San Francisco

Our strategy of finding campgrounds to stay in the same day we arrive has been working wonderfully, until we hit San Francisco.  Since we had no phone service or  internet at our last campground I couldn't even do any research, so I finally started getting internet service when we were about 2 hours away from San Francisco yesterday, and I spent over an hour trying to find something but every place I called was all filled up!  I finally asked Tim to pull over and help me, and he quickly found a great place only an hour outside of San Francisco for only $30/night (everything else I had been looking at was at least $50 - $80 a night!).  I was both relieved and jealous!  :-)  So we got there, set up, made dinner for the kids and got a movie for them, and then we went into San Francisco to meet his cousin and his wife and his son and wife and 3 friends at a restarant down at Fisherman's Wharf.  On the way there, we noticed the sky change considerably before we hit the bridge, and at first we thought it was smoke from a fire.  I snapped a picture of it because it was so eerie...we went from a completely clear sky to a cloudy one like that!  And while we were on the bridge I noticed 1 little section on the water that the sunlight was breaking through, and there was a ship in the very middle of it - again - looking eerily like something out of a movie or something. 

And then we arrived at Fisherman's Wharf and temperatures in the 50's!!  After the introductions of Tim's cousin's friends and family, I sat at the end of the table across from Tim's cousin's wife, and had the BEST time getting to know her - she is aweseome!  She's a 5th grade teacher, and being a homescooler myself we had a lot to talk about concerning education.  I told her about the weird sky we saw on the way in, and she told me that the sky in San Francisco can stay grey for weeks at a time, so she and her husband will many times get a room for a couple of nights in the town that we are camping in because it is almost always sunny here.  We had a really nice time with this great group of people and the food was scrumptious!  The kids did wonderful without us, but we came home right after dinner and then all went to bed.
This morning, we got up, had breakfast, and hit the town.  The first thing we did was drive to Fort Point right under the San Francisco bridge where we met Tim's cousin and his wife.  The temperature in San Francisco was predicted at a high of 53 in JULY! - a full 30 degrees lower than the town we're camped in not even an hour from there!  Crazy.  Anyway, at Fort Point there is a tradition in the city that joggers that make it to the Point place their hands on this plaque that you can see Nicole touching before.  This city is completely dog crazy, so there is another plaque below this one (I forgot to take a picture of it) with a set of paw prints, so your dog can touch those while you touch the hand prints.  Wow, just wow.

We snapped a few more photo's outside the fort:

We then went in and then to the top of the Fort.  Nicole snapped these pictures while we were up there.

Then it was time to experience the highlight of Noah's whole trip as he has been planning on this since before we left on the Eastern leg of our trip over 2 years ago.... The Exploratorium.  He had checked out a book from our hometown library a few years back that was put together by this museum, and ever since then he's wanted to go.  And our MOSI passes got us in there free (a $70 savings!).  And it did not disappoint - it is hands down the best hands-on museum we have ever been to!  I think one of my favorite exhibits was what Nicholas dubbed "the slinky treadmill" (see picture below - and yes, that is our mature Nicole doing bunny ears behind Nicholas).  :-)  And Noah found this door the thought was labeled pretty humorously:

Nathan's favorite was this pendulum type thing that you had to swing around and then try to balance at the top.  He was the best of anyone else we saw the whole day, able to balance it for around 1 minute.  I couldn't get it balance for more than 1 or 2 seconds!  Nicole's favorite was the sand on the spinning wheel, where she made this cool flower design in it:

We took a break for lunch

And then it was back for more exploring!  We all found this exhibit to be fascinating - you could take a picture of a water droplet falling and hitting the water at whatever stage in the process that you wanted.  And if you put your face next to the exhibit, it would take a picture of you in the background.  That's how we got the pictures below of Niicole & Nicholas:

There was a whole lot more there, but we finally had to say farewell in front of the artist's rendition of the future site of the Exploratorium, which will be down by the Fisherman's Wharf:

We then drove down Lombard street, and visited the Coit Tower:

We were going to take the kids to Ghiradelli's for a dessert before dinner, but the place was packed with long wait lines, so we opted out of that.  We walked along Fisherman's Wharf for a bit, but finally hopped in the car and came home to make an Italian night dinner (ravioli & lasagna and breadsticks - yum!).  Tomorrowe, we'll have Little Church and then head back into the city to see what other sights there are to see!  Blessings