We left Eureka and headed south along the 101 towards San Francisco! We planned to check out the coast of northern California on our way!
It was pretty misty in the morning, but it cleared up as it got warmer.
We planned a stop at Fort Bragg, which we wanted to visit because of the glass beach. Unfortunately, because people have been taking the glass for so long, they’ve closed the beach and most of the glass is gone. But the views from the cliffs were still pretty great!
We also had an incident on the way in where I should have stopped for gas, but didn’t. We didn’t realize it would be the last gas station for a long time. We ended up coasting down any downhill stretches and luckily just about made it to a gas station thanks to Jess’ driving!
We made our little hummus sandwiches and ate by the beach!
We then did the last stretch of driving and aimed to get to the Golden Gate Bridge before sunset. Eventually we started seeing signs that we were close!
Unsurprisingly, it was really busy, but we managed to find a parking spot not too far away and made it just in time for golden hour.
This was one of the things I was really excited to see, so seeing it in such perfect conditions was amazing!
We couldn’t stay too long because it was getting dark, so we then got back in the car and drove to our motel in Berkeley.
Even though we were exhausted, we decided to go to a laundromat and get our laundry started and pick up some takeout Indian food and eat it in the hotel room. It was really exciting to have clean clothes! We then got to bed because the next day was our only day to explore San Francisco!
We woke up and got on BART to go into town. We picked up a coffee on our walk over to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
We explored for quite a while. I really liked this piece, which was a slowly rotating collage of videos of people doing all kinds of things! We watched it for a really long time. They also had the craziest red bathrooms! Fancy bathrooms really felt foreign to us after being in the woods and mountains for a while!
We then started meandering towards Chinatown. We popped into this really cool art deco building that looked like it took a lot of inspiration from Mayan art or something similar!
We then explored the mid-Autumn festival celebrations that were going on.
Generally, Chinatown was pretty cool!
We got to see some cool dragon dancing!
Then we went to Lombard Street. We ate at a cafe before walking up the big hill!
It’s hard to take a picture that captures what’s going on, but what they don’t tell you is the street to walk up to get to the bottom of the windy part is the steepest road in San Francisco!
Then we headed to the Painted Ladies! We had to get all the main spots from the Full House intro! We sat there for a while in the park.
Then we headed towards the Castro to have a coffee and make a plan.
We met James’ cousins for tacos and then went to Mission Dolores Park to sit outside and hang out!
We chatted there for a long time and then headed back to Berkeley for the night. We got off at the university and going to Jupiter to get a beer, since it wasn’t that late yet.
The next morning, we did our last chores to prep to go back to camping mode. We went to a car wash to vacuum the car so bears wouldn’t break into it, we went to Trader Joe’s to stock up on food, and we went to REI to get propane for the camp stove and a few other bits.
Then as our last stop we went to Wat Mongkolratanaram, which is a Thai temple which serves brunch on Sundays. We got huge plates of curry and noodles and sat on the ground. It was honestly some of the best Thai food I’ve had in the US!
After that, it was time to leave and head to Yosemite! It was only a three hour drive, but it was going to be a big change!
