San Francisco in a day

On Friday night we reached our nephew's house in Riverbank, CA and the girls were so happy to FINALLY get to their cousins' house! We settled in and made plans to visit San Francisco on Saturday. The weather was perfect for a visit to the bay (is our luck with the weather finally changing?). We didn't make any major plans other than to visit Fishermans' Wharf and a quick visit to the Golden Gate Bridge area. On the way there we decided it would be fun to ride the cable cars so we set about finding parking somewhere near the cable car starting point. NOTE: If you are planning on finding parking in SF on a beautiful Saturday in June, it's better not to have a tall vehicle that has a cargo pod on top - most parking garages have a clearance of 7 or maybe 8 feet.

We managed to find parking and worked our way to the cable cars. On the way we spotted these funky little machines that you can rent to tour the town:

After a considerable wait to get on the cable cars we had a fun ride down to the waterfront. I am fascinated by the engineering that went in to making the cable cars work.

Fishermans' Wharf was very busy and Katie ended up not liking the crowds a whole lot, but it certainly was a change of pace from the national parks that we've been visiting.

Of course, we had to make the obligatory trip down Lombard Street:

Good views of the city abound while driving around:


We made a quick visit to the Presario and then headed back. There was certainly a llot more that can be done in the city, but we decided to save most of them for another visit.