Portland to San Francisco

This is only about 2 weeks late but I figured I should post about it. I definitely need to get my act together and get back into blogging. The last week of the trip was a catch 22. Everywhere we went was beautiful but I was starting to get a little burned out from traveling and needed a break that I didn't have time for. The highlight of the trip from Portland to San Fran was the Redwood Forests. I had seen plenty of pictures of Redwoods but it's impossible to appreciate their size unless you see them up close and personal. A huge portion of the Northern California coast is covered with Redwoods so we stopped at a handful of places to walk on the trails and see these behemoths. At one point we drove along a road called The Avenue of The Giants, a road surrounded by redwoods, and this led us to The Drive-Thru Tree, an old redwood that was cut out to fit a car through it. Even though it was a tourist trap it was still cool to drive a car through a tree. The drive through Napa Valley to San Fran was very windy and curvy, so much that I started felling sick. But once we got into the valley and drove through the wineries it was beautiful. I was reminded a lot of the four months I spent in Florence.

San Francisco was a beautiful city, and it was the first place on the west coast I really could have pictured myself living in...for the most part. It reminded me a lot of Boston and New York, just with a lot of hills! You hear about the fog in San Francisco but much like the redwoods, you need to be there to fully experience it. When the fog rolls in it covers the entire city within a matter of a few minutes. At the end of the trip on our way to the airport you could see the fog coming over the mountains into the valleys like someone was pouring it out of a pitcher. We did a lot of the touristy things around the city like going to Alcatraz, riding the cable cars, driving down Lombard Street, and eating at Fisherman's Wharf. We also headed out of the city down to the Monterrey peninsula and drove along the 17-mile Drive through Pebble Beach. After Monterrey we had dinner with our cousins at their home in Menlo Park, which seemed like a really nice suburb of the city. After being in the city for only an hour or so it's easy to see that San Fran is a very active, fit city. I imagine it's filled with triathletes who love climbing hills and swimming in cold water! I had a great time on the trip and I can't wait to go back and explore the rest of the west coast, but I was happy to be home and get back into training!