San Francisco Part 2

This morning we got up and found a cute cafe for breakfast called Farm to Table Cafe in Larkspur. We are staying at the Larkspur Landing area so it was only a few minutes drive.  Breakfast was great!

We needed a good breakfast because our first stop was hiking with our friend Mike from ONU. He has lived out here ever since we finished Pharmacy school. He picked us up back at our hotel and we headed for Mount Tamalpais which is just north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate. The area is covered in redwood groves and oak woodlands with a spectacular view from the 2,571-foot peak (if it’s clear!)

The first trail we went down was the steep ravine trail,  it took us about 1 hour and 15 min to descend approx 3.5 miles and 1500 ft in elevation down to Stinson Beach.

The next part of the hike we went back up the mountain, to about 1700 ft elevation, a 4 mile trail and it was way HARD…it took us a little over 2 hours to get back up and boy are we going to be sore tomorrow. We made it downtown just in the nick of time (literally) to catch our 2:40pm Alcatraz tour. We all enjoyed the history, they had audio headsets that explained it all to us as we toured the cellhouse.

Alcatraz used to be a prison for the worst of the worst criminals. It’s located on a small island (22 acres) that is 1.5 miles from downtown San Francisco. Based on it’s location in the bay, it was extremely windy today and quite chilly.

We headed back to San Francisco for a bite to eat. We really hadn’t eaten a meal other than a few snacks since early morning before the 7 mile hike! We meet Patrick who also went to ONU with us and currently works in San Francisco as a pharmacist as well for dessert. We look exhasuted…at least the 7 mile hike and city walking folks on the left…but overall a good pic!

We have had a blast seeing the city and surrounding areas in the eyes of locals…we pick up Josh and Sarah tomorrow morning at the airport! Excited to see a little bit more of this area before we start heading up the coast!