We woke up this morning and packed everything up for the drive back to San Francisco. It was supposed to be around three hours or so, but ended up being much longer due to traffic. It was amazing that we were able to get all of our bags of jackets, snacks, and extras all organized, but we did it! The route from Redding to San Francisco went right down the middle of the state and consisted mainly of rolling hills of gold. It’s easy to see why California is called the “Golden State” when you drive this part!
We wanted to try seeing the Golden Gate Bridge again, hoping this time we’d have a clear view. But as we got closer and closer to the point we’d have to turn off the highway we kept refreshing the live webcams and everything was pretty solidly socked in with sea fog. It was a huge disappointment, but we changed course and drove instead to the nearest beach — which it turned out wasn’t very “near” at all! Thanks to a couple of sporting events happening and normal Saturday beach traffic, it took us quite a while to finally get ourselves parked on the side of the road and then over to the beach.
The first beach we stopped at is called Half Moon Bay and is known for having great surfing. The sea fog was still pretty thick for us and it turned out that the waves weren’t breaking today, so we didn’t see surfers. The long walk to the surfing area took us through a little marina and jetty area, however, and we saw a seal on the shore that didn’t seem to be doing okay. It had flies on it and it seemed really lethargic. I used my phone to track down a marine mammal rescue organization and called in the location and description of the seal. As we were walking back to our car, we actually passed the rescue crew coming up the beach in their truck. They texted me an update initially and said we could keep track of our seal on their website, but unfortunately when I logged in, our seal had to be euthanized because of its poor health. It was still a really memorable and random experience though!
Once we got to our car we worked our way back towards San Francisco to a different beach along the coast where there were surfers. We found a spot across the road from the beach, parked, and dodged traffic to cross and perch ourselves on the cliff rocks overlooking the beach. We stayed her for about an hour or so watching different surfers take on the waves. It wasn’t the greatest day for surfing it seems, but it was sunny and gorgeous and we certainly enjoyed this last west coast beach afternoon!
Eventually we needed to navigate to our airport hotel to check in, drop off the rental car, grab dinner, and do our final packing before crashing for the night. We chose this hotel because of its proximity to the hotel and the free shuttle. It had good ratings online, but as we pulled in and approached the lobby we were already second guessing our choice. The area felt very run-down and it was one of those times when you’re desperately trying to assess whether you’re actually safe or not. The first room that we were given was very far from the lobby where we’d have to catch the shuttle in the morning (at dark o’clock) and the air conditioning wasn’t working. Thankfully they were able to get us another room and it was closer to the lobby which felt safer!
It’s probably not surprising that Kaia and I relied heavily on our GPS vs actually looking out the window and paying attention to our surroundings. This was never really a problem until tonight. We needed to get gas, get dinner, and return the car to the rental office. We had a great dinner nearby — where I actually found gluten free mac-n-cheese! Then we got gas, only to then navigate to the car rental place that was apparently somewhere we had passed several times because it was just down and across from our hotel AND it was literally next door to a Costco. I was kicking myself for not getting cheap gas there, but there was nothing we could do at that point. At least we saved money not needing to uber back to the hotel! We chose to walk against a very cold and bold wind which felt both ridiculous and hysterical.
In the room we showered, unpacked and re-packed everything, and crashed into our beds. It wasn’t a bad sleep and we were waiting at 5am for the first shuttle of the day to whisk us to the airport. The travel day back was long but we did enjoy my favorite Atlanta airport meal of gluten free fried chicken, so yay! Overall this trip is one that I thin we’ll both remember forever and we can’t wait to get back to California again to see all of the other parts we missed!!
