For years the boys and I have talked about walking the Golden Gate Bridge. First we put it off because I was afraid of going by myself with our girls when they were younger and we always seemed to find something better to do with Ken on the weekends. Then last year I felt like we could handle it by ourselves but the weather wasn't very good. So I was determined that this was the year! I don't know why I was afraid because it probably would have been easier (meaning faster:-) when they were in a stroller.
The Golden Gate Bridge is 1.7 miles long. There is parking and restrooms on either end. There are restrooms on the bridge too but they were locked and only for construction workers.
Driving over the bridge. We started on the north side (which meant we had drive over it first) because there was supposed to be a visitor's area and restaurant on the south side. Except it was totally closed and under construction:-( It's okay though, it was a beautiful day and we had packed a picnic lunch anyways.
Before we left on our adventure!
San Francisco is behind the kiddos!
One of our many, many breaks. The thing that kills me is that I routinely go on 2 mile walks with the girls. But we were stopping every 100 feet or so to look at something or because they were hungry. In the photo above see Ginger munching on apples, we had probably only walked 5 minutes:-)
Almost to the first tower! It was such a beautiful day, not even really cold.
Alcatraz is behind them in this picture.
Rose decided she wanted to try and haul our gear. It lasted longer then I thought, but she stopped after a few minutes. It's nice to have Darin and Nathan to be our pack mules, they took turns holding the backpack.
We stopped and watched about 20 dolphins and sea lions feed. You probably can't see, but all of those black spots are dolphins and sea lions. It was really awesome in person! There were 3 different pods and of course the kids like naming the mommy, daddy, sister, and brothers out of each pod.
We also saw really huge jelly fish. They were about half the size of a dolphin and bright orange.
Almost to the 2nd tower.
Darin loved pointing out all of the boats and barges. Of course most of them were military ones:-)
We stopped for lunch on the south side. Like I said everything was closed for construction. We ate lunch at a table by some of the workers. They hung out with us, played little smiley/wavey games with the girls, and watched us for a bit. Which is kind of weird but considering how many people kept coming up to our family this trip (I'll explain in a different post) really not that weird. This time we even had a few ladies come up to us and start speaking Spanish.
While we ate lunch we played go fish. A pack of cards is seriously the best thing to pack on vacation!
Ginger loved eating her squeeze cheese and crackers. She is addicted to the stuff.
Heading back over the bridge!
Some guys from India were nice enough to take a picture of all of us.
One last view of San Francisco.
Up close of the tower.
As we got closer to the end the girls got crazy giddy. They would run up to the next support beam and hide. (Obviously, cause you can't see Ginger, right:-) Then they would jump out and scare us. Sneaky Girls!
Who-Hoo! My tough kids! We made it there and back and survived to tell the tale!
Nathan timed us with his stopwatch and it took us 1 hour and 15 minutes to crossover the first time. Which is way longer then I expected since we normally walk 2 miles in about 45-50 minutes at home. But we did stop to watch the dolphins for about 10 minutes.
But, on the way back I thought we were totally walking way faster and not stopping as much and it still took 1 hour and 14 minutes. I don't know how that happened.
Anyway, it was lots of fun and a totally unforgettable day!
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