wharf. It was very windy. We walked onto Pier 39 and in front of us somebody's hat blew off her head. An astonishing amount of 2 sea lions were sitting on the docks. Walking back over the pier I told Katie that in the past ships would unload their goods here and that now it's a big tourist trap.
From my last visit I remembered that there was a cable car turnaround nearby, at an easy walking distance. I looked it up and it was only a 10 minute walk. We bought tickets and we had to wait a little bit in line. "I think we will get the third car", Katie said. She was right. I asked her if she wanted to hang on the outside of the car and with some hesitation she said yes. "Well, that is the best way to ride a cable car", I said. The bell rang and there we went! You should have seen the look of excitement on her face. Initially we were joking that the car would only go a block or so, but it turned out we rode all the way to Market and Powell. I recorded some videos of the passing buildings, and of course of Katie. She loved it.
In this video you can see how Kate and I hand colored a b&w photo of a cable car with pastels:
We walked to Union Square and entered the Apple Store. I was considering a larger iPad with a keyboard. Katie discovered a pen that goes with it and in her mind she had already confiscated my future iPad after playing with a coloring app. An apple sales dude said I should probably wait a little longer as a new iPad was probably coming onto the market soon. So we left the store empty handed with a disappointed Katie.
It was time for some dinner and I saw a Cheesecake Factory on the other side of Union Square. It was on the 7th (according to the sign downstairs) or 8th (according to the button inside the elevator) floor. When we got there the sight of a line of an estimated thousand people discouraged us. "There is a burger bar on the 6th floor, daddy", Katie said. Okay, let's try that. No line, and not many patrons either, but we gave it a shot as we were quite hungry. We were placed at a table right next to the window with a view of the square.
After our dinner we walked back to the cable car turnaround. No long line this time and we hopped on - of course on the outside again - after a 5 minute wait. At some point the car stopped at the top of Lombard Street so we could have a look at the crookedest street. Unfortunately for Katie we were on the other side of the car so she couldn't see. We arrived at a different end point than where we had started from at the beginning of the day. After we enjoyed a dessert consisting of a mixed fruit crepe we summoned another Uber.
This turned out to be the most enthusiastic Uber driver in the history of mankind. He asked us some questions and told us he works for the city and loves to show off his city. I mentioned Katie's disappointment of not seeing Lombard Street. The driver took us right there and drove down the street. He parked the car and took our picture with Lombard in the background. Then he took us to the steepest street, followed by the Palace of Fine Arts and left instructions with us as to how to get to the Golden Gate Bridge by bike, which we planned to do the next day. Later he dropped us back off at our hotel.
Katie and I were looking forward to our second day in The City.