Exploring The West: Day 17 and 18

Yesterday, we drove back into San Francisco to see the Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge once more, as well as, visit the famous Fisherman's Wharf Pier 39. We got stuck in a some major traffic near the toll. What should have taken us 40 min turned into closer to 2 hours. It was a foggy Sunday too. We spent about an hour at Pier 39 at the Fisherman's Wharf. During the Gold Rush Italian immigrant fisherman set up base here to catch crab. It has remained San Francisco's main area for it's fishing fleet. In 2010, the city decided to invest quite a bit a money to turn this area around and make it more of a tourist area. Now it's a very well-known tourist attraction in the western part of the US. It has lots of restaurants, shops, museums, aquariums, the famous sea lion colony on Pier 39 and so much more. We enjoyed the sea lions the best. We found out they took up residence here on Pier 39 right after the Earthquake in 1989. We also enjoyed watching the cable cars. See Alcatraz Island was also really neat. Tours were booked out, for quite some time, so we were not able to actually ferry over to view this area closer but would have like to have done this.

After leaving San Francisco, we headed for our "day at the beach" and some good seafood. We decided to stop at Half Moon Bay just a little south of San Francisco. It is a VERY BEAUTIFUL little coastal town. Our day at the beach didn't go quite as planned and we are actually here an extra night. The weather is very cold, foggy and rainy. The locals say the fog is typical the cold and rain is not. It's been in the 60's most of the time and continually damp. We did find the greatest little restaurant and had the best dinner. Our waitress, Jeannie, was awesome! However, about an hour after we left, John started feeling VERY BAD. He was sick all night long. We ended up taking him to the local hospital to be evaluated. It appears he has food poison from the oysters or clam chowder he ate that night. Even though we were planning to travel on to Los Angeles today and then on to San Diego, John's illness has grounded us for a little bit. However, out of all the places we have stayed, this is, BY FAR, the best place he could have gotten sick at. We are hoping by tomorrow he will be feeling better.

SAN FRANCISCO