Before we start with today’s adventure, I have to show this from last night… This is what happens when you have light-up light sabers and a cool mirror…

Oh my word! These 2 get funnier every day!!

Okay on to today:

WOW – Today was a great day! We got to sleep in a bit, which was wonderful 😀. After breakfast (again with a pancake maker), we headed out to Alcatraz. But before we got out the door, we were hit in the face… by the weather! Brrrr! It was 52 degrees this morning and it was so windy! ❄️💨❄️💨  Thankfully we had packed some pants and we got Harry Potter sweatshirts at Universal (we intentionally didn’t bring sweatshirts so we could use that as a useful souvenir) 
I think they like their sweatshirt! (Love them to dress alike on vacation so I can keep up with them ❤️ ). They got lots of comments on their shirts so they were tickled.

Alcatraz was so cool. 

Boys loved the boat ride to get there and then Leo informed me that “Alcatraz was cool because you can ninja warrior all over it!” And Lawd knows he did (or at least tried to)!   The audio tour was awesome and as soon as the boys put on their headsets, they were obsessed with Alcatraz history!

They loved the stories of the escape attempts and how the prisoners lived. 

And of course they hammed it up a bit!! But we found a place for them to run…

The Rec Yard! 

It was so much fun – obviously since we stayed for almost 4 hours!!  But we can say we saw every part of Alcatraz 😜

Now on to Pier 39 and by now, we were starving! San Francisco is a great city to be hungry in because there are some awesome restaurants at every turn!

The food was so good! We got the small and half portions so we could share lots of different things: dungeoness crab, fried fish, burger, pasta, garlic fries and clam chowder in sourdough bread bowl. Everything was outstanding!!! (We ate so much at lunch that Mike and I had a piece of banana bread for dinner because we were still full!)

Before we could leave Pier 39, we had 2 other stops to make… The famous double decker merry-go-round:

And the sea lions

Check and check!

After lunch, we headed to Moss Beach, California. Michael watched a show, Animals Across America, that told about the tide pools in Moss Beach.  Then he did some more research and found that there are octopus, starfish, anemones and sea urchins special to Moss Beach.  Once we decided San Francisco was a stop on the trip, we discovered that Moss Beach is only 35 miles away (“or perhaps you don’t want to see the world’s largest ball of twine which is only four short hours away.” Sorry, Griswolds reference 😜) So anyway, off we went 🚗🚗🚗

I am so glad we did! This ended up being one of the coolest things we have done. We got to travel along the Pacific Coast Highway, which was gorgeous! I’ve never seen green mountains on one side of road and oceans and cliffs on the other! You take roads that lead you through a residental area, and then suddenly, at the end of a road, there is brown State Park sign.  We walked down a really steep path

The views were really beautiful…But the best thing was this face right here:

😍Michael was just in his element! He told us which animals to look for, what they were, and then made sure we did not remove any shells, rocks or marine life from Moss Beach – because it was a rule!  

We really had a great time exploring the tide pools and seeing the animals

We also got to see sea lions up close, well 300 feet away-close, because they come ashore at Moss Beach to have pups and raise them in these tide pools for a while because predators can’t get past the rocky bars just beyond the beach.

This will be one of those days we will always remember – mental picture, click 📸📷

We had an early night tonight and were back in room before 9pm! Hallelujer!  

Tomorrow we are headed to Eureka, California with stops at the Golden Gate Bridge, Muir Woods, Humboldt State Park and anywhere else that looks interesting along the way. But we have no timetable tomorrow, so NO Alarm clock will be set!!! WooHoo! Goodnight All!