San Fran

So we step off the plane in San Francisco and the first thing Mindy says is "so why did we come to San Francisco?" I guess mom just bought her a plane ticket and no one explained it all to her. Such a Mindy moment. We had a layover in Las Vegas and some random stranger overheard Mindy say that she'd never gambled before. He handed her a dollar and she tried her luck at the slots. It paid off! 50 cents richer.

 We got to the airport and Chelsea came to pick us up. Rosie and Annelise were happy to see us!

 We spent a glorious afternoon in the sun riding bikes around main street and ate delicious sandwiches at this neat little place.

 The beach wasn't very warm, but it was sunny enough to be fun.

  Then we drove a looong 7 hours up to meet mom in quaint little humboldt county. The drive up through wine country was one of the most beautiful I've ever seen, and highway 1 is truly a bucket list drive.We saw a LOT of big trees, first at the Jedediah Smith state park, and then in the southern Spring Creek parks. Dad and I eventually won the battle to go see the "tallest tree", even though it was a steep hike.

 This was the best pic I could get of the San Francisco bridge. It was super rainy when we drove across.

 We crawled inside a tree with a hole in it and this was the best we could do. There were worse pics. We called the one on the right the "camper tree". It's called the "big tree" in real life, making me think it's probably the tree with the largest diameter there.

 On the right is my selfie with the tallest tree in the background. I had to take off my shoes and cross a river barefoot to get that shot. Below is another excited handstand pic with the Libbey Tree.

    I talked mom into paying for a trip to Alcatraz. We took the ferry out and did the audiotour there. It was really neat. I watched the 1970's Alcatraz movie before I went to get a good idea of the famous stories of Alcatraz. It was super beautiful.

 I slept right at the foot of Annelises bed. It was really funny.