Day 10 Recap

Day 10 left me completely exhausted. It must have because I was extremely stressed out but still fell right asleep when I went to bed. In between hotel stops we spent nearly 14 hours on a trip that could have taken 6 hours if we had taken the most direct route without stops. Perhaps it was the long day that made me so stressed; perhaps it was driving around San Francisco looking for a place to park by the hotel before settling on a spot that I’m pretty sure was illegal to stay in overnight; perhaps it was the hour or so I spent on a winding road in the dark with deer and elk around and a drop into the ocean if I went too far to the right; perhaps it was all of those and more, but whatever the reason, I didn’t have a good first impression about San Francisco and wanted to be out of there almost as soon as we got there.

But that’s not how the day started. With extra space in our trunk now that our dirty clothes were back in their original bags, we headed south. Our first stop was at the Redwoods National Park. Actually, our first stop was at the Redwoods NP visitor center, which was right on the ocean and not within sight of any redwoods. We were able to go touch the ocean though and discover that it is very cold. Based on a chart I just looked up, I’m guessing it was about 54 degrees. That’s about the temperature of the water off the coast of Anchorage, Alaska.

We had to backtrack to get to the forest. We had driven through part of it on the way and thought we had seen some big trees. They were nothing compared to the trees in the Lady Bird Johnson Grove a couple miles inside the park. Those trees are huge. The trees in the rain forest were 200 feet tall, but the redwoods put those to shame. The average redwood grows at least 275 feet, and the tallest ever measured was over 375 feet. Unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to see the tallest trees in the world because those were a fairly long hike into the woods, and we still had a long way to get to San Francisco.

When we got near San Francisco though, I realized we were earlier than I expected to be. Instead of trying to cross the Golden Gate Bridge and drive through the city in heavy traffic only to lay around the hotel for the rest of the evening, I decided to go to Point Reyes National Seashore until dark and cross at night. Point Reyes took longer to get to than I expected, so the sun had actually set when we got there, but I still got some pictures of the sun setting over the ocean (into the fog), and walking around was still pretty cool after dark. It wasn’t a beach at the spot we went to–it was more of a rocky shore with a lighthouse and stuff. During the day you could visit the lighthouse, but it was closed to actually do its duty at night.

We hoped that crossing at night would give a good view of the city lights, but the fog blocked all of that out. At first, driving in the city was pretty easy and cool to drive up and down the hills, but when it came down to finding a place to park to check into the hotel, things got difficult. We spent at least half an hour driving around, accomplishing nothing. I eventually got so stressed out by it (and at least six other things) that I made Aaron drive and just tried to forget about what was going on. We parked somewhere that I’m still not completely sure we were allowed to be, and I just went straight to bed hoping tomorrow would be better.

I didn’t feel any better the next day, although I’m pretty sure my car was illegally parked overnight without getting a ticket or anything. Best thing that happened until I checked out of the hotel.

Advertisement