California or Bust, part 1

For Spring break, we decided to take an epic road trip to southern California to visit my father's parents.  They're getting up there in age, and I felt a certain amount of urgency to see them this break.  Not because I think they're going to die soon, but because I don't see another time in the foreseeable future that we could go on such a trip.  And our tax return permitted it, despite the exorbitant gas prices.
So, to make it harder on ourselves more interesting, we decided to go a longer route and see the sites.  We went to see San Francisco, stopping for the night at a hotel on the way, and visited the aquarium there first.  The trip was long, and we broke it up by stopping at various parks and play places along the way.

The trip over the Sierra Nevadas was snowy and scary, and I didn't even think to take out the camera.  Luckily we made it, and to our Hotel in the beautiful hillsides of Auburn.  We got settled in and went on a little walk to explore and stretch our legs.

Our first palm tree sighting. I know, we're such nerds.

The next morning we drove the two hours to Fisherman's Wharf, enthralled with the loveliness of the  lush green landscape, and getting excited over first views of the bay, the San Francisco skyline and the cool bridges we had to cross as we neared our destination.

This is our only picture of the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.
We thought we were going to get closer, but we  ran out of time.

Alcatraz.  What a cool name.

The Aquarium was definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

This was the real main attraction for the boys.  They kept asking for coins the entire time. sigh.

Then we had lunch on the pier, where Gabe had fun chasing pigeons, and I had the lovely experience of breastfeeding a baby while standing up in a stall of a public restroom --not recommended. Just as we finished lunch, it started raining, so we ran back to our car and then drove through town to get back to the highway.

Yum.

This picture doesn't do justice to how steep these streets are, we were actually peeling out just to get up them.
 Of course, that may have been the water on the trolley rails, but still...

After that, we headed down U.S. 101 towards Los Angeles.

It was a pretty scenic route.  Lots of beautiful green rolling hills, a few forests, happy cows, vineyards as far as the eye could see, mountains, grassy fields, tree-dotted fields, oil fields, and finally, our first views of the open ocean.

There's deer there if you look closely.
We actually didn't know they were there until we reviewed the pictures afterwards.

We didn't get to the campsite until well after dark, but we were glad to be there, and excited to see what our surroundings looked like, as well as what new adventures awaited us in the morning.  

To be continued...

(Click here for part 2)