Today we woke up at 5:00am after our coldest night yet. It’s so funny to us that the coldest nights we’ve spent have been at the beach. I can definitely say that this is the only time I remember wearing fleece all day in July at the beach.
It only takes about 45 mins to get into San Francisco, but we didn’t want to have to drive in Monday morning rush hour traffic, so we got up extra early. We drove across the Golden Gate bridge to get into the city and didn’t hit any traffic at all.
This is Alcatraz Island.
We met our captain and boarded the Kitty Kat, our boat and set off through the San Francisco Bay. We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge and past Alcatraz on our way out to sea. I had gotten seasick on my last excursion out to sea so I took two Dramamine to fight off the sickness. I made sure to stare at the horizon constantly. I never got sick, but I felt nauseous a lot of the time. We were in some pretty rough seas. It was very windy and the waves were pretty big. Frankly I’m surprised we went out, but maybe it’s like that all the time. Some of the passengers stayed in the cabin but they started getting sick one by one and puking over the side. The key is to stay outside, no matter how cold and how wet you get so you don’t get sick. We had to put on the yellow rain slickers that you always see on TV in order to stay relatively warm and dry. It was a pretty uncomfortable 5 hours to be honest. Kate did better than I did.
Here’s the bad part…we didn’t see any whales! They said that’s the first time they hadn’t seen a whale since November. I could have dealt with feeling bad if I had at least seen some whales. Their policy is that if you don’t see a whale, you get to go on another trip for free. That works pretty well for them since most people are tourists and can’t go two days in a row. We, however, are not your typical tourists and we told them Kate would be back tomorrow (Tuesday). I decided to sit the next trip out. All I could focus on for the whole trip was not getting sick. My eyes were tired from focusing on the horizon the while time. As much as I like being on a boat in the lake, it looks like I’m a landlubber when it comes to the ocean.
We got back into port and had some chowder and shrimp at one of the Pier 39 restaurants. I was 51% hungry and 49% nauseous, so the hungry won out, but it was a close race.
We decided to go check out a local beach called Stinson Beach and drive up the coast a bit to check out some tide pools that you are supposed to be able to see starfish and other cool stuff.
Kate had to drive because the Dramamine was making me so sleepy I couldn’t keep my eyes open. We got to Stinson Beach and got a quick dessert. It was a brownie with chocolate and vanilla ice-cream, whip cream, strawberries and bananas. It was very tasty and didn’t last long. We walked on the beach for a while until we decided it was too cold. We probably were still chilled a bit from the boat, but we both had fleece on and were still cold. There were people laying out like it was 90 degrees outside, and I can’t figure out how they weren’t cold.
We headed up the coast to the area where the tide pools are supposed to be, but the tide was up so we waited for while to see if it would go down. I fell asleep in the car while Kate read. The tide was coming in so we didn’t get to see anything. We headed back to camp and I went to sleep for a few hours to try to shake off the Dramamine. I will not be taking that again if I can help it. We had some sandwiches for supper then climbed into bed. It was the coldest night we’ve had yet and had to really bundle up. We were prepared from last year’s experience so we never got cold during the night.
We’re getting up early again tomorrow to take Kate back for more whale hunting, so keep your fingers crossed!
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