Stop 13: San Francisco

Our van is getting used to being filled with snack foods, backpacks, various electronic devices, and long drives. The humans in the car are still not accustomed to the long drives part, no matter how much of the other stuff we have. Tensions were running a little high on the drive yesterday. We have reached the halfway point in the trip and it has been a lot of "togetherness". All in all, things are going well and we're making tons of great memories. But no one has any alone time and every once in a while, it shows.

We worked through the monster moments and made our way to our next stop just north of San Francisco. But first--we made it to In-N-Out Burger for Sarah. I'll say it was a mix of Wendy's (condiments), Rally's (style), and McDonald's (secret burger sauce). It wasn't worth the wait as far as I'm concerned but Charlotte liked it a lot. Everyone else was neutral about it all. I don't understand the hype but at least we can say we did it, right?

After many miles, we pulled up to our AirBNB in Mill Valley, CA, just north of San Francisco. It's a quaint little town with houses all crammed in rows on small streets but it's really nice here. I met Maria, the home host, in the driveway. She lives in the home to the rear of the property, and she showed me around, giving tips for neighborhood restaurants. After finding street parking and unloading, Alex was disappointed that this small, one bedroom house didn't have a television. We aren't as mad about that. It's nice to not hear Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon on full blast.

Everyone chose their sleeping spots and we all just relaxed a little before turning in for the night. It was nice to spread out a little bit more than a hotel room, though the house isn't much bigger than our largest hotel accommodations.

Morning brought sun streaming into the house at 6am so I was awake early but I forced myself back to sleep and was happy to wake up around 8:45. I had scouted a nearby church with 10:15 Mass so everyone got up and we headed to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church about a mile away. It's a round building perched on a hill overlooking cute, downtown Mill Valley. It was baptism day for a baby named Daisy. She was so cute, looking around and smiling, playing in the water during her actual baptism. The charismatic priest (who looked kinda like Chris Christopherson) gave a great homily about understanding/loving/learning being a heart activity instead of a brain activity and I quite enjoyed it. There weren't many in attendance but it seemed like a nice place.

It was Father's Day and Andy wanted to spend the day in the city so we headed across the Golden Gate Bridge to Pier 39 to look around. Andy wasn't super impressed with the gimmicky shops so we moved on to Fisherman's Wharf and he was much happier there. We saw a mediocre street magician, a one-man band who impressed Andy, and shopped for our regular souvenirs.

By this time, we were ready to head to Lombard Street to try out the "Crookedest Street in the World". Traffic moved pretty fast and we made our way through the crooks of the crookedest street. The flowers were really pretty on this street. I love hydrangeas and they were plentiful on Lombard Street. I can't imagine living on this section of Lombard Street--we heard they're going to start scheduling visits and maybe charging (?) visitors to this attraction. I'm glad we made it before this happened. Things seemed to flow nicely without all that hassle. **As we were driving back up the very steep hill, the battery light came on in the van. This light indicates that there's a problem with the battery charging. We were 20 miles from our rental house and on some serious hills in downtown San Francisco so I was less than thrilled at the prospect of our van breaking down. Andy seemed unfazed by the whole thing and proceeded to find a parking spot so he could walk to Lombard Street for photos. I stayed with the van because at this point I had a migraine, complicated by fears of our family being stranded in the middle of the city.

Andy next wanted to visit Golden Gate Park so we headed that way. We walked through that and stumbled upon a rock garden inside the AIDS Memorial Grove. It was beautiful and serene. Charlotte really liked trying to stack the rocks. We continued walking through the park and reading the names of those memorialized there. It was a really nice place to visit and I'm sure that families appreciate a quiet and beautiful place to remember their loved ones. Char, Alex, and Andy climbed a last set of stairs to find a bell one could rings in honor of someone with HIV or AIDS. They report it to have been a nice tribute; I could hear it but didn't see it. I stayed lower with Sarah (and worried about the van).

We started heading back toward our rental house and but made two stops along the way: the first just across the Golden Gate Bridge because Andy can't resist a good photo op and the other at Rocco's Pizza for dinner. We haven't had many sit-down-at-a-restaurant-style dinners on this trip because it's relatively expensive to feed a family of 5 when dining out and we're typically so on-the-go that we often eat sandwiches in the car. But it was Father's Day and Andy wanted to sit down and eat, so that we did. It was okay pizza in a place that, again, didn't have public restrooms (What is with that? People in SF must never pee--there are NO public restrooms ANY.WHERE. in this city).

This is the only photo we have from Rocco's. With no bathroom, I reckon there's no other place to wash hands.

By the time we reached our house, the battery light had gone off but Andy decided to still head to Autozone to see if they could determine if we had a battery or alternator problem. The closest Autozone was 10 miles away so off he went. Autozone was of no help--there was only one guy there who couldn't leave the counter and said he could only test the parts if Andy brought them into the store. Welp, that wasn't going to happen. But, all was not lost because Andy was pretty close to PIXAR Studios so he decided to swing by and take some photos. Well, photo. In the dark.

When we didn't hear from him for a while, I texted to make sure he was okay and he responded that he'd locked the keys in the car. On hold with AAA for more than a half hour, I submitted an online request and someone was there within 20 minutes. This was his resting spot for a long time:

Fortunately, once he arrived, the locksmith got him into the car within moments and and he was back on the road. BUT--he then texted that the battery light was back on. Subsequent texts grew more and more bleak. First, it was the dashboard was lit up like a Christmas tree. Then, it was the headlights were dimming to virtually non-existent. Then, it was dead. He put it in neutral and coasted to the exit by our house. Then stopped in the median, just four driving minutes from where we're staying. I got back on the AAA website to request a tow but favor wasn't on our side this time. I put in the request at 11:30PM and he wasn't picked up until 2:09AM.

I researched car repair places during this time and located one very close to our house that had good reviews (Marin's Auto Works) so we decided we'd have it towed there. The man who arrived to tow the van had good things to say about this place so that was encouraging. Andy dragged himself into the house around 3AM. I was asleep with my computer on my lap and my phone in my hand. He fell into bed and we waited to hear from Marin's in the morning. Just after 8AM, Andy called them to give them the scoop and they were already looking at it. Around 10AM they called back to say that it was indeed the alternator and it would need to be replaced. (Anyone else starting to hear the Planes, Trains, and Automobiles theme music right about now?) We had hoped to get an early start today for our 5-6 hour drive to the California Redwoods today. Wompity, womp. Now our bags would be sitting in the driveway of an AirBNB while we hiked it to a car repair place and waited for our van to get another costly repair. These aren't quite the memories I'd hoped to be making on this trip.

Our bags are behind Charlotte, in front of the colorful Tesla

After heading out of our rental at noon, we walked to Marin's to check on the van progress. It turns out that Marin's was less than 1/4 mile from our rental house so it was an easy walk. We each took our personal bags and put them into the van, which we were told would be ready in about a half hour. So we stopped into a little taco shop across the street for lunch and while we were eating, Marin's called to say the van was ready to go. That's a pretty good turn around considering it was less than 12 hours prior Andy had been sitting on an exit ramp with a totally dead minivan. Andy pick up the hot rod, we grabbed our stuff from the driveway, and headed out for the Redwoods.