Sunday afternoon in California

After Liturgy we drove the short distance to the Golden Gate Bridge which was enshrouded by a cloud.
































































Our GPS told us that the nearest Wienerschniztel, hey, sometimes you get cravings, was in Oakland so we drove across Sausilito's pretty hills
































































to another bridge back to Oakland, which also had a mall where we bought jackets for the kids that didn't have them yet. San Francisco is chilly and windy in the morning and evening year round, but nice in the afternoon.

Then we drove back
across the bay
to tour the Napa valley wine vineyards



























































which, though beautiful, were a bit too commercial for our taste. We headed back west on 116, a moderately twisty turney up and down, forrested, sometimes with Redwoods, road, to get back on to hwy 1 before it got dark.



























































I'll just say that going north on hwy 1, south of San Francisco, with the ocean across the oncoming lane was different than our second experience. Coming up on the ocean in Jenner was innocent enough. Even though we were on the ocean side of the road, there was a shoulder and a bit of land before it dropped off onto the numerous public beaches. So we strolled along enjoying the views with those gentle golden hills on our left and planned to drive until sunset when we would park and let the kids play on the beach so as to maximize our view while we afforded a short pause in driving back to our southern San Francisco hotel. The vineyard map we had was not written to scale so we misjudged hwy 1's progress along the coast, and the gps only shows you about 3 miles of map at a time. Anyway it was a relaxing drive, with about 30 minutes until sunset, but then hwy 1 started going inland after Bodega Bay - isn't that where Hitchcock's The Birds is set? *insert sense of foreboding* After about 15 minutes, with the sun already playing hide and seek behind those lovely golden hills, I started to get nervous and asked George where the next public beach was. He said Dillon beach, but we couldn't tell how far it was, and we didn't know if would be faster to backtrack, which we seriously didn't want to do, or if Dillon would show up in time before the sunset. So I was really getting nervous thinking we were going to miss it. Then I saw a sign for Dillon beach, so we turned off hwy 1 to go straighter west toward the coast on a farm road. Those golden twisty turney up and down hills are so pretty! There were some interesting rock formations too in a valley area. I had renewed hope we'd make it back to the coast in time, but then there was a dumb, slow car in front of us that I


tailgated all the way to the coast which we barely got to, seconds before the sun dematerialized from view.












































































































 

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