San Francisco to Las Vegas
... with stops along the way.
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San Francisco to Las Vegas. This was our journey for this Spring Break. We started in San Francisco and ended up in Las Vegas. In between, we spent a few days in Yosemite and saw the Hollywood Sign in LA.
My son was able to see his favorite NBA team, Golden State Warriors last year (by chance) in Minnesota during our spring break trip. So, this year, our plans revolved around where they’d be playing and it turned out they were playing in their home arena in Oakland, California. Therefore, for Spring Break 2019, we were heading West.
I used Booking.com to plan our vacation this year. Booking.com is a one-stop shopping site to make all of your travel reservations; flight, hotel, rental car, etc. Their prices are competitive and when you download the app to your phone you'll have all of your travel reservations in the palm of your hand.
Continuing to visit the 50 states
We flew to California early on Friday morning, getting in around 1:00 so we had some time to explore a little. I booked the Fisherman's Wharf Marriott hotel which is located a couple of blocks away from Fisherman's Wharf. This was the perfect location for walking around the Piers and much of the tourist 'Must See' spots.
After checking in, we walked to what's known as ‘the Crookedest Street in the World’. However, it's actually not, but it’s infamous for that. This one-block stretch of Lombard Street has 8 hairpin turns. It turns out that there is another street also in San Francisco that has more turns but it's tucked away in a more private neighborhood.
I soon realized that I was not in very good athletic condition and walking the steep hills to get to Lombard Street proved difficult for me. Our approach was at the bottom, so I stayed and let my son walk to the top. There are stairs along both sides of this one-way street, so Alex was able to get to the top easily. This is a historical ‘must-see’.
2nd Stop - In-N-Out Burger
Number 2 on our list – my son has known about In-N-Out Burger for a few years (thanks to a couple of YouTube channels he follows) and he couldn’t wait to try In-N-Out Burger when we got to California, (we don’t have them in Florida). It was shocking how busy this restaurant was… we got in line and waited. The burgers were good, but I'm not sure they were the BEST.
Flying out of Ft. Myers at 6:30 Eastern time (3:30 Cali time), we were tired. So, we headed back to the hotel with our burgers and were in for the night. We were exhausted and excited for Saturday’s day of adventure.
Day 2 - Tour of the Wharf
Saturday morning we were scheduled to take a walking tour down the Fisherman’s Wharf, followed by a tour of Alcatraz. The tour I selected was SFTour1 and Dara was our tour guide. It was a cool, rainy day and there were only 4 of us so we got a more intimate tour. Dara was born and raised in San Francisco so she was a wealth of knowledge.
Our tour began at one of the Cable Car starting locations and walked along the wharf while Dara told stories about San Francisco and provided some history about the Golden Gate Bridge. We learned that after a fire in the early 1900’s destroyed several acres of shoreline, that portion of the city was re-built on landfill after the rubble from the fire was pushed down into the Bay.
San Francisco Wharf - Sea Lions, Pier 33, Food, Ferry Boats
She shared with us why she feels that San Francisco’s sourdough bread is the best and recommended several restaurants for us to eat. We went through a museum of antique arcade games – some very cool relics and some kind of creepy games that were decades old.
The Infamous Sea Lions on Pier 39 was part of the tour. These Sea Lions began hanging out in the safety of the Pier after the 1989 Earthquake disrupted their habitation in the Bay. There are hundreds of them and we were able to see many of them hanging out before moving on towards our Alcatraz tour.
Before arriving at the Alcatraz Ferry, we stopped at what appeared to be a dead-end train track. Dara explained that some criminals who were brought to San Francisco en route to Alcatraz were too dangerous to remove from the train. Therefore, a detachable track was constructed allowing the train car that held the prisoners to be detached from the train and placed on a special ferry that would transport the convicts to the island in the train car they came on.
Alcatraz Island
What an interesting, iconic prison Alcatraz is. The ferry took approximately 25 minutes to get to the former prison island. Once off the ferry, we were free to walk around and look at the old buildings and check out the property that was once a Federal Prison.
The views of San Francisco from the island are beautiful! You can see the Golden Gate Bridge as well as the Bay Bridge that goes into Oakland. There is a gift shop with several great books about the prison and the history of Alcatraz, which was once a military base (in the early 1900s) as well as other trinkets.
After looking through some of the outbuildings, we made our way to the building that held some of the most notorious convicts in the US and took an audio tour through the famous prison. This was so interesting… the audio walked us through with narration from some of the infamous convicts, telling about some of the fights that broke out as well as describing what life was like living on Alcatraz.
Time to ride the Cable Cars
Once back on the mainland after the prison tour, we walked down to Pier 33 and did some shopping and had a late lunch. Sunday was going to be a long, busy day so I felt that our only opportunity to ride a cable car – another ‘Must do’ in San Francisco was going to be Saturday afternoon.
So, we went back to where our morning tour began and stood in line and stood in line and stood in line. We stood in line for the tickets, then stood in line for nearly 2 hours to ride a cable car.
Riding the Cable Car was kind of cool – because it’s infamous in San Francisco, but the round trip was much longer than we had anticipated and we hadn’t had dinner – and wouldn’t. We had also planned go to the Ghirardelli Square for ice cream – a recommendation from a friend. Ice Cream sundaes were our dinner that night after walking back to our hotel room.
The Golden Gate Bridge and Muir Woods
Sunday’s tour – a bus ride into Muir Woods to see the Redwood Trees. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and through the small towns leading up to Muir Woods where we had some time to walk around and enjoy the beautiful trees. After the park, we drove down into Sausalito, a small town across the bay from San Francisco.
This was an enjoyable day, but we had a basketball game toget to that night. We headed back to ourhotel and had a late lunch before heading over to Oakland to watch the Golden StateWarriors play the Phoenix Suns.
The Golden State Warriors Basketball Game
My son was in Heaven being in this arena, watching his team. Unfortunately, they lost by a few points, but it was a great game and so fun to be at their home court.
I love Marriott and whenever it's convenient, I will stay at a Marriott when I travel. Their service level is always Top Knotch and their hotels are clean and have great amenities. The Fisherman's Wharf Marriott was no different. They were very happy to help us with questions regarding finding locations and helping with transportation questions.
When my son realized after leaving San Francisco that he'd left one of his air pods in the room, I called and the agent was quick to find the missing air pod and offered to mail it to our home address. It was waiting for us when we got home.
Time to leave San Francisco
Monday was moving on day – we were picking up a rental car and heading to Yosemite to stay at a resort for a few days. We picked up our rental car at the San Francisco Airport and headed East. I thought the drive would be approximately 4 hours, but this would be the 1st of several poorly estimated timelines. However, it took more like 5 hours, but the drive after passing through Modesto, Ca. was BEAUTIFUL!
Although I’m usually a little anxious driving rental cars in areas I’ve never been before, the lush green hills were so tranquil. I’m not sure I’ve enjoyed a drive more than the approach to the mountains where Yosemite National Park began. The snow on the mountains was beautiful.
Yosemite National Park
We arrived at Tenaya Lodge around 6:00. The staff here was wonderful, very attentive. And the ‘lobby’ of this lodge was so warm and welcoming. We got checked in and went to our room and relaxed and decided to eat in that night since we had another early tour scheduled for the following morning.
After eating from a delicious breakfast buffet, we boarded a luxury tour bus for a day drive through Yosemite Valley. Jarrett, our tour guide had grown up in the area and provided plenty of history of this beautiful landscape. It was gorgeous – I felt a little like I was back in Alaska, very Serene!
The highlight of this bus tour was stopping to take in the vision of the mountain – El Capitan. It was breathtaking as was much of what we saw along this tour. We returned back to the lodge around 4:30 so we had time to explore this beautiful resort a little.
Yosemite Valley is BEAUTIFUL!
We had dinner at one of the several restaurants at the lodge and during dinner, it started snowing – big flakes. Alex had never had snow FALL on him before, so we rushed outside so we could get some pictures of him in the snowfall. Fun! I was disappointed that we hadn’t been able to stay another day or so – it was so relaxing. But, we were due to leave the following morning.
Where should we go when we leave Yosemite?
While we were in San Francisco, my son asked me if we’d be close enough to see the Hollywood Sign. I pulled up my map app to check it out and wasn’t sure if I wanted to make the drive. We were due to be in Las Vegas on Thursday afternoon so we had the time IF I wanted to navigate the drive.
I love the adventure and thought it might be fun. Worried that there may not be another opportunity – you never know what the future holds, I told him on our last night at Tenaya that we’d be heading towards LA the following morning to find the Hollywood Sign. He was very excited.
Searching for the Hollywood Sign
Wednesday morning we took off down the mountain and drove southwest towards Los Angeles. I had reserved a hotel outside Los Angeles (I thought approximately 30 minutes). We got to the hotel around 5:00 and ordered food in and relaxed that night. Our plan was to drive to the Hollywood Sign Thursday morning before driving to Las Vegas.
So, again, my timing was way off – it took nearly 2 hours to find the Hollywood Sign. We got almost to the top of a residential road where we could see the sign, but quickly were taken back down the hill away from the sign so I had to stop in the middle of the road to take a quick pic through the car window. Not exactly what I’d hoped – no selfies with Alex in front of the sign, but we did get to see it.
Not exactly wanting to have to drive around Los Angeles andknowing we had to get to Las Vegas that afternoon, we got back on the highwayand headed East towards Vegas.
By now – I am TIRED! I really like to pack our vacations full of activity, but this one was jam packed – early mornings, lots of driving, so I was looking forward to our flight home. But – not before our Hot Air Balloon ride we had scheduled on Friday morning.
Las Vegas
This would be my first time in Las Vegas and we made this part of our vacation because I have a college friend who I haven’t seen for nearly 26 years. She’s lived in Las Vegas since college so I wanted to be able to allow time to visit with her AND this gave us another State to check off our list.
I was pleasantly surprised by Las Vegas. Not knowing what to expect, I liked it. It was cleaner than I anticipated and being surrounded by mountains was beautiful. Our hotel, too, was beautiful. Just off the strip, this was going to be a very luxurious 12-hour stay.
Bucket List Item...
Check!
Hot Air Balloon Ride
5:00 AM came quick Friday morning. We had to be at the Hot Air Balloon location at 6:00 on Friday morning. This had been a Bucket List item for me for many years. So I scheduled this on our last day because my son said he really wanted to do it.
Driving up to the Balloon location, my nerves set in. I consider myself pretty adventurous, although I’m pretty specific about what adventures I want to take part in. But I do have a slight fear of the unknown.
Once we checked in and the process began… we were taken by van (with the balloon on a trailer being towed behind us) I began to get excited and the nerves started to calm down. There were 15 of us that would be going up, up, up into the skies above the canyons of Las Vegas.
The balloon is filling with air...
We watched as the balloon was inflated, then we were able to hop into the basket. Now it was time for our pilot to pump heat into the balloon so that we would lift off of the ground and begin our 1-hour flight into the cool, beautiful sky during sunrise.
Our pilot had been flying all of his life and had been a professional pilot for 15 years. He told us he’s been competing for #1 in the world and was currently #16, but would become #1 some day. It was everything I imagined it would be and I was so happy to be able to share the experience with my son.
We weren't meeting my friend until later in the afternoon for dinner. Therefore, we had plenty of time to explore Las Vegas after the Balloon ride. This would be our last day to have an In-N-Out Burger. So, we had one burger and found their merchandise store so my son could purchase a souvenir. Driving out to Red Rock Canyon was beautiful.
After a fun-filled, memory-making, adventurous week with my son, we were ready to head home to sunny, Southwest Florida. 2 more states checked off our list, leaving 20 states left to visit in the next 7 years.
Traveling all 50 States of the USA
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