From Sea To Shining Sea

In the next few weeks, our family will have driven from coast to coast! We've been visiting Calvin's family here in Nevada for the past week, and we took a couple of days out to go on our own little trip. We headed out early Thursday morning and drove to San Francisco! The drive through the Sierra mountains was beautiful.

In San Francisco, we explored Pier 39. Our hotel was only a block from the Pier, which was perfect. We saw the sea lions who have made a home there at the pier since the earthquake in 1989. We also went on a boat tour of the bay. The boat sailed out and under the Golden Gate bridge. Then it turned and went around Alcatraz. They told us all about the prision that used to be there. It was pretty spooky. We even saw some dolphins swimming out in the bay!

After the boat tour, we went to the aquarium. Camden loved going through the tunnels under the aquariums and looking at all the fish, sting rays, and sharks. In one of the tanks, they had some of the biggest fish I have ever seen. I am definitely going to think twice before I go swimming in the ocean again. In this shallow pool, we got to touch the sharks and the rays. They also had some pools where we got to touch some star fish.

Our next stop was China town. We walked all 14 blocks there and 14 blocks back. It was so much fun to watch Calvin speaking Chinese to all the people there. They would get so surprised when he started speaking to them! We got some really good treats from a couple of Chinese bakeries.

On our way back to the pier, we stopped at Ghirardelli square. We couldn't resist some of the famous chocolate and and some really good ice cream.

On the second and last day of our trip, we got up and drove across the Golden Gate bridge. We then made our way up to Napa Valley. The vineyards and rolling hills were beautiful. After our sight-seeing, we went to Six Flags, Discovery Kingdom. The roller coasters were awesome! They also had some pretty cool animal exhibits and a neat killer whale show. Camden even got to go on a little ride! Overall, we had a very fun trip!