California is a big state!

We've got a lot to catch up on! Last post, we were finishing up our visit in Oregon and were heading to California. We've done a lot since then!

Redwoods National and State Park

We drove from Medford to Crescent City, California and spent two nights there. We spent our time there mingling with the redwoods. We arrived in Crescent City and immediately went to the visitor center in town to figure out what kind of hiking we could do in the parks in the area. The man working the center was clearly asked the same question (what to do?) that he jumped right in to his suggestions, "Take this trail: big trees. This one here: it's also got big trees. Everywhere you go are big trees." There was a small, dirt road that he suggested taking through the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park that led to the Boy Scout Tree Trail. We took his advice and drove over the next morning to do our hike. The trail was beautiful and secluded, snaking through the trees with plenty of roots to scramble over and a small creek winding by occasionally. We hiked about 2 miles out to the Boy Scout Tree (a very large tree!) and turned back to our car. Once we finished, we gobbled up the lunch that we had packed before finishing the drive through the park. That evening, we visited SeaQuake Brewing in town for dinner and walked across the street to a park along side the ocean to take in the scenery. We then drove up the coast a little to find a spot to watch the sunset. There's nothing like a west coast sunset and the unique rock formations in the area made it that much more beautiful.

Sunset from Crescent City

Fort Bragg

Our next stop down the coast was in Fort Bragg, California. We spent one night here, mostly as a midway point, but the town is known for having a glass beach, and we were interested in seeing what that was all about. The beach was a former trash dump and the waves have washed away almost everything, but left smooth pieces of different colored glass on the beach. We spent a little time admiring the small colorful stones on the beach before checking into our Airbnb. There wasn't much else going on in the beach resort town in October, but Will was excited to learn that North Coast Brewing Co. was in town, so we obviously paid them a visit for dinner.

Santa Rosa

We had Santa Rosa on our itinerary for a while and we weren't sure if we were actually going to be able to visit due to the wildfires that had been ravaging the town and the surrounding area for about a week or so. We messaged our host a few days before we were set to come and she told us that her place was outside of the evacuation area and that things were calming down, so we stuck with our plans and were able to visit after all. We did see some buildings that were burned just off of 101 on our way in, but beyond that, the areas we visited were untouched and lively. There was a great sense of community in the area, signs on freeway overpasses and in business windows and different ways to give back including profits from one of the beers at a brewery we visited going to victims of the fires. It's hard to think about the tragedy, but it's always good to see the way that communities stick together and help each other out in times of crisis. I felt a little weird visiting during such a hard time, but we figured we could help out with our tourism dollars since that is such a big deal in the area.

Our first day, we arrived and visited Russian River Brewing Company for dinner and Fogbelt Brewing Company after checking in to our Airbnb. The next morning, we visited a local coffee shop and headed south toward Sonoma County to visit some vineyards. We went back to Robledo Family Winery where we had visited last year on our tour with Vantigo from San Francisco. We also visited Anaba Wines and Schug Winery which were both just down the road. After tasting several wines, we decided to get a late lunch. We headed to Lagunitas Brewing Petaluma Taproom and devoured some burgers. We had a relaxing afternoon at our Airbnb before visiting Third Street Aleworks in the evening.

The next day, we started the day with some laundry since we were running out of clean clothes. We drove to town to find somewhere to grab lunch once we were done and ended up at Third Street Aleworks again for some food and to watch the Michigan State football game. We caught the end at Henhouse Brewing Company and headed back to the Airbnb for the night. The next morning, we ate a quick breakfast and hit the road for San Francisco.

San Francisco

We arrived in the city before we were able to check in to our Airbnb since we had a short drive from Santa Rosa, so we grabbed some lunch and walked over to the bay. We caught some of the Packers game in The Pub at Ghirardelli Square before walking back to the car. One of the things on my list for my second trip to San Francisco was to see Twin Peaks since it has a great view of the city, so we drove up there, snapped some photos, and climbed one of the peaks. We had a little more time to kill and needed a bathroom (without a line), so we drove over to Social Kitchen and Brewery which was a few blocks away from where we were staying. After enjoying a beer, we went to our Airbnb to check in. We got settled and had some sushi for dinner before calling it a day.

View from Twin Peaks

The next day was our only full day in San Francisco, so we packed it full. We had been to San Francisco last April and did and saw all the touristy things near the bay, so we were excited to see what was on the west side of town. We started the day by finding the 16th Avenue tiled steps. We climbed to the top while snapping some photos along the way and continued our way up to the top of Grandview Park. We marveled at the view for a while since you can see essentially all of the north part of the city. Once we had taken in enough views, we headed back down the hill toward Golden Gate Park. I wanted to go find a really big sundial (this one), but due to my poor google maps searching, we found a very small one in the park. But either way, we had a nice walk through the park. After all that walking, we were ready for some lunch, so we stopped by Street Taco on Haight Street and devoured some delicious tacos and a burrito. After lunch, we set off toward the Painted Ladies. Once there, we had decided we had walked enough for the day and called an Uber to take us back to the house. We needed to get some groceries for our upcoming camping, so we drove to Whole Foods then we grabbed some dinner at Park Chalet down by the ocean. I had been wanting to see Baker Beach for the view of the Golden Gate bridge, so we drove to the park to make it just in time for the sunset. We sat and people-watched including a couple who were getting some wedding photos taken by the waves in front of the bridge and sunset. It was a pretty spectacular view. After sunset, we stopped by Magnolia Gastropub and Brewery, recommended by our host for a quick beer before heading back.

Painted Ladies

Baker Beach

Sunset at Baker Beach

Yosemite

We grabbed coffee and hit the road from San Francisco to Yosemite (and got to cross the Bay Bridge!). Yosemite was the only part of our trip that we couldn't book ahead of time. All of the campgrounds that allowed bookings were full, but one was walk up only, so we made sure to get there right around noon to secure our spot. It ended up not being a problem and we had a choice of plenty of spots though all of them were on a small slant. We picked one after some deliberation and set up our tent. We made friends with a girl from Minnesota who arrived not too long after us and we decided to hike together the next day. We made our dinner and planned our hike for the next day.

We decided to hike the Vernal Falls trail in the morning which started in Yosemite Valley, so we marveled at the sites while we headed into the valley to park at the trailhead. The trail was a total of about 1000 feet gain to the top of the falls and the last quarter or so had some monstrous marble steps scaling the side of the mountain. We made it to the top and decided to go a bit further to see the Nevada falls before coming down. Our trip took about 3 hours, so we were hungry for lunch when we got done. Kelsey, our hiking buddy, only had one day to see the park, so we parted ways and she continued on to Mirror Lake while we found a place for us to eat our packed lunch. We found a picnic area under El Capitan and marveled while we ate. After our late lunch and the drive back to our campsite from the valley, we barely had time before we had to start thinking about making dinner. The next day, we hiked to Mirror Lake to see the face of Half Dome before driving up to Glacier Point to get a great view of the summit and everything else in the valley. We enjoyed our lunch at Glacier Point before taking the long, winding drive back down to our campsite to prepare dinner.

Vernal Falls

Top of Vernal Falls

Face of Half Dome at Mirror Lake

Half Dome from Glacier Point

This morning, we made breakfast, packed up our campsite, and hit the road to Fresno for the night. We are on our way to Pasadena tomorrow, though we plan to spend our one full day exploring Joshua Tree National Park. Then we will be done with the big state of California!