San Francisco

How’s it going guys!

We are excited to kick off this writing post with a brand new destination to share with you guys…San Francisco! Although this wasn’t our first time visiting the city, it WAS the first time Scott and I got to visit it together 🙂 Both of us had been to SF before with our friends, but had never experienced it together and we must say we really did enjoy ourselves! Our plan for this road trip was to drive into the night until we reached SF for sunrise, and then enjoy a full day roaming around the city being the tourists that we love so much hehe. Then, the next day we planned to leave pretty early and drive 6 hours until we reached the Redwoods and explore the coastline for the next 3 days. Most of this trip took place in the Redwoods, but since we want to keep things organized by where we went, this writing post will be dedicated to our whole day in San Francisco 🙂 Stay tuned for part 2 of this road trip later next week. Now that we are all on the same page, let’s get into it!

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We planned to leave the night of Wednesday, April 18th, at around midnight, due to the fact that our destination was 6 hours away. Both of us were a little anxious to start our trip because of all the research we did on the Redwoods and how gorgeous it looked in pictures. We become very inspired with the idea of a new concept for this trip’s travel video and we became buzzing with ideas on what to shoot and how to make a full on narrative within the video. I found myself getting a little gitty with the idea of getting to spend a whole day in San Francisco because I had so much fun the last time I had been there. Our plan was to leave Scott’s house at midnight and drive all night until we reached the Golden Gate Bridge for sunrise, it was a mission to say the least. For the first few hours of the drive, I was driving and found it very hard after 2am to stay awake. My body was telling me to go to sleep so I was fighting off the tired eyes that kept creeping up on me, once I felt I was getting too tired, I had Scott take over and he drove for the remainder of the time. After getting a few hours of sleep, I woke up to the sound of Scott cursing to himself, it was 4:50am and we were in traffic! About an hour away from the Golden Gate Bridge we had entered the early bird traffic that looms in the outskirts of SF. It was Thursday morning and people we commuting to work already. One of the things we weren’t so prepared for, were all of the toll roads and special lanes you had to drive in, this was completely foreign to us, so unfortunately we had taken a wrong turn and accidentally got on the toll road (about a week later I got a notice in the mail with a fine I had to pay 🙁 ) Once we crossed over one of the many bridges, we finally got off at the exit for the Golden Gate Bridge lookout.

Driving up the hill, we were loving the views already. There weren’t a lot of cars parked at the first lookout, but we thought we would go up a little higher just to get a better view of the bridge. We parked at the second viewpoint and got out of the car where there was an area where you could walk down a dirt hill that overlooked the bridge and had a nice view of the sun coming up in the distance. It was a perfect spot to take some photos and videos. We had a really great time here watching the sunrise and got even more excited for what else we would be seeing later that day.

After we got enough video content and photos, we were curious of the view from a higher spot, so we drove up the road to the next lookout. We parked, stayed awhile and then settled on where we would go to get some coffee and after some searching on Yelp, Andytown Coffee Roasters was the winner! Now I’m not gonna lie, but I was really excited to try out some of the hidden gem coffee shops that are prevalent in SF and I made it one of my main goals during the trip to do just that! Making our way around the city was a challenge since we weren’t used to the freeways, toll roads, and just about EVERYTHING for that matter. We found ourselves a little nervous while driving, but our navigation did the job and we made it to Andytown safe and sound. We enjoyed a little “coffee break” sitting outside the shop and uploading some footage onto the computer, to me, it felt like we were really living the  “blogger” lifestyle for the first time LOL. The coffee that we ordered was a brown sugar latte and I’ve gotta say it was SO BOMB, Scott and I would agree it’s up there with the top 5 best coffees we have ever had 😉 After we took our little break, we decided to roam around the city making our way to our next destination, Dolores Park. We enjoyed the commute from one end of the city to the other, taking the busy city roads that were engulfed with people, town homes, and cute small businesses along the way. Once we arrived at Dolores Park, finding a parking spot was definitely a mission all on its own. We made our way to a neighborhood close to the park, crawling up a giant hill to find a parking spot that seemed to be waiting just for us. We found a long staircase that led us back down towards the park and as we walked towards the park, we couldn’t help but think how much we loved the city views and just the whole vibe San Francisco had. We found a nice spot to lay out in the grass and take in the atmosphere that Dolores Park has, so much history has been recorded at this iconic park, so getting to sit down and think about what it was like years ago, brought a grounding feeling of why San Fransisco is so special.

After relaxing in the park for awhile, we decided we would make a stop at a camera store so we could buy more film for my camera before getting some lunch down at Fisherman’s Wharf. We made a quick stop at Samy’s Camera in Mid City to pick up some fuji film (I had been wanting to get some fuji film for awhile now, so this was great getting to try it out finally, although we actually didn’t end up using this film for the Redwoods in the end.) After checking out the camera store, we were off to Fisherman’s Wharf to grab some lunch. Scott and I had both been to this part of the city in past trips to SF, so we knew what to expect once we got down there. We found a nearby parking structure and walked down to the pier to see where we wanted to eat. There are A LOT of options to choose from, so it was a hard decision but we ended up going to a sit down restaurant kinda at the end of the pier. We enjoyed our fish and chips and shrimp salad and thought of one more spot we could check out before heading to the motel to check in. Scott had an idea of a place up the street, where the cable cars ran to, to get a cool pic of the long roads and city in the background. We got back to the car and drove up the hills passing China town to make it to our destination, almost smack dab in the middle of SF. We parked at a meter really close to the intersection that Scott had found inspiration from online, so he could jump out and walk in the middle of the crosswalk to get the shot he wanted.

He did this a few times until he got what he was looking for, and as we were running back to the car which was 10 feet away, I noticed a patrol car getting ready to stop and give me a ticket because it had been 30 seconds since my meter expired. I raced to the driver side and jumped in, nearly bumping the patrol car in the process. I was NOT going to get a fine because of 30 seconds! Luckily, he went away and I didn’t get the ticket 😉 It was time to finally check into the motel and get a quick little nap in before our sunset session we had planned to take at Twin Peaks.

La Luna Inn was the motel we stayed at and it was super cute. We would totally recommend it if you want an affordable room WITH a bathroom (lots of cheap hotels have shared bathrooms in SF, so we were lucky to find one with a private bathroom that wasn’t super expensive.) Our room was great and it was perfect timing to take a nap before we had to leave and go catch a sunset. Scott ended up being on his computer the whole time while I took an hour and half nap 🙂 Waking back up was a struggle due to the long day we had already had, but we made it out of the room and back to the car to drive a solid 45 minutes to Twin Peaks. Twin Peaks is a popular photography spot because of it’s 360 degree views of the bay area and it seemed like the perfect spot for us to be during sunset. As you drive up to the top of the peak, you can see the lookout with lots of people admiring the view and taking selfies with the gorgeous backdrop of the city 😛 We parked the car and got to enjoy a breezy sunset overlooking the bay, it really was an awesome place to admire the city.

When it was time to head out to grab some dinner, we came to the great surprise that my car wouldn’t start. This was a big problem. Never ever had this happened to us before and we become very flustered trying to figure out why my car wouldn’t turn on. The notifications my car was telling us was that the key couldn’t be detected even though it was in the car with us, very strange..We ended up calling AAA and getting a car tech out to help us, which took about an hour of waiting so Scott took the liberty of getting a few night shots of the city while I waited nervously in the car. When the AAA guy arrived I was prepared for the worst, having to get a ride back to the motel and being stranded in SF with no car and thus ending or road trip, but thankfully the car tech figured out that my battery had just died! It was a great relief that nothing really bad had happened to my car and we were safe to continue on with our road trip to the Redwoods. Once we had the car started, we drove back to the motel and decided to just grab some pizza that we could walk to from our motel just because our dinner plans got ruined. We were thankful that our trip wasn’t ruined and we planned on getting to bed early so that we would have enough energy in the morning to drive the remaining 6 hours to Crescent City for the continuation of our trip. Our day in SF was exciting to say the least! We loved every minute of it and were eager to see what the Redwoods we be like..

That’s all we have for today’s blog post, check out next week’s blog post ending out this road trip to the Redwoods! Hope you’re having a good week and we look forward to sharing our Redwoods post with you soon!