San Fran

We had a nice visit in San Francisco! We saw some sights and did some walking. :)

Friday evening we arrived and went to visit Kate at work. I hate hospitals! She works on the 11th floor and the sights are awesome. We just checked out the view and waited for her to finish her shift. We saw a few of her cancer patients. It always amazes me what she does for a living. I wish I could deal with blood and such- I'd like to make a difference in people's lives the way she gets to. Once she was finished with work, we headed out to a nice seafood dinner. It was such great food! We then headed for ice cream at a local place that was delicious!!! I love how the town is so friendly to walkers. We walked a lot that evening and I really enjoyed it. We were pretty tired after all of that so we played a bit more catch-up then headed to bed.

Saturday was a nice day. We headed down to the farmer's market at the ferry building. It was the nicest farmer's market we've ever been able to visit. I cannot imagine getting to go there each week! You've have such fresh food all of the time! From the ferry building we walked down the fisherman's wharf. It was a long walk!!! We had clam chowder.

As you can see Jackson said he did not want any and then helped himself!

I also had Jackson try an In-n-Out burger. He liked it! I don't know that it's charm was quite as strong on him as it is on the real Californians. Then we hiked back to the "muni" (the subway type train system) to head back to Kate's place. We got ready and headed up to the Napa Valley. Kate let us borrow her convertible. It was lovely! :) Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge was a really cool experience. The weather was perfect. We went to lunch and then headed to the spa.The view of wine country from our convertible. LOVE :)

Our mud bath experience was...different. Jackson was sooo funny. The mud is WARM and he was freaking out the whole time about how much he was sweating. The mud was different than the other times I have done that. It had like twigs in it. Weird! The whole place was rather odd, but the laughs were worth it. We headed back to city for pizza with Kate. We got to walk again to dinner, it was wonderful! I just love to walking lifestyle.

This is a "tree tunnel" that leads from St. Helena (Kate's hometown) to Calistoga (the spa town). I think it is so beautiful! :)

Sunday we headed to Half Moon Bay to walk a 5k. One of Kate's friends, Carrie, drove us down there. It was a gorgeous drive! Carrie drives a Prius. I actually liked it! I cannot believe it. I would actually drive one. I know. Crazy! The 5k was beautiful. We walked with Kate's roommate's boyfriend. He was quite an interesting guy. He made the walk quite enjoyable! Then we headed to the pumpkin festival.

I hate pumpkin food!!! There was so much cinnamon there! UGH! The festival was really cute, though. As we headed back to the city we were amazed at the traffic. People were wrapped for miles around the mountain waiting to get in to the festival. Crazy! They had the world's biggest pumpkins- I had read about them on CNN. They were HUGE!

Later we walked around the city. We took the photo below from the top of the Macy's building in Union Square. I hate heights, but it was a gorgeous view. We went to dinner with some of Kate's friends and a girl I went to IU with. We had a great time! San Francisco has some amazing (expensive!!) restaurants.

I had a really cool experience while we were on the muni headed to dinner that I wanted to share. As I said above, I really admire Kate for being a nurse and helping people in need. (All nurses are wonderful, I just happen to know and love my Cali Kate) We were headed to dinner, but we were running early. Kate asked if we wanted to do some additional sight-seeing. I, being the tourist to beat all tourists, eagerly agreed. As we exited the train Kate grabbed me and yelled, "Oh my gosh! LOOK!" I look up to a man falling down the cement stairs that lead from the city to the train underground. In moments Kate has rushed to his side, has called 911 and has control of the situation. We stayed with the man until EMT's came. This may not seem all of that out of the ordinary except that hardly anyone stopped for this man. Well after Kate was on the line with 911 someone walking by suggested that we call. She didn't think twice. She just stopped and helped. I was so proud to call her my friend! End of bragging. :)

That was really the jist of our trip. We had an early flight this morning- we got picked up at 4:50! AH!! And our flight was behind so I had to reschedule my job interview. It is now at 3:00 tomorrow. Annoying. We took a solid nap when we got home. Ahh. Traveling is so fun, but it is always nice to be "home" again.

MacKenzie was pretty tired from Camp Bow Wow, but that did not stop her from catching up on her Us Weekly gossip. :)

Good night!