Driving to California

On our way to my nephew Taylor's wedding in Monterey, California, we stopped in San Francisco and saw a few sites. We first went to Coit Tower, which was a station used to signal when ships came into the Bay.

You can see a lot of sites from up on the hill, like Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Lombard street, which is home to the most crooked road in the world, or so they say.

We decided to make our way over and drive down. Above is what it looks like from far away, and here is how it looks as you are driving down:

I think the fear is appropriately captured on Beth's face of how terrifying the experience of going down a super twisty road can be, but I may end up replacing this with the short video of the drive down instead when we get back home.

After San Francisco, we drove down to Santa Cruz, which is home to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. We wanted to ride the famous merry-go-round which is not only old and was featured in the movie "Lost Boys", but has one of the only remaining brass ring dispensers.

You have to sit on the outside of the ride and reach out to grab a ring and then are supposed to immediately throw it into a giant clown face target. If you get the ring inside the clown mouth, there is a light that flashes and you supposedly receive a happy feeling. We did not experience this joy, so we took some of the rings as mementos. They make tens of thousands per year and expect people to take them, so no, we did not steal them.