Hitched and Rolling

Waking up in Sonoma was cool. I have never been to “wine country” before and as we came down off the mountain it was very foggy, but we could see the vineyards that we had unknowingly driven past the night before.

After Bre tided up the van and Duke and I had our regularly scheduled programming of morning fetch: fog edition, we got back into the van and I typed “breakfast burrito Sonoma reddit” into google. Reddit did not lead us astray, and we found ourselves at a wonderful breakfast burrito food truck.

Bre was not very happy with me, and this morning was probably a low point on the trip emotionally. She said that my working and our fast pace was making her feel alone, and that we weren’t getting to see anything because we were moving too quickly and trying to see everything. A point well taken. Since then I have tried to separate work into discrete time periods, and we are thinking about cutting some things from the itinerary so that we can spend more time enjoying the places that we visit.

We were only about an hour and a half from our destination, San Francisco, so today was not expected to be a big driving day. And it wasn’t. We found ourselves in Marin around noon and stopped at Target for some dog food before heading over to Rodeo beach to admire the surf. We got to play fetch on the beach with Duke and then cruised Sausalito very briefly before heading over the Golden Gate Bridge into the city.

Because I spent a year in San Francisco after college, I had some favorite haunts that I wanted to check out, so we were able to arrange a dog sitter, Kathy, who was a friend of a friend, and also booked a hotel room in town for the night.

Having dropped off Dukem and the van at Kathy’s place in Daly City, Bre and I ubered into the city and checked into our hotel. It was nice to be out of the van for a while, and we showered and put on clean cloths for our night out on the town.

Every time I return to San Francisco I am reminded at just how hilly it really is. We had a drink at our hotel before heading out to a restaurant, and the view from hotel’s bar was great. 

We decided to take a self driving car to the restaurant. Yes, you read that correctly. In San Francisco they have a service called Waymo which is basically uber except there is no person driving the car. It was a thrilling and strange experience to watch the blinkers magically turn on and off as the wheel spun around on its own and the car navigated to our destination.

Bre and I had a great dinner down town before heading over to one of my favorite bars- the black horse. This is said to be the smallest bar west of the Mississippi. It has about 8 bar stools and whether you like it or not you mostly hang out with whoever else is there, because the small quarters force interaction. We met some really fun people and had a wonderful evening. The beer options are few, and your selection is drawn from a bathtub full of ice and bottles behind the bar. Bre loved the bar which didn’t surprise me. A wonderful night in a beautiful beautiful city.