No flowers in our hair for San Francisco

On Monday, Sept 8th, we drove from Fort Bragg to Monterey, CA. This drive was also much longer than I had expected. It was less mileage then the previous day, only 296 miles, but we didn't reach the hotel that night until 11pm! But we were a bit smarter this time and found a faster route after the sun went down so that we didn't end up on another winding road in the dark.

Since we were in so late the night before, I took some pics of Fort Bragg this morning. The view from the room was fantastic and there were some pretty pink lilies growing wild near the shore. I would highly recommend staying at the Sand & Surf Hotel. The room was nice, had a great view and the owners were super friendly.

We wanted to have breakfast at one of the local restaurants but we drove up and down the main street and couldn't find the place so we found a Denny's and ate there instead. They have really great breakfasts for a chain restaurant!

After getting some gas, which seems to be changing price more often out of Oregon (most of their stations were $3.89 whereas the prices in CA have ranged from $3.91 to $4.29), we headed down the coast once more. We really tried not to stop too many times today so that we wouldn't get to the hotel to late, but it didn't work out. At least I got quite a few good pics of the ocean and several other places along the way. I wish we had another week to look at more stuff!

I had planned for us to be in the Marin Headlands just north of San Francisco for lunch, but we ended up having dinner there instead. Since we had a late breakfast, we skipped lunch and stopped in a little state park for cheese and crackers that we had brought along with us. We ended up stopping at Fort Ross and looking around at the exhibits. Did you know that Russians came to this area to work with the Americans at this fort? We didn't know that. Pretty interesting. But we couldn't stay long and had to get going.

We had some more winding roads near the coast but we finally made it to San Francisco before the sun went down. I was hoping to get some great pics of the Golden Gate Bridge with the sun shining on it, but no luck. Too foggy here too. I still took some pretty good shots of the bridge with the city behind it from the Marin Headlands though.

The bridge is a toll road going south and we had only planned on crossing it once, but the freeway became super hectic near the bridge as it was rush hour and we missed our turn. So we ended up paying the $6 toll twice since I wanted to get some pics from the north side and we had to go back. Poop! There's our donation to the bridge. :)

Anyway, before we went across for the third time, we had dinner in Sausalito at a restaurant called The Spinnaker. The stupid AAA guide book said that this restaurant was casual, but I think casual in SF is different that casual in Phoenix. Everyone was dressed in office casual and the place seemed a little hoity toity for me. We stayed and ate there anyway. The food was pretty good and the view across the bay was spectacular! I was able to set my camera on a rock near the restaurant and get a couple of really great pics of downtown! So that made our $50 dinner bill worth it! :)

I was glad we had dinner before crossing the bridge into SF as rush hour had ended and the traffic was way less hectic. I don't know why it seemed so intimidating, but it was pretty crazy!

This night we were staying at a Best Western right on the Monterey bay and received a package deal that included tickets the the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The room was a bit smaller than we had expected, but seemed quiet and had an awesome view of the bay! We could hear the waves crashing on the shore below which kept waking me up! They seemed to get louder and softer and I'm not sure why. The view of Monterey is pretty cool though.