Ocean Views
Monday, February 22, 2010 
After leaving Santa Cruz, we headed up to San Francisco for a few days to see some of our favorite sites. Finding a reasonably priced campground in the Bay area is next to impossible. When we stayed here the first time around, we camped at Half Moon Bay for $25 a night with no hookups. They've now increased it to $50. So we figured for a few dollars extra, we'd get full hookups closer to the city at Pacifica's San Francisco RV Resort. It's certainly a humorous name for the park, because it's just a parking lot with electrical posts. However, it does happen to be right on the ocean...so they can call it whatever they want. Here is the view from the front of the RV:
We loved watching the waves and light change throughout the day. We would get up in the morning and just stand out there and stare into forever. God's creation is so awe-inspiring. How can you not just give praise to the Creator when you are surrounded by such beauty?
We only spent one day touring around the city but we packed a lot in! Our first stop was the Exploratorium...which just happened to be FREE on the day that we went. Yay! It was unbelievebly busy, but worth it. Bella had a blast...and so did we.
After that we headed over to a store I had seen numerous times on Apartment Therapy and I just had to go there...Rare Device. In their own words...it is "a place to promote designers, artists and artisans plus help them grow by taking on new projects and collaborations. Every object in the store has its own story, and has been chosen because it is either handmade, well-designed, useful, beautiful or all of the above." Now that's my kind of store. It was a fun surprise to see a friend's jewelry on display. Check her site out here...love love love her work!
Next, on to Cafe Gratitude, one of our very favorite raw restaurants. If you have never been there, Cafe Gratitude is all about the love. It's a wonderful, positive environment and the staff is always very laid back and helpful. The location we like the best, near the Golden Gate Park, was permanently closed...so we went to the Castro location. Matt had raw pizza, Bella has steamed red rice and raw "cheese" and I had the sushi bowl...a dish that I CRAVE! So good.
Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf were next on our list. It's SO touristy, but we love it and we really had our hearts set on seeing the sea lions again. We were so disappointed when they weren't there! Boo. But we had fun riding the carousel, gazing at Alcatraz & the big boats, and eating fudge.
To end the evening, we headed to our favorite Thai restaurant in the city...Marnee Thai. It's a tiny little restaurant and it's always busy. The food is PERFECTLY delicious. Probably one of the best Thai restaurants in the country. And believe me, we've been to enough of them to know. :) In case you haven't noticed, it's kind of "our thing". 
One of our days in the Bay area was spent doing a photo session with a sweet family...and on our way back to the campground, our fuel pump went out. Luckily, Matt was able to pound on it good enough to get us back home. But we were unable to use our tow vehicle for a couple of weeks after that. We didn't end up fixing it until after we came back from Christmas in January (when Matt was able to get the part and do it himself).
It was a fun stay...but we were glad to head south. We were getting so excited to fly back home to the Midwest for Christmas!
Photos from San Francisco here.
Photos are available for comment on Flickr.
