San Francisco

Heading up the California coast, our next stop was San Francisco. We camped north of the city, in Napa California and drove about 20 minutes into Vallejo each morning to catch a ferry boat that dropped us directly at Pier 41 near Fisherman's Wharf. The boys loved the ferry ride and it gave us about an hour to sit back, relax, and plan our day.

Since we had a few days to spend here we purchased City Passes at the visitors center. These passes included our admission to 5 area attractions plus unlimited use of the buses, street cars and cable cars. We started with a walk through the Aquarium of the Bay, much smaller than Monterey, but it was nice and had some cool tunnels that you walked through as the fish swam all around.

Next, we tackled the public transportation system and made our way across town to Golden GatePark, a beautiful old fashioned space with tall trees, a playground and beautiful old stone structures. Inside Golden Gate Park we visited the California Academy of Sciences. This building has an aquarium, rain forest, planetarium and natural history museum inside and a living roof, 2.5 acres in size, that you can climb to and visit. We grabbed up some tickets to a planetarium show later in the day, stopped to say hi to Claude, the albino alligator, and headed for the aquarium.

Divided into regions, this aquarium has a Philippine coral reef, Northern California coastal exhibit, Amazon Flooded Rainforest, swamp and a tide pool where kids can touch sea stars and bat rays. It was very well done and informative. The boys loved it!

Next we headed up to the living roof, 2.5 acres of native plants growing over the gently curving structure covering the science center. Composed of square trays filled with soil and plants, the roof is completely sustainable and has 40-50 different types of plants. A habitat for birds and insects, it also serves as an insulator and collects storm water runoff.

We took a walk through the rainforest, a huge dome filled with trees, plants, birds and butterflies. When we finished it was time for the planetarium show, a movie about plate tectonics and earthquakes shown on a huge domed screen. It was very interesting, and the boys said it was great!! Truth be told, the husband and I may have nodded of for part of it...

The day ended with a walk outside to see the baby ostriches and a turn in the earthquake simulator. Simulating both the 1906 and 1989 San Francisco earthquakes, which was pretty interesting.

Before heading back to Napa on the Ferry we grabbed some dinner and took a narrated boat tour of the Bay area. Usually socked in by heavy fog this time of year, we were incredibly lucky to have cool but beautiful clear views of Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge. The Bay was quite windy and rough, and I got tossed around a bit out on the front deck with the middle boy. We got some great pictures though!

The Golden Gate Bridge is beautiful from the water, but we really wanted to drive across it to. Built to withstand winds up to 80 miles per hour, it can sway as much as 21 feet from side to side. Luckily, we drove across on a very calm day!! After crossing the bridge we drove up the side of a mountain and into Muir Woods National Park to see the giant coastal redwood trees. Muir Woods is a very small but beautiful National Park and the trees really are like skyscrapers. We hiked along the trail learning about the history of the park and the trees while the little dude filled out the pages of his junior ranger book. A little fun fact about the California Redwoods, their bark is naturally fire resistant. It will scorch and turn black in places, but the trees will survive a forest fire.

San Francisco's Pier 39 is the touristy, restauranty, shoppy part of the city, and not surprisingly, where all the ferry boats drop off their passengers for the day and pick them back up again at night. We didn't spend a whole ton of time there, but the boys, especially the middle boy, loved walking out on the pier to see the sea lions hauling out on the docks in the bay. They were really fun to watch, sometimes lifting their noses up to sniff the air and barking at one another when they got crowded out by another sea lion trying to steal some space on the dock. It reminded me a bit of how crowded we are from time to time in the motor home and so we briefly instituted a rule where if you had a complaint about a brother, you had to bark it out like a sea lion. That lasted a few days and produced more than a few giggles!

So, San Francisco was a nice change of pace from the rural and rustic beauty of the canyons in the Southwest. The middle dude's favorite part was the sea lions, the teen loved the boat tour and the little dude could have spent hours (and many dollars) in a little kite shop we found in the city. The husband liked Muir Woods and I really enjoyed Golden Gate Park. There was something for everyone, and I even got to spend a little time strolling through downtown Napa, enjoying a few tasting rooms and picking up some samples as I went.  We did and saw a lot, but could still make another trip just to see and do all that we missed!

Salinas California

I love to read, and have been known to stay up all night long if a book is really good!  I've done it many times, even during the week when I have to work the next morning.  So when we realized Salinas California was just a measly 17 miles from Monterey, we decided to make it a day trip and visit the National Steinbeck Center. 

Known as the salad bowl of the US, Salinas is not only the childhood home of John Streinbeck, it also serves as the setting for many of his most popular works.  The museum building is beautiful and bright and houses several different exhibits.  The main hall is devoted to Steinbeck's life with a section devoted to each of his major books.  Each section had artifacts and interactive exhibits as well as movie screens showing clips from each movie made from his books.  I loved the Of Mice and Men exhibit, with pegs on the wall showing quotes from each character and the hat or outfit they may have worn.  The object was to guess which character went with which quote.  Lennie's jacket pocket even had a fake mouse in it and a can of beans next to it that when you lifted it up revealed a bottle of ketchup!

 
Some of the other memoribilia included personal letters and journals that inspired the book East of Eden, canisters from Doc's lab in Cannery Row and war memoribilia from Steinbecks time as a war reporter during WWII and used in the book Bomb's Away.  Then, as you near the end of the exhibit you come upon a map of the US that shows the route Steinbeck took when he traveled across the country with just his dog in 1960.  He traveled to and visited many of the same places we are visiting, but what made this part of the exhibit so cool was his camper, the actual one he travelled in!  He named teh camper Rocinante, presumably after Don Quixote's horse in novel by Cervantes.

It is a wonderfully done museum, with additional exhibits on the history of the Salinas Valley and the agriculture of the region and another exhibit on banned and recovered books throughout history.  I really loved it!

As fabulous as the museum was, our day in Salinas was not over yet!  With a bit of time to kill we headed to the outskirts of town, near the Spreckles Sugar Factory, to The Farm, an actual working organic farm with a farm stand and a very active CSA program.  The boys had great fun petting the rabbits and seeing some of the old tractors. We bought a big box of strawberries, grown right across the road, that were some of the best I've ever had, and a really yummy homemade strawberry rhubarb pie!

Our final stop in Salinas was an evening at the California Rodeo Salinas. One thing we really wanted to do while we were out west this summer was go to a rodeo. I had googled and looked for rodeos in Texas and Oklahoma, but had not been able to find one running while we were here visiting. That is, until we got to Monterey. Outside the aquarium, entertaining the crowds, was a brightly painted car and three rodeo clowns advertising for the rodeo, which was running for 4 nights starting the day we were there. We wrote down the website on the advertised on the side of the car and looked it up when we got back to our camp sight. Turns out this rodeo is a pretty big deal in this area, and we were lucky enough to get tickets for the following night!

The Rodeo (Ro-day-oh, as they say in California) was fascinating! There was definitely a carnival type atmosphere inside the gate, with food and vendors selling shirts, cowboy hats and other western wear items. There was even a kids area set up with games and bounce houses and music! We found our seats just as the parade was starting. This rodeo starts with a parade and the Pageant of the Flags, where each flag that has flown over the State of California is carried into the arena on horseback by a rider dressed in full costume while a narrator tells the story of how each group came to California . It was very interesting, and the horses and costumes were beautiful.

After the National Anthem it was time for the events to begin. The rodeo started with bull riding in the main arena. Other events included calf roping, bronco riding and steer wrestling. While these events were going on in the main arena they had other events happening in the outer parade area. We watched some womens horse racing and barrel racing, several trick riders, and the “Mutton Muster,” a kids event similar to bull riding, but for kids under 60 pounds and riding sheep.

The whole event was very much like a hockey game at home. There were announcers and cameras filming for television broadcast, music and interactive things broadcast on a big screen TV. There was even a tractor pulling a grader that came out several times during the rodeo to smooth the dirt, much like a Zamboni does on the ice. The whole evening was a lot of fun and ended with fireworks and a bullfighting competition between the rodeo clowns.

We really had a great time, enjoyed watching the people and learned a lot! The little dude is now in training to become a rodeo clown and the other two want to go back next year...we'll see.

Monterey Bay, California

After spending several days hiking the canyons of the Southwest we headed for the Pacific Coast and Monterey, California. Having spent a week last summer in Maine on the Atlantic Ocean, the boys were really excited to dip their toes in the Pacific and spend some time relaxing on a nice sandy beach. Monterey is a really pretty coastal town, with lots of family friendly activities and things to do. We parked the King at an RV Park in Marina, California and rented a car for a couple days to get us around town.

The drive from Utah to Monterey is fairly long, so we broke it up with a stop overnight in Bakersfield California. We found a beautiful RV park right in an orange grove where, in season, you can pick your own oranges. Unfortunately the season is from January to April. But, a short walk around the corner we found the California Fruit Depot, a little shop filled with fresh, local fruits, nuts, olive oils, honey and other goodies. They have samples of all of their products for you to try before you buy them and we left with a big bag of Valencia oranges. There's another box of Valencias on the way to grandma and grandpas house, so look for them the first week of August!! They also make their own fresh homemade date shakes! The woman working there was super nice and friendly and we left with our oranges, date shakes and some free t-shirts for the boys.

Monterey is a picturesque tourist town right on Monterey Bay. Once home to the many fish canneries described by John Steinbeck in Cannery Row, it's now home to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and National Marine Sanctuary. The original Cannery Row has been converted into upscale shops, restaurants and hotels.

Our first stop was the aquarium. They have a wonderful exhibit on jellyfish right now, so we started there.

The exhibits in this aquarium are really well done, with lots of huge tanks arranged by ecosystem instead of by fish type. They have tanks for local sea life found in the harbor, another for animals found in the open sea as well as tanks for vanishing animals and a kelp forest. The boys loved the otters and the puffins and the giant octopus. The touch tanks had anemone and red abalone, sea cucumbers and sea stars as well as bat rays and sting rays that would let you touch the tips of their wings as they swam by!

Before the day was over we got to take a “behind the scenes” tour of the aquarium, which was neat because it showed the boys how the tanks were set up and maintained. The aquarium cycles 200,000 gallons of seawater a minute through the facility, bringing in important nutrients and native sea life. It was a really well done tour that ended with a feeding in the kelp forest. Pretty cool!

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is built on the sight of the Hovden Cannery, the largest and the last to close, in 1973, on Cannery Row. It has an interesting exhibit, including many artifacts, on the mackerel and sardine canning facilities, and also on John Steinbeck and some of the research he did while living in the area and writing Cannery Row. There is a bust of Steinbeck in the park down the street, and the middle guy took my picture with it before we left.

After a nice dinner on Cannery Row we headed over to Dennis the Menace Park, one of the best playgrounds I've ever seen, in spite of this sign posted at the entrance:

The boys could have spent hours here there were so many things to do!! It had a couple of climbing walls, swings and tons of slides. There were tunnels and bridges and I think the little dude ran for a solid hour! We only played on the park, but the whole complex included a pool, a ball field and a small lake with paddle boats, all owned and maintained by the City of Monterey.

We loved Monterey!!