California Vacation

It has been a while since our last post, but 2014 has been a busy year so far! To take a break from work, we took a week-long vacation out to California. We left the cold of Wisconsin on Saturday afternoon leaving Cassie at home to be watched by Diana's brother Michael. We arrived in San Francisco and started driving towards Lake Tahoe. We spent the night in Folsom and were ready to start our vacation!

Day 1 To Lake Tahoe!

We started off Sunday with a short hike along Lake Natoma, which happens to be a local rowing venue. We have a good way of finding rowing locations when we are on vacation and were jealous of the rowing conditions compared to the narrow and frozen Milwaukee River.

Lake Natoma

Rowing!

We arrived in Lake Tahoe around noon and decided to check out the area and go for a hike at Emerald Bay off the southwest corner of Lake Tahoe. The hike started at the bay and went past Eagle Falls up to Eagle Lake. It was a nice couple mile hike to acclimate to the altitude. With the drought there was not much snow on the ground making for some easier hiking.

Emerald Bay

Diana found some big trees!

Eagle Lake

Day 2 Lake Tahoe Skiing

Diana did most of the planning for this vacation and found this hotel to stay at in Lake Tahoe from online reviews. At first glance from the sign on the street it looked like a blast from the past... the name didn't help the image much. But once we checked in we saw why there were so many great reviews. The hotel was across the street from the main gondola for Heavenly ski resort and the rooms were newly renovated. The unique thing for the room we had was that the bed was actually a murphy bed that folded into the wall when not in use. We would recommend the location to anyone looking for affordable lodging to ski at Heavenly.

The Stardust Lodge!

Nicely renovated rooms. The bed folds down from the wall behind the couch and was actually easy and convenient to use.

We only skied for one day due to the snow conditions. Since the temperatures got into the 50s-60s in the afternoon and then down into the 20s-30s at night, the snow melted and the froze on the trails meaning you really had to only stay on trails that were groomed. Aside from the snow, the mountain and the views were amazing and we really had no idea that it was so close to the coast since it only took us 3 hours from San Francisco. The region is definitely a great combination of lake and mountain activities.

View of Lake Tahoe from Heavenly

Skiing two states!

Day 3 Lake Tahoe Boat Cruise

On Tuesday we decided to get out on the lake and do a boat cruise. The boat was a paddle-style river boat that was actually built in Wisconsin and transported to Lake Tahoe. The cruise left the east coast of the lake and crossed over to Emerald Bay on the west. It was a different perspective seeing the mountains from the lake.

Cruising

The paddle wheel supplied 1/3 of the ships propulsion

View from the lake

Entering Emerald Bay

Day 4 Sonoma Wine Country

On Wednesday we left Lake Tahoe early to drive to Sonoma to check out wine country. We were impressed by the terrain and how many vineyards and wineries there were. We started out at the Ravenswood Winery mostly because we live in the Ravenswood neighborhood and have seen that people have a bit of a cult following. Being off peak season, we had a private tour since we were the only visitors there and learned a lot about wine. We stopped at one of the historic and original wineries of the region before visiting the Sonoma Plaza to walk around a get lunch.

Directions to all of the Wineries

Ravenswood!

Leaving with a bottle of wine to bring home.

Day 5 Muir Woods and Point Reye

On Thursday we changed things up to do some hiking and visit the Muir Woods  National Monument to see the tallest trees in the world, the coast redwoods. We got to the park right when it opened at 8 AM, and I guess if you get there that early they don't have anyone working to collect the entrance fees. There was just a sign saying free entry. We did a 4 mile hike through the redwoods and then were ready to move on. There was much more of a crowd at the entrance when we were leaving.

The trees are huge and many have charred bark from a fire decades ago.

The trees are quite tall too

The hike was on a nice and easy paved path

After the woods, we drove along Highway 1 out to the coast to visit Point Reyes national seashore. Highway 1 is a lot of fun to drive and was good at making Diana a little car sick with all of the winding turns. We drove out to the Point Reyes lighthouse to hike around, look at the coast, and see if we could spot any whales. The coast is beautiful with rolling hills, historic cattle ranches, steep cliffs, and WIND. It was extremely windy. Unfortunately we didn't see any whales, but the coast was great to see.

Beautiful Coastline

Diana posing in the wind

Beautiful cliffs

Day 6 San Francisco

For our last day of touring on Friday, we went into San Francisco. We started out taking a boat out to Alcatraz to tour the island and prison. Alcatraz is a very interesting place to visit and it is a little crazy to think that it was a functioning prison. There were great views of the skyline and the Golden Gate bridge from the island.

Cruising out to Alcatraz

Docking at the island

The prison

San Francisco Skyline

Golden Gate Bridge

After Alcatraz, we walked through the aquarium which has underwater tunnels to view the fish. We may have been the only people there without kids, but we wanted to see the fish!

Tunnel through the aquarium

After the aquarium we walked down the pier to see the sea lions at Pier 39. They were very vocal and fun to watch.

Pier 39

Sea Lions!

Following the sea lions, we hopped on a cable car to go to china town for lunch. The cable cars are interesting devices and fun to ride, even if they don't seem entirely practical or cost effective compared to the other electric trolleys running around the city. We have never been to China, but china town felt like a different country. We walked off the main touristy area to find some lunch and enjoyed some good Chinese food. After lunch, we walked some more to visit the cable car museum to see the history of the cable car and to see where the actual cables for the car lines are spun by 4 large electric motors. It was an interesting stop and I would recommend it to visitors to really see the scale and the engineering behind the cable cars.

The manual turn table to spin the car around at the end of the cable line.

The cable motors inside the cable car museum.

To finish the day we went to Union Square, sat down for some dinner, and then went to a magic show. The magic show was a very small venue, personal atmosphere with classic old style magic. It was a lot of fun and a good way to finish off the vacation. Since the show ended late and our flight the next morning was early, we found a parking lot near the airport to sleep for a few hours before heading home.

It was a great vacation that was packed with variety. If anyone is planning on going to the San Francisco area you should talk to Diana since she is great at planning vacations!