Escape to San Francisco

     Back in January of this year, before Sarah and I became into a relationship, we had been talking a lot, and I had noticed how stressful her life has become since she had moved back up to northern California.  Because of how I felt about Sarah, I wanted to try to help her in anyway I can.  At the time, I have wanted to ask Sarah to be my girl friend, and San Francisco popped in my mind.  I brought up the idea of her and I traveling to San Francisco to give her a break from the stresses of life.  Along with that I had an agenda to ask her out during sunset at a vista point over looking the Golden Gate Bridge.  We worked out the dates and had set plans to travel in April.  For those who have been following my blogs, plans had changed when I asked Sarah out in February.  After awhile, plans had changed to where Scotty and Jane would be joining us on the trip, but later changed again when Scotty and Jane just couldn't afford to go.  I traveled up to Sarah's house on April 15, then Sarah and I went to San Francisco on the 16th and 17th.  Original plans were for me to drive home on the 18th, but as luck would have it, class was canceled all day the 19th, so I stayed up at Sarah's till the 20th.  This is the blog of this short but amazing trip to San Francisco, and my visit at Sarah's afterwards.

April 15, 2011: The day started out just how any other day of when I travel.  The alarm goes off, I ignore it, then it goes off again, I think about getting out of bed.  Finally decided to get out.  Begin to get ready for my trip and finish packing.  I had left the house at 9:00 am to drive up to Sacramento.   I would take the 8 hour drive up the 5 freeway through the boring and non-exciting Central Valley.  I made a stop in the Grapevine for lunch, and made a stop at one rest area and a gas station right outside Coalinga. 


     I arrived in the Sacramento area around 4:30, but my journey wasn't finished yet.  I continued to Auburn to visit Sarah at her work, which is at the Echo Valley Ranch Feed Store.  Driving into Auburn gave me a feel that I was leaving California, and arriving in an old time town separated from standard, or normal life.  I really liked that feeling.  Of course, I had to remember that this area was one of the first area's of California, formed back when the California Gold Rush occurred.  I arrived at Sarah's work, and walked inside.  I looked around, and I found the chick room, which I knew that was where she would be.  Her job is to take care of and sale baby chicks at the feed store from spring till October.  There seemed to be about 100 baby chicken chicks in the room, along with a few ducklings and turkey chicks.  I stood there and watched Sarah work for about 45 minutes.  After they closed, I still stayed inside for a good 25 minutes while she was cleaning up before I had to move my car, so other employees can put a few things up front away.  I waited outside till Sarah got off work, and I followed her home.  The drive from Auburn to Olivehurst (where Sarah lives) was a fun curvy ride through the foot hills of the sierras fulled with lush green trees.  Very beautiful.  The drive got disappointing when we passed through Lincoln, CA, when we entered the valley and was just flat land again.  
     
     We got to Sarah's house, and chilled for a little bit until her mom, Sarah, and I went to go pick up a pizza to bake.  After dinner, we chilled and watched a few things on Netflix before heading to bed.  We tried to go to bed early, for tomorrow would be a very long day.  

April 16, 2011: Sarah and I woke up early to make plans to head out to San Francisco around 9:00 am.  We got up, packed up the car, and headed on the road to San Francisco.  Normally, when driving to San Francisco from Sacramento, people just drive the 80 to the Bay Bridge and drive on into the city.  I had decided it would be way cooler if we had driven down over the Golden Gate Bridge into the city.  We drove over the Richmond bridge to get over to the 101 from the 80.  As we drive up to the bridge, the signs for the toll booth lanes where a little confusing and I got off an exit right before hand.  We ended up getting off the highway and onto a little road.  We flipped a bitch and headed right back onto the highway, and payed the toll to get in.  As we were crossing the bridge, we got our first glimpse of downtown San Francisco, and we both got excited to be there.  The city was kinda covered by a thin layer of fog, which isn't surprising for San Fran. After a two hour drive, we had finally gotten to the Golden Gate Bridge.  The bridge too was in a thin layer of fog, but it was cool to see, well for me anyway, because I love fog.  The traffic was moving great.  We had to pay a toll to get into the city, which was $6.00.  Now if you look at the photo taken of us about to go onto the bridge, and you notice it looks kinda weird, that is because it was taken from inside the car, and those are dead bugs on my windshield, which is a small price you pay for driving through Central Valley.  


     We got into the city with no problem, and was headed for Pier 39.  The 101 is called Lombard Street, and if you continue past where the 101 changes to Van Ness, you will go up a very steep hill, and on the other side of that hill will be the most famous part of Lombard St, considered the worlds most curvy road.  As I was driving closer, I started getting worried about my car, and had it in my mind that we were not going to attempt it.  When we got to Van Ness, I said screw it, and continued up Lombard.  At the top of the hill, in the middle of the road, you can see many people just standing there.  Sarah and I were wondering why they were blocking traffic.  As we started up the steep hill, it became more obvious they were taking photos of the cars trying to drive up the hill.  Driving up the hill wasn't the bad part.  It was when we would have to stop on the hill.  Right as you release the brake and go for the gas pedal, the car starts going downhill and fast.  You don't dare ride the ass of the car in front of you, or there is a chance you can get hit.  Well the driver behind me came in to close for comfort, and I could of sworn at one point I was just centimeters from hitting that car.  After that, the driver of that car learned to keep his distance.  We finally made it to the top of the steep hill, and tons of people were sitting there laughing and taking photos of us.  I just wanted to yell at them to try the same thing, its not as easy as one would think.  Thank god I didn't have a stick shift.  That would be even worse.  We drove down the curvy part of Lombard St., which was easier to move around than what I thought, and then headed down to Pier 39.

     We parked in the official Pier 39 parking garage, and headed over to look through all the shops.  Our first mission truly was to find a bathroom after that long drive.  We looked around, and followed the signs, and found the restrooms.  Afterwards, we walked around and looked at the shops.  We didn't really go in too many shops.  We went into a few shops which had some memorabilia type things and we stopped to look at the chocolate shop.  After spending some time in the shops, we headed over to view the famous Sea Lions that hang out on the west side of the Pier.  We killed a few minutes watching the seals, then decided to look at a few more shops and to get ideas of were we should have dinner that night.   As we started walking up the stairs to the second level of shops, we stopped to watch two performers do some tricks on the stage located near the end of the pier.  They were cool to see, and my favorite thing was when they were on their unicycles and juggling flame torches.  After the show, we finished looking around, and was planning on heading over to Fisherman's Wharf, which is just west of the pier, but we were hungry, so we headed back to my car to eat turkey sandwiches, which I had brought all that stuff from home.  After lunch, we headed back out to adventure Fisherman's Wharf.

     For those who haven't traveled to San Francisco before, one of the famous things Fisherman's Wharf is known for is street performers, artists, and others who want to make it in the world.  Right outside of Pier 39, heading toward the wharf, we noticed a large group of people, so we went over to check it out.  A show was going on from three street performers, who are students from England trying to make some money.  Out of all of the performers, they were the funniest, and most awesome.  One of my favorite things that occurred in the show  was when one of the performers noticed one person in the audience.  The performer pointed her out, but she kept on talking on the phone, so he went over to talk to the person she was talking to.  Afterwards, he had her volunteer in the show.  I really liked that.  We watched the show, which only lasted 25 minutes, and then we continued on our Fisherman's Wharf explorations.  We walked through a few shops, and stopped to look at other artists and performers.  I was hoping that I could walk Sarah right by the bush guy, who hides behind a trash can and scares people who doesn't know he is there.  I failed because he was moving to another location.  We also stopped to look at the WWII Submarine (USS Pampanito) that Sarah's grandfather had served on.  Since we didn't have money we weren't able to go inside, but that always leaves that for another trip.  

     At the end of Fisherman's Wharf lays the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, which is the historical Hyde Street Pier.  This National Park has many old boats and ships from the olden days from Ferries, tug boats, small traveling boats, and the ship Balclutha or the Star of Alaska some call it which took lumber from Oregon to Australia and later got into the trading of Salmon from Alaska to California.  Normally it costs money to get through to see these ships, but lucky for us, it was National Park Week, which means all National Parks in the country are free for people to visit.  We wouldn't have seen these awesome boats if we had to pay since we had no money.  We explored all the old ships, and enjoyed the view of the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the cityscape with a side of taking photos of course.  We also got to see one of the National Park rangers work on a restoration project of one of the boats, which was cool to see.  He talked to us for a little bit of what he was doing, and how they curved the wood to the shape the boats are, which they steam it.  

     After we explored all the amazing old ships and some photo taking, we had noticed time was moving fast, and I had an agenda to be somewhere for the sunset, so we slowly walked back to Pier 39, where we would have dinner.  We had dinner at Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company.  By time we had gotten there, our feet were tired from all the walking.  We had an hour wait to get a table, but it felt good to just sit for a little bit.  We got seated about 30 minutes ahead of schedule which was awesome.  I crossed my fingers that we would be seated by a window with the view of the bay, and with our luck, we did.  We enjoyed our dinner, the view, and talked about what we should do the next day.  After dinner, we slowly walked back to the car, and headed to our next destination.  This entire part of the trip was the major reason why I wanted to bring Sarah to San Francisco to begin with.  If you read my past blogs, you will read something that Sarah and I created together, our own love story about a guy and a girl who found an outlook with a great view and their relationship built from that location.  My plan at this point was to travel across the Golden Gate Bridge and take her to Hendrik Point.  From there, you can see a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge, downtown San Francisco, and the bay.  Originally, I planned on taking Sarah here to ask her to be my girl friend, back when the plans for this trip had first been made, and as you read those plans had changed.  After we drove over the Golden Gate, and started heading for the point, we noticed hundreds of cars parked on the side of the road.  When we got to the parking area, it was jam packed.  I had to avoid cars hitting me and from hitting people.  The road past that point was closed till the end of the summer for construction.  I started to get worried.  We turned around and as we started driving down the hill, a car pulled out in front of us, which was awesome because that gave us a parking spot.

     After we parked, Sarah started collecting things and got scared by a stink bug that was under her chair.  The bug was in my car and traveled up with me, which I didn't notice.  So we released it real quick before getting there.  We grabbed some blankets, our jackets, cameras, and took the small hike to the point.  When we got there, there was a good amount of people there, but not tons.  The city was covered in fog but the bridge was beautiful, as you can see from the photo above.  We first went over to the edge to take a look of the awesome view.  I also asked someone to take a photo of both of us and the bridge.  Afterwards, we sat on a blanket for awhile and just enjoyed the view. I would get up every so often to take some photos, as I always do.  About 30 minutes after being there, the entire bridge was covered in fog to were you couldn't see it.  We waited for a few mins and the fog moved inland and uncovered the bridge for us to view.  As the sun set, more photographers showed up to the area to take some photos.  At this point of the day, i started to get very nervous, for I had a mission here, and I wasn't quite sure how to even accomplish it, for I had never done this before (kinda embarrassed to say that, but its true).  While im trying to play out how to accomplish this mission, Sarah would be giving hits towards what she knew would eventually come.  As a retard, I kept stalling, and soon the sun was gone.  The sea breeze was starting to get really cold, and it was about time to head off, and I knew Sarah was starting to not enjoy it, but i kept stalling leaving due to my mission.  Of course, I was glad we stayed, because the moon came out and it made for perfect photos of the bridge at night.  The fog was also slowly moving away from downtown to were we can see the lights of the cityscape.  I went off with my camera for a little bit. When I got home to look at the photos, i noticed they had too much noise, and I totally forgot to change the ISO settings on my camera before shooting.  It does make sense that I would forget when photographs of the bridge really weren't on my mind.  Finally, after a few hours of being up at the point, we packed up.  I real quickly took Sarah, and we walked over to the edge to get one last view of the bridge, which was beautiful.  My heart was racing, and I stalled a little bit more trying to think, but then I noticed she was getting cold, and to be honest I was getting cold so I just went for it.  Then we shared our very first kiss.  A kiss that has slowly been coming at us for the last 9 years, since we met at Cal Focus in Sacramento in 2002.  It seems we had found our outlook.  I was planning on kissing her while the sun was still setting, but my nervousness took over.  After the kiss, we took one last look, then we slowly started walking away.  We shared another kiss, and afterwards I noticed another photo opp.  I took a quick photo, and then Sarah and I headed back to the car.  The photo below was taken right before our first kiss, and it was a beautiful view.  We drove back through the city, and down to near the San Francisco Airport, where our hotel was located.  We stayed at the Travelodge.  We got to the hotel around 10:00 pm, and it didn't take us long to pass out from a long but amazing day.

April 17, 2011: Originally we wanted to wake up in time for breakfast, but our tiredness slowed us down in the morning.  Sarah isn't much of a morning person, and im kinda a morning person, but from the long day yesterday, and with the lame sleep I had from the lame mattresses of the hotel had me tired.  We finally got up, packed, and headed out on the road again.  Our plan was to make it for the free breakfast, but as we headed out of the room, it was 30 mins too late.  We drove across the street to have breakfast at Mc. Donalds.  Afterwards, we drove on out back into the city.  One thing I wanted to do in San Francisco was to find a few geocaches.  While looking for caches to find, I saw one called sounds of the bay.  I looked it up, and I had learned it was hidden at a point of a marina near the Golden Gate Yacht Club with something called a wave organ.  It seemed that an artist took old pipes and old cemetery blocks to create this wave organ. Many pipes would be placed into the water, and as the water crashes or moves in the pipe, you can hear that noise come out of the other end.  I believe there are about 28 pipes total.  There were pipes, and holes coming out all over the place, and you had planty of places to sit to listen to this "music".  We parked and walked out to the wave organ.  We found the geocache hidden there.  Then we laid down together next to one of the pipes, and put one of each of our ears over the pipe to listen to the beautiful water echo through the pipe.  In front of us and to the left was the view of downtown.  You can see in the image I posted here of Sarah and my backpack.  That was where we laid to listen to the organ.  The sun was coming out of the fog, and a sea breeze was blowing, and it was quiet.  It was a perfect moment.  It felt as if time has stood still, and it was just Sarah and I enjoying each others company.  It was so comfortable (Other then the cement we were sitting on) that both of us started to fall asleep.  It was a way different mood than the night before when I was nervous and stalling.  After about 30 minutes, we decided it was time to move on, or we were gonna pass out and lost time.  It kinda sucked near the end because people showed up and they really weren't that quite, so our alone time was kinda over.  In my opinion, this was my favorite time of the trip, with the sunset being second.

     We headed back into town.  We drove up Steiner Street.  First on the street we came too was the house used in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire.  Second we stopped at Alamo Square to see the painted ladies.  We spend alittle bit of time enjoying the view of the houses and the downtown cityscape before moving on.  From there we drove back down to Fisherman's Wharf.  This time, we parked right behind the In N Out.  We were hungry by that time, so we decided to have In N Out for lunch.  It was jam packed, but they still moved really fast to get our orders and get our food.  We knew we weren't gonna find a seat inside, so we went outside, and ate in a courtyard to the side.  While eating, a homeless person showed up and started trying to talk to people in the area.  He first kept talking about how he could rip it up with a rental bike from the rental place located in the courtyard.  After awhile, the homeless person sat near us, and music began to play.  Then he tried to ask us if we know how to tango, and he started to dance.  Then he asked about the salsa.  Of course, we arn't talking to this weirdo.  We finished our food, and headed out of there before the homeless guy got closer.  That burger by the way, was one of the best burgers I had in a long time.  Idk what it was, but it was AMAZING!

     After lunch, we walked over to Ghirardelli Square, which was were the original factory was located and the very first store was located there as well.  Of course, we went through it.  We got a free sample, and we saw some caramel filled chocolate eggs.  I just had to buy them.  Afterwards, we walked through Fisherman's Wharf to get to the Boundin Sourdough Bakery.  I wanted to buy a sourdough bread to take home, and Jane wanted one as well.  Since she seemed to had a bad weekend, I bought her a bread in the shape of a sea turtle to cheer her spirits up.  Sarah waited outside, and watched from a window some workers in the bakery preparing the bread.  Afterwards, it was time that we called it a trip, and we headed back in the car, and headed out over the Golden Gate Bridge, and headed back to Sarah's house.  On the way back, we had to drive an extra hour out to Grass Valley in Nevada County to pick up Sarah's sister.  After a long trip, I was tired, but I have to say seeing the house that Sarah grew up and the beautiful foothills of the Sierra Nevada's with the lush green forests was nice to see.  It was raining alittle bit at that time too, which made us glad it didn't rain on us in San Francsico.  We got to Sarah's house, we had dinner, Sarah and I cuddled on the couch to watch a movie on Netflix, but we were too tired to finish, so we went to bed.  Well I made her go to bed, for she had work the next day.

April 18 , 19, & 20, 2011: On the 18th, Sarah left for work at 7:00 in the morning.  Right as I was waking up, she had come in my room to say bye, and she left.  I ended up staying in bed for two more hours.  My plan for the day was to do a take home test for math class. I had attempted it, but I was so tired from the trip I couldn't stay focused.  I ended up posting photos on facebook, so people can see them.  Sarah came home around 4 pm.  At that time, we just chilled and watched movies on netflix, and I tried to fix their desktop computer which had gotten a trogan virus.  We then went to bed.   The next day, I woke up at 8.  Ended up working on half my take home test.  Sarah's mom and Sarah woke up late, around 10, and we had brunch.  Afterwards, her mom started getting interested into Geocaching, so i looked up some and we drove down to Sacramento to find them.  We parked at Old Sacramento, found a virtural cache, then we walked through downtown to the capitol building to find 6 caches.  One cache we tried looking for was high in a tree and we couldn't reach.  We later met up with Sarah's oldest brother who was in town, and took him to the location.  He got the cache for us.  After a nice walk through downtown, we headed back to Old Sac, got a free sample of salt water taffy, and italian ice, then got Ice Cream and chilled for a bit before heading home.  We got home and Sarah and I stayed late watching more movies, and being together for the last time before I headed home.  On the 20th, Sarah had to go to work, she came in to say goodbye, and then I got out of bed after she left.  I packed up and headed on the 8 hour drive home.

     This was an amazing trip, and Sarah and I had a great time!  I can't wait to see what the future holds for us!  For more photos, visit my facebook page.