Trip Details Part I

I'm still going through all of our pictures and sorting through them but I think by the time I get done it will be the end of summer. So....I'll be sharing about our trip in a few posts for you. We were gone for 11 days and we saw a TON of things in that short time frame. Today I'll be sharing the first part of our trip, Sonoma, San Francisco and our spur of the moment trip out to Lake Tahoe. Then I'll share Yosemite and probably finish with one more post on our last few days next week.

Before I get into the details I just want to say a quick congratulations to my sister Sadie and Joe's sister Kate. Both of them graduate high school today and we are heading home to celebrate with them! So proud of you girls!!!

Okay. Back to the trip...

We flew out on a Thursday and landed in San Francisco around 11pm their time (1am our time) and made our way to pick up our car rental. Our first hiccup of the trip involved standing in a long line for two hours before driving away in our car because of a few delays they had earlier such as a lack of staff, plane delays and a fire drill. Of course all the other rental car companies had no problem leading to many angry people with Budget. By the time we got to our hotel it was about 3am our time and we were starving...thank you Denny's for being across the parking lot! We grabbed a quick bite to eat and finally made it into bed around 4am our time. It was a long day....

The next day we were off to Sonoma. It was the warmest day we had of the trip and we explored the town of Sonoma, went to Benziger Family Winery where we went on a wine tour and tasting and drove through Napa. The rose trees/bushes in that are are gorgeous!

This picture is from the center of Sonoma. There were many small shops, little restaurants and of course wine tastings all over the place. 

On our tour at the winery: They told us about the family history, what kinds of wine they make and the process of making wine.

They have 10,000 square feet of underground man made caves where they store the red wine for many months. This picture is just one hallway of it...

We drove through Napa where there were wineries on every side of the road and went to bed early to catch up on our sleep. The next day we made our way back to the city but first stopped at Marin Headlands to go on a little hike and view the Golden Gate Bridge up top.

Our view from the top of the trail!

Here's the famous bridge which was celebrating it's 75th anniversary a few days after we left.

Later that day we checked into our hotel and went out on foot exploring San Francisco making our way to the ultra busy Fisherman's Wharf. We walked a good portion of the area and then my feet were really starting to hurt so we made our way back to the hotel for the night.

Sunday we had tickets for Alcatraz and before we departed we made our way to Pier 39 to take some pictures of the harbor seals who sun themselves all day long.

I would definitey recommend going on the Alcatraz tour if you ever make your way to the west coast. We went on the audio tour and it was actually very interesting!

When we got back we walked up to Lombard Street. You know that crazy curvy one?

And then hopped on the cable car lines. I suggest the California line...way less people and we actually got to stand on the side!!

We made our way to see the Painted Ladies. Anyone else grow up watching Full House?! We saw that house too:)

That night we decided to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge too. Well, we went half way but we got the idea.

That night we got to talking and felt that we had seen everything we wanted to in San Francisco. We tend to exlpore cities pretty fast:) We had one more full day in the city but while Joe was browsing around online he came across a deal on Hotwire. a 4 star hotel room for a whopping $28 in Reno, Nevada. We ended up being able to cancel our last night with no extra charge and the next morning we made our way to the Lake Tahoe area.

Not knowing what to expect, we were a little shocked when we pulled up to our hotel. It happened to be attached to a casino but for $28 and a TV in the bathroom, we couldn't go wrong.

I think I may have slept that best that night. When we woke up on Tuesday morning we started making our way to Yosemite. More on that  next week...