And to the Hosts.. THANK YOU!!!!

Lastly, I want to say a HUGE thank you to our very generous hosts in California!!

Unfortunately, this is the only picture that I have of all three of you, but thank you for opening up your home to Nate and I while we were in California. We both appreciate your hospitality so very much!! 

Thank you for sharing your fascination with black widow spiders. I don't appreciate this as much, but Nate did!!! 

Thank you for allowing Nate to climb on your roof and catch a black widow spider. He loved it!! :) 

Thank you, Rick, for casually opening the jar to the black widow spider and standing a foot from me without me knowing you were standing that close... :) 

Thank you, Dessa, for playing with Nate. He always loves a little companion to toss around and scare a bit. 

Thank you, Helga, for being my kayak buddy!! This picture will forever crack me up!! :) 

Helga, Rick and Dessa please let us know when you'll be back in NH so that we could return the favor! We do really appreciate letting us stay with you!!! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Kayaking in Monterey Bay

The last day of our adventure in California was definitely one of my favorite days. We were sitting around Rick and Helga's house trying to think of things to do for the last day. I was looking at things and saw whale watching in Monterey Bay. Helga and Nate discussed it and decided it was definitely an idea. We kept thinking and decided that was exactly what we were going to do. The next morning, we packed up the car with kayaks and we headed south to Monterey Bay. The weather forecast said it was going to be brilliantly sunny all day... unfortunately when we got there, it was overcast and cold... but we still got to see tons and tons of stuff. 

When we put the kayaks into the water, we noticed that there were some jelly fish in the water. We all decided that at no time would we be entering the water, besides the cold water and cold air temps. I stuck the underwater camera in the water to see what I could take a picture of without getting stung and I was able to come up with this one:

Not only do the sea lions bask on the rocks, but the monstrous sea stars too!! They were HUGE!!! 

As we were paddling around, you would see birds fly around and land in a few places. From my many whale watching boat tours that I have been on and seen ONE whale, I knew that where birds are means that the wildlife is around too. Where ever we saw pod of birds, we would paddle towards them to see what was out there. You can see the seal's head sticking up as he just threw a fish out of the water and all the birds trying to gobble up all the parts that flew as the fish was tossed out the water. It was pretty cool. 

We paddled through a kelp forest. The underwater camera was pretty awesome to have!! 

If you look really closely, you can see a momma otter holding her baby otter and paddling backwards!! SO CUTE!!!! 

Mr. Seal was fascinated with Nate's rutter. Nate was not impressed with the seal chasing him. It was the second time on the trip to California that I saw Nate somewhat uncomfortable. 

Then Mr. seal thought it would be a great idea to try and climb up on our kayak. Helga and I had made a pact not to go into the water so we started paddling like mad to get away from the curious seal. 

All smiles once we got away from the curious seal. 

The adorable sea lions basking on the rocks!!! And yes, once we got out of the kayaks, the sun started to come out and it was a nice day. 

Just a little 6 hour ride around San Francisco on Mountain bikes

On Sunday, after we found out that the waves were JUNK, we decided to borrow Rick and Helga's mountain bikes and drive back to San Francisco so that we could ride across the Golden Gate Bridge. As stated in the post before, the fog had finally rolled in so unfortunately, it was probably going to be a foggy ride across the bridge but oh well... 

When we were in San Francisco on Friday, Nate kept mentioning that he wanted to see what Haight and Ashbury was all about. So, first stop on the bike adventure was to find Haight and Ashbury. We rode through the streets of western San Fracisco until we finally found the panhandle of Golden Gate park. Then we found Ashbury street so we took that and then we found Haight and then we rode up and down the street looking at all the shops. What I didn't expect was a Ben and Jerry's ON the corner of Haight and Ashbury... but it was 10am on Sunday so there was no Ben and Jerry's for me!! :(

 We then rode through Golden Gate park and worked our way to the Golden Gate Bridge.

We climbed some crazy hills and Nate took his shirt off.... 

Then we looked over some crazy cliffs.. 

And we kept riding until we got to the bridge... And it was AWESOME!!!! 

After we rode across the bridge, we rode up another killer hill and got to see the bridge from a different angle. Also very cool... 

Then we rode down the hill and went off on a pier and got to see the bridge from yet another angle. 

After the bridge, we decided to have lunch in Sausalito. We found bike locks when we were leaving the house, but we didn't know the combination so we decided we would stay with the bikes and eat outside. It was a really yummy cute restaurant so it worked perfectly. 

After lunch, we decided to head back towards the city as we needed to get back to San Jose to pick up Dessa. Here is the bridge on the way back into San Francisco. 

Nater Potater in an awesome cheese pose off the bridge!!! 

The bridge from the last and final angle as we rode away... 

With only knowing where we parked the car and not knowing anything about the elevation. Nate decided that we would ride Fillmore street back to the car. We pedaled up to it and I looked up and said, "Oh no"... 

Nate is the yellow shirt with the orange back riding up the hill above the silver car... notice the steps on the side of the road. 

This is me as I'm pushing my bike up the hill... I didn't ride much at all and I am ok with it! 

The last of the trip to the city included an unexpected stop at Stanford University. We messed up Helga's GPS system in the car and it was giving us directions back to San Jose via the shortest distance, not necessarily the shortest route. So we got off on some exit and then started driving down some road. I looked at the phone and was like, 'ooh, Stanford is just down the road. Can we see it?'. So, we did... 

The brand new track with the tower in the back ground. 

Nate skating through campus... 

The pool... must be rough... 

I did take a picture of the football team during practice and I did get yelled at and because I'm a rule follower, I won't post it on the blog. 

Glass, and seals, and Mavericks, oh my!

We took the train on Friday from San Francisco to San Jose and hung out with our friends' Rick and Helga and their daughter Dessa. I'll post pictures of them in a later post. On Saturday, Rick and Helga were off on a crazy long bike ride so Nate and I had to figure out something to do. We decided to see if we could go surf in Santa Cruz. We drove to Santa Cruz in the morning and found a really nice break. We hung out a little  and decided that we should find a place to rent a board. We went to the Billabong shop and talked to the manager guy, Adam. We asked him about renting boards and suits and he said it was going to $10 to rent a board and $10 to rent a suit. He showed him the board selection and we asked if there were any with any less plastic. He showed us some boards in the back that we could rent if we wanted. Then we talked a bit about surfing and what not and next thing you know, he's telling us to save our money. He told us that the tide was going to keep coming in and the waves were going to get junkier. He said that he thought that were going to be better waves tomorrow.... He then pointed out some spots on the map that we could check out that would be really cool to visit... I'm not sure if he was a total punk and just didn't want us to surf OR if he was really telling us what he thought was to be true because all in all, the tide was in fact backing out and the waves were probably going to get better as the day went by AND the forecast for the next day looked like complete JUNK!! BUT that being said, we did get to see some really cool things along the coast! Instead of just hanging in Santa Cruz all day, we headed north up the coast.

First stop, was a town called Davenport. There is a glass bottling factory in Davenport and it's up the creek from the beach. The creek flows into this beach and brings down broken glass with it. It has basically created a sea glass beach. We didn't actually look for sea glass because we didn't know if we were in the right location, but we did check out the beach and it was really cool. :)

This the cliffs around the sea glass beach in Davenport

The tunnel to the glass bottling factory

Nate checking out a little cave. Me hoping some critter jumped out of the cave and scared Nate! Although, I probably would've screamed louder!! :) 

Nate rock climbing the cliffs at the beach. 

The next stop on the adventure was to Ano Nuevo State Reserve to see the Elephant Seals. We got to the state reserve and got our little ticket to see the seals and headed out. We first came along a beach and there was a guy knee surfing so we went and checked it out. 

The knee surfer is the speck behind the rock in front of us. Also notice that the fog is starting to roll in in the distance. 

Along the way to the elephant seals we saw a lizard-dude. 

We finally made it to the elephant seals and it was pretty cool. The only elephant seals on the beach at that time were the juvenile seals. The adults had gone off to feed. The juvenile seals were plumping up and learning how to be adults. The first video is all the seals and some of them spraying themselves with sand.

This second video is two juvenile male seals practicing their fight moves. 

As we were walking back, we noticed a GIANT seal trying to get into the water. We watched him get back into the water. It was pretty cool. 

We got back to the car and kept heading north. The next stop was going to be Pescadaro to see if we could run into Neil Young but we kept seeing signs for Half Moon Bay. Going to find Mavericks was WAY more tempting than Neil Young so we headed north to Half Moon Bay. We used our phones to figure out where Mavericks was and I believe we got to the beach.

It didn't appear to be working when we were there but the fog had completely rolled in so we really couldn't see too much to know. 

Nate said he felt a little spooked out while we were there which I was a little thankful for. I would rather him spooked out then thinking how awesome it would be to ride those waves! 

It was getting late and the sun was going to set soon so we decided to head back towards San Jose. I really wanted to see the sunset but Nate convinced me that with the thick fog, we weren't going to see it on the beach. We headed towards the highway and as I was looking at the GPS on the phone, I saw a road called, "Skyline Boulevard". I said, "lets take that one". We headed south on highway 35 and as we turned onto the road, I knew we hit jackpot. We started driving out the fog and the sun was starting to set. It was amazing!!! 

The adventure ended on this crazy hairpin turny road back towards San Jose, but it was an awesome time and definitely one to remember!!

Quick Sight Seeing San Fran

Nate and I had great aspirations of going to Alcatraz after we finished our run. We went to the mall first and hit the Vans store. Look at these cute little pink Vans... SO CUTE!!! 

Then we took the bus from Market Street to Pier 33. We got off the bus and went to see if we could buy tickets. Yes, we could buy tickets... but only for a boat ride on Monday... uh... no thanks!! So, then we sat there and were like, "What should we do now?" We had already ran the city and saw the twisty road, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate bridge from a distance, the Sea Lions, and part of China town... We went up to a tour bus to see how much that cost and it was going to be $47 for a couple hour ride. We said, 'No thanks' and continued pondering what to do. I looked up and saw Coit Tower and said, "Well, lets go there". So we walked up to Coit Tower, paid our $7 and went to the top.

The city from the top of the Coit Tower: 

A little fake grass roof... 

The Oracle boat for the America's Cup... which happened to capsize last week and crashed... :-(

The cute self portrait at the top: 

From Coit Tower, we walked down a little stairwell street which had gorgeous gardens. Check out some of the flowers:

We were going to take the bus back but we didn't know the schedule and needed to catch a train to San Jose so we decided to walk quickly back to the hotel to grab our stuff. 

Coit Tower: 

Transamerica Pyramid:

For not having a plan, it was a really scenic day!