Day 40 - Heading to Northern California

 It was clear from the decor that this hotel has been around for some time, but if this is how people slept in the olden days, I’m ready to go back to the past.  I’m sure the 8+ miles of San Francisco hills had something to do with it, but I slept like a log.

When we checked in yesterday, we heard the bonus news that there was an unexpected continental breakfast!   When we got down to breakfast, it became clear that we shouldn’t have been quite as excited.  It was pretty underwhelming with nothing but store bought sweets, but better than nothing!  And it did feature some local donuts so some of us were excited!


Our plan for the morning before we left was to get the boys a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.  We found online a kids section in the Golden Gate Park so we thought this would be a great stop.  We didn’t have a car so public transportation was it, but we struggled a bit with this since we didn’t know that the streetcars went underground for parts of their journey.  So we stood outside at the stop we thought we needed only to have Google tell us that our ride had departed!  Eventually we figured it out and arrived at the park.



The boys enjoyed the park, but there was no view of the bridge to be had.- the fog was too thick this morning.  We split up for a bit as Sebastian and I went for a walk around the park.  We tried to communicate but again Amy didn’t respond to texts.  When we got back together, I suggested that maybe Amy had blocked me and sure enough, she found that she could unblock him and just like that we were back to being able to communicate!  Nothing makes big city traveling easy than not being able to communicate with each other.  Ha!


Now that we could communicate again, we opted to split up one last time.  I went to get the car while Amy and the boys went back to the Wharf to buy some fleeces as souvenirs for the boys.  They had some travel issues, but eventually we were back together again and ready to travel (and had a great view of at least the bay bridge on the way). 



We headed north and had planned to see a museum in Sacramento, but California traffic got us again and since we would have only had 45 minutes before the museums closed, we decided to skip Sacramento and head to our next stop on Oroville Lake.


We made a brief stop in Yuba City to get some groceries (got a reminder for just how expensive California is!) and then found our location in the Oroville Lake Recreation Area.  While Sebastian and Amy got dinner ready, Robinson and I went for a walk to see what we could find around the site.  What we learned was that Oroville Lake is fun for those with a boat, but if you don’t have a boat, it wasn’t the best spot.  However, there was one bright spot - wild blackberries were plentiful and we quickly filled our hands to bring them back for a snack of dinner.


After dinner, we gave the boys a special treat and let them start Oceans 11 after dinner.  We had discussed the movie since we were in Vegas and they seemed captivated by the plot.  It was too late to watch it all so we’ll have to finish it tomorrow.  For now, it’s time for bed with some air conditioning.  It’s HOT here.


Miles traveled - 6,397

# States/Provinces - 14

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