WESTERN ROAD TRIP 2013 | Day 8 - San Francisco
**Click the links below to visit all of my galleries from my Western Trip or to purchase a Seth Berry Photography print:
Yosemite National Park | Death Valley National Park | Sequoia National Park | Kings Canyon National Park
Mono Lake, CA | Bodie, CA | Nevada Deserts | California | San Francisco
Saturday, August 17 (Day 8)
This was the last day of one of the most epic trips I've ever been on - being able to travel the wide open western roads with two great friends and visiting some of the most beautiful scenes I've ever seen. As I've mentioned before in my earlier blog posts, traveling out west to witness for myself some of these amazing National Parks was always something I wanted to do. I'm so thankful and grateful that the Lord blessed me with the opportunity to make it out there and capture His beautiful creation through photography...not to mention the great spiritual experiences I had as well. Its also been a blessing to share these magnificent scenes of the great western America to YOU through my pictures and stories. We certainly packed a whole lot into 8 days (you could tell by how filthy our poor rented car was on day 8), but it was totally worth it. I look forward to traveling to more of my bucket list trips in the future (Glacier National Park and Grand Teton National Park to name a few)! All in all, I hope that I've encouraged you to get out and see for yourself the great beauty God has given us to travel to and see!
San Francisco!
Our last full day was going to be an exhausting one! Not only would we spend the whole day walking around and exploring San Francisco, but we were scheduled to board a red eye flight at 10:30 PM to fly back home to South Carolina. That didn't stop us though in packing in all the sightseeing we could during our short stay in the beautiful bay city.
San Francisco was a beautiful city that has tons of things to do and see! I definitely would love to travel back to spend more time there. Our first destination early in the cool morning was the infamous Full House setting - the Painted Ladies houses! This beautiful row of Victorian houses across from Alamo Square with the skyline in the background is a classic scene often seen in postcards, magazines, television, and tourist photographs! When I think of San Francisco, I immediately think of Full House, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Rice-A-Roni...so we made sure to see this location while humming the Full House theme song..."everywhere you look, everywhere you look... chip-a-dee-ba-ba-dow"!
The classic Full House picnic scene pose...without the picnic basket...and Uncle Jesse, Uncle Joey, Stephanie, Michelle, etc...
The Golden Gate Bridge
After driving to the Painted Ladies and around the city some, we made our way to see the most popular place in San Francisco - the Golden Gate Bridge! The morning in San Francisco was absolutely beautiful as the fog was rolling across the bay and the crisp 60 degree temperatures were in the air! This is common weather though in this city. When we arrived at the Golden Gate Bridge park, we were greeted with a brilliant view of the bridge and the morning fog lifting over the red steel structure and the blue sky looming. I was able to get some amazing shots of this famous location. Once we spent time walking around the San Francisco side of the bridge, we paid the toll and drove across the bridge to explore the other side.
Like I've said before, I would love to come back and just drive further along the Pacific Coast, because the views are absolutely stunning. The little amount of driving we did along the Pacific Coast mountains above the Golden Gate Bridge was breathtaking. We stopped at several overlooks for great photo moments of the bridge and city in the distance. But the reason why we drove across the bridge was to get to the beautiful Point Bonita Lighthouse, which you'll see after these Golden Gate Bridge photos.
Point Bonita Lighthouse
We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge so we could go to the Point Bonita Lighthouse...only did I not know it would become the most beautiful coastal scenes I had ever seen! This lighthouse is in the Marin Headlands, which is a hilly peninsula north of San Francisco across the bridge. These rocky drop off cliffs that lead straight to the Pacific Ocean are simply breathtaking. The drive to this lighthouse was a nice country ride on small roads through small bay villages. There are also many historic military sites, bunkers, and batteries along the Marin Headlands as well, so this was a very interesting visit.
The walk to the lighthouse was the real treat. After parking in the parking area, its a good little walk along the path to go out on the rocky peninsula. The lighthouse itself is way out on a rock in the ocean, so to get there you walk through a tunnel of the mountain then across a small bridge to the lighthouse. All along the way, on your left and right, are amazing views of the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay. The beautiful blue sky and green water left me in awe as I just stood and watched the water crashing against the cliffs down below. It was ironic how peaceful, quiet and breathtaking the place was when considering off in the distance was one of the largest and populated cities in the US. We spent the rest of the morning up until the afternoon at this beautiful place and several overlooks of the Golden Gate Bridge.
I hope you enjoy the views along this beautiful walk to the Point Bonita Lighthouse!
On our way back to the car, I was taking pictures of the sea lions on the rocks down below. Then all of a sudden I noticed in the foreground and in my viewfinder some movement! At first I thought it was a dog, but it turned out it was a coyote! It was only about 30 yards away from us on the edge of the cliff. However, it wasn't paying any attention to us visitors because there was another coyote down below that he was playing with. It was interesting watching them trying to chase after each other. You'll see in my photos, the one on top of the cliff was looking down on the one trying to climb back up to catch him! This was just another interesting story from our awesome week long trip! But I'll never forget what Robbie said when we both first saw the coyote. When I was zoomed in trying to take a picture of him, Robbie had his camera out too. Then the coyote turned while both of us looking through our camera, it looked like the coyote was coming toward us (you'll see I caught a picture of him looking toward us). Then I heard Robbie say, "Oh blessed Jesus!! He's coming at us. I'm heading back to the car!" Hands down funniest thing I heard the whole trip!
After taking pictures of the lighthouse, I ran into a problem I had feared the whole trip! However, thankfully this problem occurred on the last day of the trip! I had MAXED OUT ALL OF MY CAMERA'S MEMORY CARDS! At a total of 3,000+ images taken from our unbelievable Western Road Trip, I had finally taken all of the pictures I was able to take.
Now you may thinking, well your day/vacation was pretty much over right? Well keep in mind we visited the Painted Ladies, Golden Gate Bridge, and Point Bonita Lighthouse all in the morning! So we still had a whole afternoon and evening left in San Francisco before we boarded the plane! ;) But actually, I was kind of glad to be able to just enjoy the rest of San Francisco without a camera around my neck. And that was just what I did!
It was a great way to end my vacation to just enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells of the beautiful city. The rest of our time included walking around the Fisherman's Wharf, eating at one of the top restaurants rated on TripAdvisor with the #1 rated clam chowder in SF, and last but not least - riding on a cable car! I took many pictures and videos though on my iPhone of the city and the sea lions in the Fisherman's Wharf. But I'll leave you with this last photo...proof that I rode the cable car in San Francisco. We actually rode it at night on our way back to our car so we could drive to the airport. And for the record, I didn't sleep on the red eye...so I was flat out exhausted when I got home!
Thank you again for reading each of my posts from my Western Road Trip! I hope that you have enjoyed seeing the pictures and reading the stories. Feel free to contact me or ask me any questions if you'd like to know more about where we traveled. I'd be happy to give you suggestions on places to go!
