Spring Break Day Two

We woke up this morning to a nice marine layer and a mist in the air. Felt a lot like home! We ate a breakfast of convenience at a restaurant that doesn’t deserve a mention on THIS blog. Then we headed down the Redwood Highway through beautiful green, rolling hills covered with grape vines, apple trees, grazing sheep and cows and beautiful wild flowers. It was amazing and my mom made me take pictures the whole way. Finally we reached Sana Rosa where found a restaurant from a Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives show. We were so excited to get to California where they know how to make Mexican food the right way. We weren’t disappointed and I found my enchiladas to have plenty of “kick”. The star of the show was my dad’s dish which was called molcajete. It was served in a large caldron looking pot which kept it hot from first bite to last. It was filled with chicken, steak, shrimp, cheese, green peppers, green onions, and a spicy tomato sauce. It was served with home-made corn tortillas, rice and beans. Mom’s dish was called huarache and she said the flavor of the meat was out of this world. Her favorite part of the meal was the white beans. They were so much better than the refried beans we get at Mexican restaurants in Seattle. Since Mexican isn’t my favorite I hope this is our last stop at a Mexican restaurant but I’m going to have to hold my ground since both mom and dad LOVE Mexican food.

Enchiladas

Fish Tacos

Huarache

Hamburger

Molcajete

We couldn't visit Santa Rosa without a quick stop at the house where my dad lived for a big portion of his mission almost 30 years ago! To our surprise the house was still standing and it looked the same to dad except that it wasn't yellow any more. We stopped to take a quick photo and that made dad happy. 

There’s no way you could be anything but happy after a meal like this but the day just seemed to get better and better. We drove over to the coast to Bodega Bay and we hiked down the cliff to the water. It was amazing and so fun and we took a ton of pictures and tried to avoid the waves since the water was freezing! Then we drove up highway 1 along the coastline to our next stop – the giant redwoods in Muir Woods. Could this day get any better? We took a leisurely stroll through the woods and we read most of the plaques describing the majestic trees and their “life stories”. There was a stream running through the pathway and it was so soothing and peaceful. We stayed as long as Michael had patience for and then we got back in the car and headed toward San Francisco – finally! We drove up the hill out of Muir Woods and when we reached the top we got our first glimpse of the city. I was so excited.

We drove to a great lookout to see the Golden Gate Bridge. There were a lot of people there but we managed to find a place to pull off the road and get some pictures of this amazing structure. Seeing it in real life was so much better than all the pictures I’d seen in the movies and on television. Then we drove down the hill and across the bridge and dad found our hotel, thank you car navigation system. To say that this hotel is an improvement over last night’s dump is an understatement. Our room has a view of the Bay and Alcatraz Island is right there! They took care of our luggage for us, park our car in some secret place and told us a good place to grab a quick dinner since it was almost 8 pm and we were starving, don’t know how that’s possible but we were.

Dinner was just up the street and Lou’s. We ordered a crab bisque soup to share and it was delicious. Mom ordered a hamburger and I ordered fish and chips but we decided to do a switcheroo because she liked mine better and I liked her hamburger better so it was a win/win for both of us. Dad had a chicken breast and veggies – boring! He keeps reminding us that SOMEONE has to be good on this trip. That might have been true for dinner but he was about ready to blow it because I had a plan.

I’ve been wanting to visit Ghiradelli Square ever since we started planning this trip. We walked up this hill to get to the square from where we had dinner. There is a huge sign over the top of the square that says Ghiradelli. As we walked into one of the chocolate stores we were handed chocolate samples that had a bunny in it for Easter. We walked around the store for a little bit and no joke ever corner seemed to be filled with some sort of chocolate goodness. While we were in the store dad was waiting in line for us, so that we could get some ice cream. Dad orders a banana milkshake with no banana, because he wanted a chocolate caramel milkshake. This was more vanilla ice cream with their caramel chocolate bar all crunched in it. Mom got a salted caramel Sunday and it was yummy! It had vanilla ice cream chocolate sauce and caramel sauce and whipped cream. I got an ice cream Sunday with cookie on the bottom and yet again mom liked my ice cream better. Michael Goober got just a one scoop ice cream Sunday he ended up eating more of dad’s than his own.