Fleet week

Fleet Week in San Francisco is the week the military has free displays down at the Marina AND puts on a free air show - the Blue Angels fly, among others. We just happened to be crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, about a 1/2 hour before the show was to start, so we found a parking spot and walked onto the Bridge to watch the show.









Since we were already on the Bridge, and it was such a gorgeous day, we walked a little after the show and got some close up photos of the structure...

Sunday drive down the coast

Like I mentioned in a previous post, we found a little town on the coast south of SF, Capitola, that we're fond of. In fact, Bob thinks he might like to move there - he's been seduced by the beach!









This Sunday afternoon, we decided to keep going past Capitola and ended up in Monterey/Pacific Grove, where we discovered a Monarch Preserve. Apparently the Monarch Butterflies migrate to this area around November, so we didn't see any, but we did find out where to look for them.

Nightime view of Union Square

We discovered something new and exciting... the Cheesecake Factory in San Francisco (there is only one in SF) is on the 8th floor of Macy's and has a huge outdoor patio overlooking Union Square. On a nice evening there's quite a view!

Hot autumn days

We had some really warm (90+), sunny days - warmer than it's been all summer, in fact - so Bob went out kayaking with our friend Adrienne. She loves to kayak, but it's been so chilly she hadn't gotten out much so we proposed a spontaneous outing one afternoon when it was in the mid-90's.

Beautiful day in the Park

I know you're probably thinking we spend a lot of time in Golden Gate Park, but the reality is there's just a ton to see, so we usually go somewhere new. This is the Rose Garden with some gorgeous roses!





And this is the view from the tower (which is free) at the de Young Museum - specifically a view of the living roof of the California Academy of Sciences.

The POD

Having witnessed how handy POD's are and discovered that they're significantly cheaper than storage units, we decided to go that route this time. It's pretty amazing how they can drop these things just about anywhere!



Quick plug for PODS: Instead of renting a Uhaul, loading and unloading it at a storage unit in a short window of time and then rushing to get the Uhaul back before closing time (we've done that a few times); we had a POD dropped off several days before we had to move, planned our packing strategically and - with A LOT of help from some very kind friends - the POD was completely packed in less than 3 hours!



And here's where it lives...

A little moving, a lot of time with friends

As it turns out, we've come to the end of our lease without having secured jobs, so we're once again packing up and going mobile.

We had a lot of help packing - Natalie catered lunch the first day...



And then Natalie, June and Kim packed up our entire kitchen and most of the living room in just a few hours!!

Since we had so much help with the packing, it took much less time than we'd anticipated and we had time to fit in some other fun things.

We took Kim up to the Marin Headlands to experience the fog rolling in...





Bob and Kim made a travel bag out of a coffee sack from Alvin's...



We took some friends from New Jersey on a tour of San Francisco including cable car rides,



Chinatown,



and dinner at the Spinnaker in Sausalito with an amazing sunset view!



Thanks everyone for all your help!!