Oakland A's McAfee Coliseum (Stadium #28)

Final stop on our long weekend getaway to the Bay Area: Oakland. The more glamorous side of the Bay (ha ha) After we checked out of our hotel and did some last-minute shopping, we hopped back on BART for the last time and ventured over to Oakland, checked into our new hotel, and took a little nap before walking over to the Coliseum. Once we arrived, we met up with Josh (a friend from DC who was visiting his brother in CA and decided to come to the game with us), and proceeded to our seats (which were awesome - thanks craigslist). The game was enjoyable once Josh and I figured out that if we talked enough, we could drown out the annoying guy behind us who was complaining and using one profanity after another because right after we got there a foul ball was hit to him and he dropped it and another guy picked it up. Unfortunately for us, no other foul balls came our way the entire night. That was our one chance and we missed it! Anyway, the A's beat the Mariners and it was a good game. We had fun. Kelli had some nachos that she shared with us (they weren't all that great), and I actually didn't get any other food. I think I was all food-ed out by that point of the trip! There's not a whole lot of commentary about the Coliseum ... its a standard generic stadium that won't actually be in use for much longer. They're building a new one in Freemont that will open in 2011. Looks like I'll be taking another trip to the Bay Area in a few years ... hooray! This really was one of my most favorite vacations yet. It was the perfect combination of friends, fun, food, entertainment, physical activity, relaxation, and of course, it started and ended with baseball games! It just doesn't get much better than that in my book.

Muir Woods

Monday morning we took a little tour over to Muir Woods National Monument, the only Redwoods that are left in the Bay area. It was incredible! Our tour bus driver's name was Romeo, and he was really funny. Or at least he thought he was ha ha We had some time to ourselves at Muir Woods to explore ... and explore we did. The trees were really tall!And made us feel really small ...Of course we had to pretend to be tree huggers ... even though we couldn't quite wrap our arms around the giant trees!After we left Muir Woods, Romeo took us to an incredible view of the Ocean. "AWESOME" he kept saying over and over. It really was though. Simply beautiful.The pictures just don't do it justice, since it was a little foggy still. It was breathtaking though, trust me!Next stop ... Sausalito ... after winding down the terrible roads there. We all felt pretty sick when we finally stopped! Since we'd already been there on Saturday, we didn't mind that we only had about 45 minutes. We got sandwiches at a little deli there, and it was probably one of the best sandwiches I've had in my life. I'm definitely glad we were able to visit Muir Woods though - it came highly recommended, and I'll certainly pass along that recommendation!

Sunday Stuff in San Fran

On Sunday morning we took advantage of the hotel (the Marriott downtown near Union Square)and slept in, and then went downstairs to the restaurant and had the most delectable brunch ever. Seriously, it was divine!! Worth every penny that it cost us.

As I was getting ready that morning, I noticed that my hands were kind of hurting, and then I saw in the mirror why ... the tops of my hands were totally sunburned from our bike ride on Saturday! ha ha
We headed over to the San Francisco Singles Ward for church, where I happened to run into Christine's sister Steph. Steph and I seem to have a knack for running into each other in the MOST random places - like the produce department of Macey's grocery store in Provo, and Cafe Rio in Utah (ok not random for me to be there, but for her to be there the ONE day she was in town was random)! She didn't even know I was in town this weekend, and it wasn't even her ward. But, it was fun, as always to see her. Especially since I'd just responded to an email from Christine, who was vacationing in Ireland, a few hours earlier! Everyone was sooo nice to us at church. It was a good ward, and we had a ton of people come up and introduce themselves to us and wanted to know if we were new or what. The first guy that came up to us before church started said "hey I saw you three near Ghiradelli Square yesterday." Um, ok. Apparently it was after we'd returned our bikes and shoved our faces with ice cream that he saw us walking by the trolley cars. Crazy!

Anyway, he was super nice, and actually ended up giving us a personal tour of San Francisco after church. He drove us through Golden Gate Park and over in a few other neighborhoods that we wouldn't have otherwise gone to. But, our favorite part of the tour was what we'd asked him about initially ... across the street from Alamo Square is what is called the "7 Sisters" or "Painted Ladies" or "Postcard Row" ... better known to me as the Full House Townhouses!! My favorite show growing up - so yeah, this was pretty much a must-see for me!
Sunday evening we explored around our hotel and walked through a park nearby. We hopped on the train and did the touristy thing again ...Then we headed back over to Fisherman's Wharf for our mandatory trip to In-N-Out Burger for dinner, followed by dessert (again) at Ghiradelli Square. This time, no melted ice cream for us! We decided to take the trolley car back to our hotel, in our continued effort to utilize every mode of public transportation while in San Francisco! Amazingly enough, when we got back that night, we were still exhausted- thank goodness for a nice hotel to crash at before our last day of vacation! :)

San Francisco by Bike

On Saturday, we rented bikes at "Blazing Saddles"- probably the best decision we made the entire trip. It was soooo much fun! Definitely something I want to do on vacations in the future - it was such a fun way to see the sites and get a different viewpoint of everything. We started out in Fisherman's Wharf and biked over almost to the Golden Gate Bridge. Of course we had to stop and take pictures.From there, we climbed a steep hill and then proceeded across the bridge.

What an awesome exhilirating experience! It was pretty windy, but it was incredible. We stopped about halfway across because the view was awesome (and windy, obviously)...

Once across, we headed into Sausalito, where we locked our bikes and walked around the cute little Mediterranean town just on the other side of the Bay. We saw the cute little (expensive touristy) shops, and then settled in this little cafe right on the water for lunch. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and we were loving every minute of it!

We'd initially planned on only biking to Sausalito and then taking the ferry back, but once we were there, we decided to continue on to Tiberon. The whole ride was about 16 miles, and we wanted to do it. So we did. There were definitely some hills on the ride, but it was so beautiful and again, a perfect day. The views of the City from the other side of the bridge were spectacular, and it was one of the highlights of the trip! Once we made it to Tiberon (at the end of the bike path) ...we rode around for a little while and saw a few more views of the City ...

and waited for the ferry to go back to Pier 41. Thank goodness for the self-timer on my camera!There were about 300 bikes on the bottom of the ferry - we were certainly not the only ones biking that day!

After the ferry arrived at Pier 41, we hopped back on our bikes to ride them back to Fisherman's Wharf - and soon realized where the name "Blazing Saddles" came from! ha ha We returned our bikes, and walked straight up to Ghiradelli Square - of course after that long bike ride we needed to gorge ourselves with ice cream right?! Unfortunately, the ice cream was mostly melted by the time we got it, but what we did eat sure did taste good!

We relaxed at the hotel that night, after taking a cab to the Mission area of San Fran to pick up a pizza from Little Star, which had been highly recommended. The hot tub and hotel beds never felt better than that night! What an awesome day though - definitely one of my favorite memories of San Francisco, even though most of it wasn't actually in the City :)

4th of July in San Fran

After the game, we walked all the way down the Embarcadero into the touristy part of San Francisco. First stop: Pier 39. Walking around apparently made us hungry, and we saw a little crepe shop that look fantastic (maybe because the line was clear out the door and they were slatering nutella onto the crepes in the window) - so we joined the crowd and proceeded to have one of the best crepes I've had in my life. Unfortunately for us, there was no place to sit (at a table), so we sat ourselves right down on the back side of the information booth, right in the middle of Pier 39. That crepe shop should have paid us for their advertising, because I can't even tell you how many people wanted to eat those crepes they saw us devouring!

After we left there, we continued on to Fisherman's Wharf (for one of the many times we would go there during the weekend).

There were so many people everywhere, since it was the 4th of July, but nothing like how crowded it is on the National Mall in DC! We took our sweet time walking down to where we were going to see the fireworks, and then staked out a spot facing the water ...Which just so happened to also be just in front of Ghiradelli Square.It was pretty chilly that night, but we survived. Definitely not nearly the same feeling as sitting in the sweltering heat and humidity of DC fireworks! Unfortunately, the fog was so dense that we couldn't even see the Golden Gate Bridge at ALL that night. We were a little disappointed that we wouldn't be able to see the fireworks next to the bridge, but it ended up turning out to be really cool to see the fireworks in the fog. First you heard them, and then you saw the clouds changing colors and the faint shadow of the fireworks ...And here is the Photoshop edited version of that same picture ... It was funny that we actually wanted them to do more fireworks that were low to the ground so we could see them! After a few minutes, our disappointment turned to delight as we enjoyed a fireworks display unlike any other we'd ever seen in our lives. They were shooting the fireworks off at the pier directly in front of us, so we had a great view of everything. The exact same show was going on at Pier 39 (same fireworks and everything - simultaneously), but we couldn't see them as well. I can only imagine how it must look on a clear night. This was definitely a 4th of July to remember!

San Francisco Giants AT&T Park (Stadium #27)

San Francisco: the California Treat. It most certainly was this time! Way back when I looked at the baseball schedules in February, I decided that I wanted to spend the 4th of July in San Fran this year to knock off two more baseball stadiums: AT&T Park in San Francisco and The McAfee Coliseum in Oakland. I don't think I could have picked a better weekend! Sharyn and I flew out Friday morning and met Kelli in Oakland. Our trip got started off on the wrong foot when our flight was 2 hours delayed leaving DC, but after that, everything was perfect.

Because of the flight delay, we took BART to our hotel and checked in and headed straight to the Giants game at AT&T Park. I got really excited when I saw this in front of us ...Absolutely beautiful!! I could hardly wait to get inside and see the rest of it.It was a gorgeous day, the Giants were playing the Dodgers in front of a sold-out crowd, and we had awesome seats to enjoy the game and the view from. I must say, the garlic fries were better than they were at Safeco (sorry Karrie and Robin!) ... the game was very exciting (Giants ended up winning 10-7) and we thoroughly enjoyed taking it all in. After the game, I made everyone walk around the stadium with me so we could get a closer look at the whole thing. I'm sure they loved that (ha ha)...We couldn't walk up to the giant baseball glove, unfortunately, since they closed it down after the game ended. Oh well - I've gotta save something for the next time I'm at a game there, right?!?I loved the view from the stadium (except for the fact that you couldn't see the Bridge). There were boats out in the Bay, people walking up and down the sidewalks outside the stadium, and of course, the wind blowing everything a million directions. The verdict: Well done San Francisco! AT&T Park definitely ranks among the best ballparks in my book.

Ward Trip To Kirtland

My ward went to Kirtland, OH last weekend. I have to admit, the thought of sitting on a bus for 15 hours over the course of 2 days didn't sound all that appealing to me. But, I'm so glad I went. We had a lot of fun (and a lot of funny stories that aren't appropriate to share on the internet) and saw and experienced some amazing things.

We left early on Friday morning, and drove about 7 hours (including breaks) to Kirtland. Luckily for us, the bus was fully equipped with nice televisions, so we were able to watch movies like "The Sandlot" the whole time. Can't complain too much about that!

Our first stop was the John Johnson farm ... we split into groups and toured the home there. This is in the "translation room" where Joseph Smith finished translating the Bible, and received the revelation in the 76th Section of the Doctrine & Covenants (among others):Here's my roommate Lisa and I standing on the porch where Joseph Smith preached:We had a BBQ with the single's ward there on Friday night, and then a bunch of us walked across the street from our hotel to the bowling alley for a little cosmic bowling.

Saturday EARLY we got up and went to the Kirtland temple ... The Community of Christ owns the temple now, and they let LDS groups rent it out for church, which is exactly what we did - for a nice Sacrament Meeting (testimony meeting), followed by a tour.We spent some time on the temple grounds, walking around, etc., Then we headed over to the Church-restored downtown Historic Kirtland (just a couple blocks down the road). We toured the buildings there with the LDS missionaries, and had a great time. From there, we went to the Isaac Morley farm for one last tour, lunch, and the last bit of socializing with "the other bus" before we headed back to Virginia. We crammed a lot into those few hours in Kirtland! Its out of character for me, but I didn't really take a lot of pictures on this trip. That doesn't mean it wasn't an awesome experience though. For those of you who haven't ever been, GO to Kirtland! It is an incredible place where so much of Church history happened, and there is no denying the spirit that is still there. What a great way to spend a weekend.

The Hair Cut

Ok, all those of you that have asked - here is a picture of my latest hair cut. [I decided I should probably post a real picture of it before I post my Kirtland pictures, since those were all taken after the half-hearted effort of getting ready that comes when you wake up at 6am on a Saturday morning sharing a hotel room with 3 other girls...]

Anyway, thanks to Jen, here's my new 'do ...