How do YOU Francisco? (A Quiz)

After the Redwoods, we went straight to San Francisco. We drove across the famous Golden Gate Bridge at about 10:30pm, and found our bed about 20 minutes after that. (Stephen has a San Franciscan friend who graciously let us stay at his home while he and his family were gone on their own vacation!)

The next day, we explored the  city - or should I say, we explored ourselves. I learned a lot about myself in San Francisco, and a lot about Stephen. New places have a way of doing that to you.

So I came up with this quiz, to tell you about our day in San Fran. The question is, are you a Heather, or a Stephen, or a city-dweller?

1. Good mooooorning! Do you prefer to:
a. Go out and find somewhere to eat.
b. Make pancakes and then go out exploring.
c. Starve.

A is Stephen.
B is me, except I didn't have time to make anything.
C is San Franciscans. I'm pretty sure they just starve, because I saw how big their kitchens are, and I saw how expensive the restaurants are, and I saw how long it can take to get one mile in downtown San Fran at any time of the day, and it just seems like eating cannot be a priority to these people.

2. You're looking around for a place to eat breakfast. Driving in San Francisco is:
a. Downright terrifying, so you'll let someone else do it.
b. Alright. I can handle the driving - parking is what really sucks about this city.
c. Kinda fun! So many opportunities to honk....but it's also kinda stupid. So I ride my bike.

A is me. I did finally drive, at the end of the day, but mostly I was more than happy to let Stephen chauffeur me around.
B is Stephen. He did get slightly anxious about all the one-way streets and the traffic, but the parking situation truly would have had him in tears if he wasn't so masculine.
C is the San Franciscans again. I am baffled by this, but no one seemed bothered by the overload of cars. It was like watching a cooking demonstration, and the chef pours the brownie batter into a 2"x3" Pyrex pan, and it's clearly not gonna fit, but he's going for it anyway, and no one in the audience goes, "Hey Curtis do you need a bigger pan?" And then it's spilling all over the counter and still nobody thinks to say "Hmm maybe that's too small of a pan." And that metaphor was really just a long, abstract way of saying there are too many dang cars in this city, it is not big enough for all those people, but no one seemed to notice except me.

3. You find a place to eat breakfast! After driving around for another 45 minutes looking for a place to park, you find a different place to eat breakfast. One you can walk to from your parking space. You order:

a. Potatoes, eggs, ham, and pancakes. You eat about 1/4 of one of the pancakes and leave everything else on your plate.
b.  A breakfast banana split. (Basically a banana sliced in half and topped with Greek yogurt and homemade granola full of unidentifiable seeds and other organic things, and strawberries and blueberries, all served in a beautiful glass dish.)
c. A breakfast burrito. Which you inhale in about 5 minutes.

A is the San Franciscans. I KNOW! In this place where all the napkin holders have signs saying "Please only take what you really need," Stephen and I were shocked at the wastefulness! Not to mention, we were starving at this point and had to really hold ourselves back from eating that person's leftovers, because pretty sure they were on a date and pretty sure they didn't even touch it, so pretty sure we could have eaten it without getting the plague, but whate'er.
B is me. Did I trick you?! Did you think Iiiiii was the San Franciscan? Well thaynks. (It was actually quite delicious.)
C is Stephen. And his burrito was also delicious.

4. Breakfast is over, and your plans for the day include taking a picture in front of the Painted Ladies (Victorian townhomes from Full House). Do you:

a. Drive by them because, boring.
b. Park illegally and run your butt up the hill to take a picture, only to get embarrassed of looking so touristy and refuse to get in the picture and hand your camera to someone else.
c. Pose for a picture, then run back down the hill in an absolute PANIC when you see a policeman drive by, clearly on his way to ticket your car.

A was the San Franciscans. They don't curr.
B was Stephen. Normally he's really good about taking pictures with me, but he wasn't havin it in San Fran. I think it was a mixture of embarrassment, concern that someone was going to steal our camera if we asked them to take a picture, and anxiety about being in the city at all.
C was me. And no the po did not ticket us, whew!

5. You're done with one tourist attraction! Next, you:

a. Go back to the hotel / place you're staying at. This is way too stressful. It's not even fun. I actually hate it here.
b. Go back to the hotel / place you're staying at. I'm getting eaten alive in this city. I almost got run over by a car. (That might have happened like 3 times actually.) I just need to plan out my day a little better....
c. Go to another attraction because I run this city.

A is Stephen. B is me. I don't love cities, but I do kinda like them. Stephen, however, borderline-hates them. So after breakfast, one attraction, and 3 hours, we were both ready for a nap.
C is, I'm guessing, the local SFans. They all seemed so confident....one day I'll be like them.

6. You're in Ghirardelli Square, looking out at the water

a. gobbling a Ghirardelli's sundae and trying to figure out the least incompetent passerby who can take a picture with the water in the background
b. on a date with a handsome man, and you're both delicately picking at your own Ghirardelli's sundaes, not wanting to scare off the other one by scarfing down ice cream with your normal abandon
c. so you walk through the middle of a circle of benches filled with couples, and rip out your biggest possible fart. Then keep walking, unabashed, leaving all the lovebirds on benches to look around and giggle and question whether they actually just heard what they think they did.

Let's hope I never get pregnant too far away from a Ghirardelli's, because pretty sure I'm going to crave these.

A is actually both Stephen and I. Maybe we are past the honeymoon phase, but we might have spoon-fought over the last bits of fudge. It's fine.
B is the well-dressed gay San Franciscans we observed having the same(ish) date as us, just on a different bench. Oh, and there was no spoon-fighting. They were a lot daintier than us.
C is another San Franciscan. A lady. (Though not a very ladylike lady....) who really did exactly that.

7. In Fisherman's Wharf, the best place to go is:

a. a fancy exPENSive store, with statues of horses and dragons and naked people, and $2,000 urns, and sundry other expensive decorations that would look expensive anywhere you choose to drop them in your front yard, next to your 10-foot Bellagio-esque fountains, obvi.
b. Boudin's Bakery, where they make clam chowder and sourdough bread bowls - or rather, the stand right next to Boudin's Bakery, where they sell the exact same sourdough bread bowls and clam chowder, for the exact same price, but just without the indoor seating and the line.
c. anywhere else, because Fisherman's Wharf is a tourist trap.

A is me. I don't want to say that I enjoy window-shopping and looking at all the things I can't have, but I do enjoy window-shopping when it's things that I don't want and they are obscenely priced. It's just kind of fun.
B was Stephen. This day was largely (90%?) about the food for him. And I don't like clam chowder.
I'm assuming C is how the locals feel, but who really knows. I couldn't always tell the San Franciscans apart from the tourists.....although I'm sure people knew which category we fell into!

8. It's rush hour once again. This time: the night kind. You:

a. Joyously run people off the road with your ginormous-butt semi.
b. Get in the car, in the passenger side. Coax your co-pilot into the driver's side. Talk them through the process of squiggling out of the tight spot you have found yourselves in, thanks to some very selfish parkers who didn't feel like leaving a mile in front of and behind you on the curb. End up moving to the driver's seat again, because your person couldn't handle the stress of it. Flawlessly squiggle out of the claustrophobic space and onto the normal road, where it's not quiiiite as claustrophobic.
c. Get in on the driver's side. QUICKLY realize that this is not the place for you. You don't belong in this world of shiny new bumpers and parallel parking and 31% grade hills. You don't belong!! Panic. Press on the brake with all your might. Put the car in reverse and press a little harder on the brake. Express alarm when it starts making a terrible sound. Crawl shamefully into the passenger side, then back into the driver's seat once the car is safely away from the curb.

A is the San Franciscans. There are some rude semi-truck drivers there....or at least one.
B was Stephen. He really believed in me for about 2 minutes, I think.
C was me. I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but kind of indignant that anyone is expected to live and drive like that.



I did like San Francisco.....I just wish that we had had more time there. Someday I'll convince Stephen to go back with me ;) And we'll take the trolley so we don't have to worry about parking or driving, and that will make everything so much better.

S'more Adventures

There is nothing quite like YouTube to get you psyched for your upcoming vacation....especially if that vacation is to Yellowstone, and especially if you are on YouTube because your husband can't stop googling "bear attacks in Yellowstone" and "bear charges" and "bear vs. car" and other things like that. Oh yes, that is the easiest way to get a girl excited for a road trip.

We decided on Sunday to go to Yellowstone, perused YouTube on Monday, searched Amazon for bear spray on Tuesday, and finally retreated back to Pinterest on Wednesday for some friendly campfire meals on blogs that made no mention of bears, thank goodness. On Thursday, we started off on our journey, stopping for the night in Idaho, and on Friday, we made it to our destination. 

Bear Country. 

Yellowstone National Park. 

Wyoming / Montana / Idaho / what the heck state is this anyway.

The Final Frontier. 

Whatever you want to call it, we were there, and we spent the weekend getting blown away by the beauty of it all.  

So while I didn't really love what Stephen had to say at the beginning of our adventure ("Babe come watch this. It's a guy getting attacked by a grizzly bear"), I did love the things he said during it. So much so that I decided to make him the narrator of this blog with a little edition of 

Sh*z My Husband Says - Yellowstone Edition

Him: And then it was awkward, because the ranger smacked me....

Me: Wait, what??

Him: Yeah. He said there was a bug on my neck, but it was still weird. 

Our first order of business was getting into the park and setting up our tent. Did you know that Yellowstone is huge? Because I did not. I thought it was like one, maybe two campsites, and then a nice big meadow, a few streams, and a biggish forest. Turns out it is 3,468 square miles. Which means we drove for nearly an hour once we got in before finding a place to camp.

"Just step in the bison poop! Please, just one time!!"

The first wildlife we saw were bison! I'm pretty sure that's the first animal that everyone sees when they first enter the park. There are 2,300 - 5,000 bison who live there, but it's still cool to see them! (At least the first like 9 times.)

At some point that day, we also saw a bunch of deer.

For some reason, it's a lot cooler to see deer in Yellowstone than anywhere else. 

The first cool nature thing we saw was a waterfall!

And this sign, which made it super-reassuring when Stephen climbed over the guardrail and marched past the sign.

We started out on the west side of the park, which is more geyser-y and less animal-y. 

Some of the geysers are really pretty!

Some are less pretty, but still cool to look at, as long as you don't breathe through your nose.

The geysers have names, but some people doesn't exactly agree with the names they've been given. And when I say "some people," what I mean is "Stephen."

"Inverted boobs."

"Poop Streak. For sure, that's this one's name."

"Okay, Butt Print. I mean, look at it!" 

Geysers get old after a while, so our next activity for the day was exploring a river! I'm not sure we were actually allowed down to it, since there was no trail, but I'm glad we went. It was stunning and a nice way to cool off! We just changed into our swimsuits down at the river's edge and then played around, trying to wade all the way across, etc.

The "etc" I was talking about....

We headed "home" and made dinner - teriyaki chicken, watermelon, and s'mores - and then we set off on a hike. 

Have you ever tried making a s'more with a Hershey's Cookies 'n' Cream bar? Sooo good!

Stephen noticed a little baby geyser at the foot of the mountain the hike was on, and I guess curiosity overtook him.

"It's not even that hot! I mean yeah, it's boiling, and if I put my hand in there for a few seconds it would probably burn it, but it's really not that bad."

For the record, I don't mind hiking. I would even say that I enjoy it. It's just a little harder to enjoy when these quotes happen:

"Oh yeah, this is totally grizzly bear territory."

"Isn't this when bears come out? Dusk and dawn. We're bound to see at least one."

"If we get attacked by a bear, and I do have to fight it, I want you to run back to the car."

And when this sign is posted at the trail head, and you're already breaking 3 of those rules, it's just a little bit unnerving.

So then poor Stephen had to endure the whole hike with a steady stream of "Stephen I think I just saw a bear." "Hold my hand!" "What's that!?!" "Talk louder! We have to make noise!" Which I hope taught him that all his jokes about bears were not as funny as he had thought.

Thankfully, we didn't see any bears. Just postcard-status views like this one.

And this one, when we got to the top. #worthit

After breaking rule #5 the entire way down the mountain, and scrambling back into our car where I actually felt safe, we ditched Yellowstone to spend our 4th of July night in civilization. 

There was a free concert, very fourth-y.

Homemade ice cream, super-American.

And of course, fireworks! 

I could barely keep my eyes open on the drive back to our campsite. Good thing Stephen drove :) And good thing I was able to sleep a little bit in the car, because that's basically all the sleep I got that night. (And I'm not even being inappropriate right now.)

"Alright, pick a blanket, cuz we're only bringing one." - These are the famous last words that landed us on a campout in 30* weather with one sleeping bag and one blanket. Don't get me wrong, I love cuddling! But when you wake up every 20 minutes because the other person is rolling over and that means you have to roll over, too, and there's an elbow in your face, and you're freezing, but the blanket is only barely big enough for the two of you....that doesn't count as cuddling anymore. 

Our cute little tent! Where we almost froze to death....

"Alright, looks like we're the best campers here! No offense but I tend to judge people who bring their entire lives camping."

"Do you hear that? Those are wolves." And that was not even Stephen just trying to scare me. 

Saturday morning, jumped out of bed, and put on my best suit found this in my hairs.

"Babe, you never look rough. Just hot." <--he's a keeper!

We had bacon and scrambled eggs for breakfast. It's cool how wonderful you can feel when your morning starts out with a hunky wild man cooking your breakfast over a fire....even if that fire did take an hour to start, seeing as how it rained the night before and all the wood was wet and we had no lighter fluid.

"Honestly, the only thing worse than this would be trying to start a fire in a snowstorm."

Scrambled egg burritos, yum!

When we did manage to eat breakfast (which actually turned out quite delicious), we were off on more adventures!

We met a bear (a very patriotic one).

Frolicked through a beautiful meadow with a creek and tons of bison 

"That's my mountain woman!" - when I jumped over, like, the tiniest little stream of water

"Bison just look like old men with huge faces. And fur, and stuff."

Got in a bit of a traffic jam

Went on a hike on Mt. Washburn - I highly recommend this hike! There was still snow on some parts where it's shady, but it didn't feel cold. It was perfect weather, and we saw more wildlife on this hike than anywhere else.

There was still snow on some parts where it's shady, but it didn't feel cold. It was perfect weather, and we saw more wildlife on this hike than anywhere else.

"This is actually the 4th highest mountain in the world." "Is it really??" [As I'm feeling very proud of myself] "No, I made that up. It's not at all."

Saw some pikas! 

Also, a whole family of mountain goats. They were so freaking cute!

"Look at this rock! It's just asking to be climbed!......Okay fine, I will." [He grabs hold of a rock jutting out above his head. It promptly falls out on the trail.] "Uh....never mind."

"I don't think we're in America right now. I feel like we're in Switzerland or something."

"Look at this guy, he's just chillin in the middle of the town!"

Saturday was also the day we saw all the bears we saw on our trip! They were all black bears, and we saw them exactly how I like: with them far away and us in a huge crowd of people. We saw a cub by itself, hanging out by a tree, two cubs with their mom, playing in a field by some trees, and another one by itself down by a river.

You can't even hardly see them in this picture...but it's the brown splotch kind of by the dead tree and the little creek. 

"Don't black bears just seem so cute? I kind of want one now. We could feed it huckleberries....it would be so fun!"

Besides the wildlife, the people at Yellowstone are funny to watch. Stephen categorized them as such:

"There'll always be a few people like us, couples who can do the hikes and stuff, but mostly it's either your typical American RV family - overweight people with huge obnoxious cameras, or Asians on tour busses in heels and sundresses."

"This guy brought a whole telescope for his camera! Do you see that, it's like, longer than his arm!"

"I don't know how people explore like this, going this slow. You know there's just one guy at the front of this line going 25 mph and they're holding everyone else up. What, do they go around the whole park like that? It would take a month!"

"These people from Nevada are just freaked out right now. You know they've never seen this much green in one place."

"We are camping next to straight-up hillbillies." (because they had some weird RV shaped like a tent, and they were popping open beer cans all night, and listening to the most hillbilly music I have ever heard....so he had a point)

Dinner on Saturday was baked potatoes, pork & beans, and corn on the cob. At least that's what it was supposed to be....but we forgot salt and pepper, and the pork & beans tasted like the can, and it just wasn't as spectacular as I had envisioned.

"Can you please just go ask those people if we can borrow some salt? They've got an RV. You know they have salt."

LOVE this man of mine and how he goes along with the embarrassing pictures I think up for us to take!

Saturday's dessert was peach cobbler. I thought it was good, and Stephen thought it was the best thing he had ever eaten. (It was also super-easy! If you want the recipe for this win-win dessert, click on that link.)

Me: Should we put this in the bear box? (Every campsite has this super heavy-duty steel box dug into the ground that you put food in. I don't know what they're actually called, but we called it the bear box.)
Him: Oh, no way. A bear would get a whiff of that and be on his way over here in a second. He would destroy the bear box to get to it....he's probably on his way here right now. *Sniff sniff* Huuhh?? Peach cobbler??? *Bear sounds as he snuffles in the peach cobbler and gobbles it up*

In case you're wondering how we slept on the second night, it was a lot better. Thanks for asking. We opened up the sleeping bag and put that on top, and just spread out the blanket on the ground under us. Stephen's prayer probably helped a little, too:

"Please bless that I will be kept warm tonight, and that if it gets cold, that Heather might be useful in warming me up...."

Whate'er.

We were hoping to see some moosen on Sunday morning, but we didn't make it to the lake as early as we wanted.....because we were sleeping so soundly! JK, that's not why. It just takes like a week to get anywhere in Yellowstone.

We did, however, see a super-cool waterfall!

"Man. Can you imagine going down this? That's death, right there. I don't even think you would survive it a little bit."

Strangely, these kinds of signs make me feel awesome, while the ones about bears make me feel scared out of my mind.

Here's the picture Stephen took of us, with arm extended.

Here are the pictures that other people took of us:

Hmmm, I don't think that's quite centered....

Not even close. 

Nice, very nice. Besides the fact that my butt looks like it got elephantitis, and you can't see the waterfall at all, even though clearly that is what we wanted a picture of....us in front of the waterfall, but you know. This works, too. 

I....what? What happened?

Seriously??

So that's why we can't have nice things. Also, why so many of our pictures are selfies. 

Like this one. Selfie all the way! (Just kidding, we just found someone who was a little more competent.)

"Babe, I think an animal got ahold of your leggings last night. They were like, kinda wet when I found them, and off in some bushes?" .......Okay good to know, because I've been wearing them for 4 hours now. 

Yellowstone Lake is beautiful, but I wouldn't recommend swimming in it to anyone but a penguin.

As you can maybe tell, we haven't showered in days. Don't hate.

We were feeling a little geysered out, but you can't exactly go to Yellowstone and not see Old Faithful. It would be like going to Krispy Kreme and not getting a donut. 

We briefly considered staying here for our trip, but ultimately decided that we were going to camp and so we might as well camp and not stay at a hotel. But then we went inside, and we will definitely spend at least one night here the next time we come. 

There happened to be a photographer there doing a book signing for his newest book. I guess I just attract famous people? I flipped through his book while Stephen took one picture after another of the beautiful architecture inside.

"There's just such a nice feeling in here....I want this to be my house one day."

"Wouldn't that be fun? We could host like classy parties here...."

Me: Let's get a picture in front of this fireplace! [scanning the hotel guests lounging in chairs] Which one of these people should we ask to take our picture? Who do you think would do the best job?
Stephen: Uh, I dunno, maybe the guy in that chair over there?
Me: [looking around]
Stephen: ....the one doing the book signing, since he actually is a photographer....

*Spoiler alert: We did not ask him to take our picture.*

The traffic jam we ran into earlier was nothing compared to the one we ran into as we left Old Faithful. It didn't affect us too much....there was just a little bit of slowing on our side and a few cool photo ops. But then, we drove past literally 6 miles of traffic at a complete stop, and all thanks to a small herd of bison who thought they owned the place.

The rangers had to be called and they were having a field day on their megaphones! "Red shirt, return to your vehicle now." "Everyone needs to be in a vehicle." "Carry on." "Do not come within 25 yards of the bison!"

Stephen: A bee!! *Swat* Sorry, dude, I did not want to have to kill you, but you were attacking me!
Me: Did it sting you?
Stephen: It was trying to, but luckily there was a lot of hair right there on my leg, so it couldn't get it's stinger in.

Goodbye, Yellowstone! And thanks for a perfect weekend.