Cable Cars

Liz and Benito getting ready to ride a cable car

The boys with their "Aunt" Lizzy in downtown SF

Lunch and pigeon/seagull-chasing at Herman Plaza near the Ferry Building

I'm coming up on six years of living here in the San Francisco Bay area, and yet I'd never been on a cable car until Liz's visit a few weeks ago. It's one of those downtown tourist staples that I can now vouch for as being pretty dang fun. Eli got cozy with the people standing on the side where we were sitting, grabbing their hands, playing with the buttons on their jackets, and stealing their tickets. There's nothing like a toddler to defuse that awkward invasion of personal space you feel when you're less than a foot away from a total stranger on public transit... Those people should be glad they weren't with us on the ride back, however, when Eli decided it would be funny to start screaming at random. Scream at the top of his lungs and then laugh his head off as I attempt to give him a time-out inside a cable car, to be more exact. That kid = loco. Bennett LOVED it, of course: big hills, big buildings, big views, big noise (from that mammoth stick shift in the middle of the cable car), and big opportunity for choice people watching.

Gray Whale Cove

I'm not sure how she does it, but Liz has a knack for finding amazing beaches. Whenever she comes to town we head to the coast and either stumble upon or luckily discover these small and obscure yet absolutely beautiful spots. This one was so small we drove past it the first time and ended up in Half Moon Bay, but back up toward Pacifica we drove until Liz's Cherokee Indian instincts kicked in and landed us atop the hidden Gray Whale Cove Beach. You can barely see it from Highway 1 way above, but the hike down proved well worth it. Enclosed on both sides by cliffs, the beach is windless and pleasant, a very different experience from the blow-your-hair-to-bits beaches that surround it. This place lives up to its name in terms of whales, too: we saw several a half-mile or so off the beach.

Apparently we're not the only ones who've found and loved this beach, however. While there were some surfers on our side of the cove, the other end of the beach seemed to be more popular with the nude crowd. There were only a few people at first, but things picked up as the afternoon went on; unfortunately (or maybe fortunately at the time) they were far enough away that we couldn't get a good shot of them. We were hoping to give Stephen a funny photo surprise!