San Francisco

What??  It's going to snow and be 20 degrees in Utah!?  Let's get out of here!

Okay, that's not quite how it all went down, but you could imagine what it would be like it if was...
While San Francisco certainly isn't the warmest place this time of year, it was certainly warmer than home.  We had awesome weather.  75 degrees greeted us on arrival, but unfortunately that didn't stay.  It averaged a high of close to 60 every day while we were there, and was almost always sunny.  We could see the Golden Gate Bridge every day we were there and I hear that's quite a feat.  But enough of about that, let's talk about the interesting things we did!



The first item of business was to travel to Monterey, pausing only briefly to stop by this beach in Santa Cruz where the young Lovell's used to play.  Ashley remember how much fun she used to have playing in the water, and Lindsey remembered how her Dad got hypothermia here once and she thought he was going to die.  Ah, the fond memories.

 Just to prove how sunny it was we decided to take pictures of our shadows.  They're better looking than we are anyway.

 After a lovely frolic on the deserted beach we finally made it to Monterey and our next stop, the aquarium, apparently one of the best in the US.  It was great, except for the fact that their Great White Shark went belly up the day before.  There were still plenty of sharks and other marine animals to gawk at though.

 Brent got some really cool pictures at the aquarium, and since we stole all his pictures I thought I would share.

 Gavin liked the aquarium.  He was as happy as could be as long as he could sit and stare at all of the fish swimming around.  He didn't even mind going pantless after he completely soaked through his diaper and pants.

 The jellyfish were really cool, but we couldn't find any in the petting section...so disappointed.

 17 mile drive and Pebble Beach.  This is near the somewhat famous Cyprus tree growing out on the rocks near the water, but it's apparently trademarked so you get this picture instead.

 Measures were taken to ensure Gavin was smiling for all pictures, they may have involved some of the crazyness you see below.

 We went out looking for the Golden Gate Bridge the next day, but all we found was this red one.  It seemed cool enough so we took some pictures.

 After passing over the non-descript red bridge we endured every Californian effort to make us car sick (just because Lombard street is famous for being curvy doesn't mean you need to build all roads that way), we made it to Muir Woods.  Lindsey failed to realize it was the Muir Woods sign and not a disco ball hanging over her head.

 What? These little trees?  They're hardly even noticable...  We found out that all of the black we were seeing along the bottoms of the trees was indeed from fire.  Turns out the last forest fire here was a long time ago but because they are resistant to burning, all of the junk (not the term the tree man used, but I forget) collected around the bottoms of the trees burns and scorches the bottom of the tree.  So if you ever see a really old giant redwood that looks likes it's burned, turns out it probably is.  Bet you didn't expect to learn that when you dialed up our blog today did you?

 The less pretty side of things... Lindsey thought she got him out before he completely exploded.  It initially appeared she had, but after a bit of sleuthing we found this under the car seat.  Thank goodness for rental cars.

 View of San Francisco from across the bay.  We tried to walk across the bridge but we took the side that was closed for construction 1/4 of the way across.

 Yeah, he's cute.

 Of course we couldn't go to San Fran without checking out Alcatraz.  I learned that it was originally a military base set up by Union soldiers during the civil war to protect the bay and also that after the prison was shut down Indians tried to take it over.  I can't believe how rusty my history is getting!  I guess I should not have sworn off reading books after high school.

 Turns out they forgot two inmates when they closed the prison.

 They looked like desperate folks in need of a bit of company so we joined them for a few minutes.

 Gavin realizing he is stuck in jail.

 Gavin realizing he is skinny enough that he can slip right through the bars.

 Alcatraz from the boat.

While we enjoyed many other things during our trip, I wanted to share just some of the highlights in hopes of not boring everyone to death.  A few highlights that didn't make it into picture form though:  Watching two grown men trying to get in a fight and one of them running around in a cast boot.  Brent saying he thought the ground was shaking and no one paying attention to him until a newsflash 10 minutes later that said there had been an earthquake.  The people on the bus tour trying to figure out why Gavin had one mom and two dads (Lindsey was at a conference.)  Walking through every Ghiradelli store we saw and getting free chocolate.  Watching Brent order a "sweet" in a Chinese bakery and having neither he nor the bakery woman know what he was actually talking about coupled with the puzzled look from the Starbucks employee when he ordered a hot eggnog (she ended up giving it to him for free, maybe because she didn't know how to ring up hot eggnog.)

Lastly, a special thanks to Brent for doing virtually all of the driving so I wouldn't have to be driven batty and also for taking all of the pictures.