San Francisco - It's Nothing Like "Full House."

Waves of exhaustion pour over a family of four as they fight the urge for extra sleep and start their morning routines. It was a foggy day outside the Monarch hotel and a Vietnamese man in a trench coat sold them a parking spot for 20 dollars the day before. Who was this man? What was his motive, will they ever see their car again? 1920's horror film you say? Nope, just day nine on the Tate Family Adventure.

We were up and about by 8AM pacific time and off to explore San Francisco and see what we could see. After walking a number of blocks down from our hotel through downtown, we saw Union Square and passed the famous San Francisco cable cars riding up the hill-filled streets. We caught a street car around the edge of the coast and toward Pier 33 where we were scheduled to depart for a tour of Alcatraz island and spend the early afternoon. Alcatraz happened to be my first attraction/landmark of all the different sights that we've described to you in the previous blog entries, so as you can imagine, I was pretty stoked to finally take the Tate family there. San Francisco was sunny and the temperature was in the 70s-80s but with the wind blowing so much, it must have only been 60 degrees out. Pretty cool and damp, but I guess that's how prisoners must have felt on "the rock."

Once we got on Alcatraz island, we saw an introductory video and then went on an hour long audio tour of the entire jail facility. This went through the entire history of the island, from when it was a military fort during the 1800's to when it became the famous maximum security prison of the early 1900's to its rise in fame as movies and films sensationalized it over time too. Some of America's notorious criminals and gangsters were housed on the rock, from Al Capone, to Machine Gun Kelly, to Robert Stroud (aka the "birdman") and many others. Additionally, the tour took you through the play-by-play of some of the famous escape attempts that took place on Alcatraz. Over the years that the prison was in full use, there were 14 total escape attempts that occurred and to this day there were only four prisoners that have not been officially accounted for, either were not found in the icy cold waters of the San Francisco Bay, or were not recaptured after their escape attempts. All of this was simply fascinating, so I won't bore you with anymore history, but I know that I'll continue to read about some of the inmates stories, as they are remarkable and intriguing too.

After we escaped from the rock around 2pm, we headed down to the famous Pier 39 where San Francisco prides itself in having a wonderful dock-filled area of shops, restaurants, street performers, and of course - us tourists. Our family settled on an awesome restaurant chain known as the "Bubba Gump Shrimp Company." Yes, it's the same "Bubba Gump" from the classic movie "Forrest Gump" and I've surprisingly never eaten at one of the restaurants, although I've always heard great reviews. Needless to say, our family split a shrimp platter and enjoyed our 2-hour break thoroughly. It was nice to get some good quality meals over the past few days as opposed to the grab-and-go routine of our earlier trip. We ended our afternoon on Dad's 44-block hike of San Francisco - count 'em, 44-blocks all mostly uphill to see the city and head back toward our hotel. We worked off the grub that we ate earlier, saw San Fran's famous "Lombard street" which zig-zags and curves in an S-formation all the way down a hillside city block and apparently is the crookedest street in the world. Although the hike was long and tiring, it was a great way to see the city and put a bit of a capstone on our experience there overall.

Once we were back to our rent-a-car, we hit the road and left San Francisco, crossed the bay bridge (which was the one that is 2 levels and collapsed partially in the 1980's earthquake) and headed toward Yosemite where we had booked a hotel for the evening. On the way, however, Kelsey arranged for a stop in Modesto, California to visit a close family friend of ours - Mr. Dias. Now, Mr. Dias and his family used to live in Virginia on the other side of the county a few years ago and came from California when Mr. Dias got a job at our local high school as the Drama teacher. Since my sister and I were both involved with theater, we actually both were taught by Mr. Dias and performed in the musicals and one act shows he directed too. This allowed us to really get to know Mr. Dias and in turn we met his family - Mrs. Dias (Kathy) as well as Caleb and Annalee, his two children. However, the Dias family moved away from VA and back to California the year before Kelsey graduated, and conveniently enough they lived right on the way to Yosemite, so we made a pit stop and had a wonderful meal with the entire Dias family and got to catch up for most of the evening. It was a delightful treat to see familiar faces and spend some downtime with a home-cooked meal (A+ Mr. Dias - he's quite the chef) especially because we've been on the go so much that we haven't really had time to relax.

So anyways, our ninth day of the Tate Family Adventure was crammed with more travel, great eats, and even some familiar faces too. We hope that pace continues and that we don't lose too much steam along the way ourselves. Our plan for tomorrow is tour Yosemite National Park and get our fill once again of landscapes and scenery before leaving California and heading to America's Northwest as we will soon tour Oregon and Washington. Until next time - Ciao!

~Josh