It's laundry time in here.
After eating breakfast and packing, we continued north on the 101 and through the city to the Presidio, and found a place to take pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. R found a new friend (to the right of the fire hydrant).
"We make the silly bridge pose"
The bridge surprised me in two ways: it's much smaller than I expected, and there's a beach! Why did it always seem like there was nothing but huge rocks on either side? We enjoyed seeing all the folks cavorting in the sand with their dogs.
After photographing the bridge to death and not catching any glimpses of James Bond and Christopher Walken duking it out, we headed to the wharf and bought souvenirs, then headed to Ghiradelli Square and bought yet more stuff. I decided that eating a Ghiradelli brownie while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and listening to Jimmy Buffett's "Come Monday" is the ultimate San Francisco experience and will be repeating this ritual the next time we visit (when R takes the Alcatraz tour - date TBD).
We made it to Santa Rosa when we learned that Brookings, where we originally planned to spend the night, was under a flood warning and experiencing some freaky weather. This inspired us to head east and take I-5 home instead of going up the coast - a bummer, as we were hoping to see my little town and complete more of the 101, but we'll just have to come back again, darn it.
We passed The Petrified Forest in Sonoma county and of course had to visit.
We bought more souvenirs and R tried out the "make a cool penny" machine which unfortunately was out of service.
At Williams, we turned north on I-5 and stopped in Redding for some great food at Maxwell's Eatery in old downtown, and settled in at Hampton Inn & Suites. Very comfy. We're all exhausted and ready to go home tomorrow, but it's been a great trip.