San Francisco

Rich and I escaped for a few days to chilly, rainy, BEAUTIFUL San Francisco. Some observations from a temporarily childless Utahn on vacay with her husband in SF:

• arriving at the airport two hours early and waiting through endless security lines to board your flight is actually fun when you don't have your offspring with you
• never mind what it costs in the airport to buy a bottle of Dasani and a box of Junior Mints---it feels so classy and so un-stay-at-home-momish that you will do it anyway
• Have I mentioned that I got a Kindle for Christmas and I love love love it? Tres chic on the airplane. The young stylish college student next to me also had one. We bonded.

• Eating at Bette's Ocean View diner in Berkeley is really fun. I had a really hot date (who planned the whole trip--love him)
• If you think you will leave Utah in January to escape the cold weather, you might be mistaken:

(cold, foggy, and windy! Did that stop us? Noooo)

• If you love to shop or just window shop, SF is the place to be:

(a five-story Gap!)

• the Golden Gate bridge is amazing, especially sailing underneath it

• The Point Reyes Lighthouse is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. The look on my face when the stranger snapped the shot? Not so much. The views from the Lighthouse? Much better than my face.....

(fyi, there are 300 steps back up from the lighthouse, which is equivalent to walking up a 30 story building)

• Big cities are exciting, but I would take small-town Utah anyday (this coming from a Los Angeles girl!)

• I think I did a pretty good job of trying to blend in and look like a local. The neon pink hoodie with "San Francisco" emblazoned across the front and the ever-present camera on my shoulder really helped with that

(Muir Beach, north of SF)

• My favorite part of the trip? Driving HWY 1 north of San Francisco through tons of small, quaint towns surrounded by the Pacific on one side and towering Redwoods on the other. Rich is so good to me---he stops at every historical marker we pass (something you can't do easily with kidlets) and lets me take my time perusing old cemeteries, old farms and ranches, and plenty of other insignificant but interesting to me sights along the way:

(historic ranch cemetery--we parked at the bottom of this hill in the middle of nowhere and hiked through the rain to get there)

(WWII-era bunker used for a look-out post above Muir Beach)

(and finally, Sea Lions, because I thought they were cute...but not as cute as this guy---

We had fun, we missed the kids, the kids missed us...now we're back to wishing we could miss the kids again. I'm thinking someplace tropical, someplace WARM......