In case you didn't see, I posted last night, so skip down and start there if you haven't read the post yet... :)
Anyway, moving right along, we had a great Labor Day weekend and headed full-speed into last week. I started the clinical immersion part of my fellowship, so I spent alot of time in the Stanford hospital and clinics learning about medical care (specifically in rheumatology) and looking for "needs". It was incredibly eye-opening and didn't take long to come up with quite an extensive list of 'needs" that were identified. Bridget had a great week of nannying and also found some tutoring clients! So, she's starting up with them this week. She's pretty excited about that, to say the least. :)
Anyway, back to last week. We went back to the volleyball gymnasium for another match. This time Stanford played Penn State, which had the longest win streak in NCAA history until last season. And Stanford lost to Penn State in the national championship game last year, so it was a rematch of near-epic proportions. And the match was intense! Every point was a battle, literally. There were times when two, three, even four players ended up sprawled on the floor. One player almost jumped into the stands to save a ball! Needless to say, it was an extremely entertaining match to watch. And Stanford pulled out the win in the end! They won 3-1 (Stanford won 3 of the "sets" and Penn State won one). The whole arena was going crazy toward the end. It was a blast. And one of our friends whom we met last week joined us, so it was even more fun with her there.
After the game, we all came back to our apartment and had dinner and played Wii for awhile. I realized that we hadn't even plugged in our TV yet, so I had to run all the cords and setup the Wii sensor bar and all. And the craziest part is that we haven't missed watching TV at all. I had missed playing Wii before, but never had the time/energy to hook it up... :) Anyway, it was alot of fun. Definitely a good Friday night. :)
Saturday morning came pretty early, and Bridget and I decided to go to Muir Woods, which is a national park just north of San Francisco (across the bay). So, we drove up to Sausalito (the first city north of the Golden Gate Bridge) and took a shuttle to the woods. We checked the prices ahead of time and decided to get an annual pass to all of the National Parks in the country. We'll for sure make it to Yosemite, Redwood, and hopefully Grand Canyon and some of the parks in Utah, so it will definitely pay for itself pretty quickly. :) And now we have more impetus to get out and explore on the weekends. :)
So, Muir Woods was a 300-acre donation to the State of California by a wealthy family back in like 1906. The family wanted to preserve some of the massive redwoods before they were all cut down. So, there are some HUGE trees. Not quite as big as some of the Sequoia trees (like the one with a road through the middle of it), but really big nonetheless. We hiked for about 6-7 miles and had a nice picnic lunch up on top of a ridge. Unlike last weekend when it was hot and we hiked in shorts and t-shirts, we wore pants and long sleeves. The cool breeze off the ocean kept the temp pretty low. Which was refreshing in a way too. But it was a really cool hike. Here are some pictrues.
Bridget next to a slice from the trunk of a 1,000 year old redwood. Yep, someone counted the rings and marked world evens that occurred during the tree's lifetime (that's the white rings and markers).
Me by a big tree
Bridget's turn by a big tree
The view toward the tops of the trees
After hanging out in Muir woods for awhile, we took the shuttle back to Sausalito and drove around a pic and took some pictures of the city and bay area. It was a really pretty area, with the fog coming from the West, but never making it far enough to obscure the sun for most of the city. And there were a ton of sailboats on the water (most were in marinas, but it was still impressive).
The hills makes for alot of "ocean-view" houses :)
A rather large sailboat on the water (it's a bad angle, so just trust me on the size part...)
The fog threatening to take over, but never quite making it...
We then drove to Golden Gate Bridge Recreational Area, or something like that. We drove up this winding road that had some neat spots to take pictures of the bridge and surrounding area. Unfortunately, the fog was pretty thick, so none of the pictures were super clear. But we still managed to get some decent ones. Also, the road led to an unfinished military gunnery base. During WWII, the top of this hill was going to house some huge artillery to defend against attack from the Pacific. The guns could shoot 2,100 lb shells around 27 miles (yeah, that's miles) out to sea. The guns themselves weighed nearly 1,000,000 lb! Unfortunately, the guns weren't there for us to see, but there were a few walking trails and cement structures. When we walked over to the west side of the ridge, the wind was blowing like crazy and the fog was flying up and over the ridge. We took a video since pictures can't really communicate the effect quite as well...
And here are some pictures we took too...
Lots of moss everywhere due to the moist air
Tunnel through the ridge. Goes from pavement and sand on one side to trees and green on the other...
A view of the bridge from one of the lookout points...
Since that wasn't enough excitement yet, we drove back over the Golden Gate Bridge (still having trouble not adding a "t" to ever time I type "Bridge"...) and went to Baker Beach. It's a pretty famous beach with a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was foggy (noticing a trend yet...?), but you could definitely still make it out. The waves were coming in pretty well too, but were crashing too close to the shore. Anyway, we didn't bring a blanket or anything to hang out on the beach for awhile, so we didn't hang out for too long. But we did manage to get a picture (of course!). :)
Us at Baker Beach
After that, Bridget wanted to do the "Lands End" hike, which is a trail that goes around the far northwestern part of San Francisco. There is a nice park there with a trail around it. It's actually a couple miles from one end to the other, so not a little park. We stopped a few times along the route to enjoy the scenery and snap some pictures. Bridget got a really nice panorama shot (see below).
Really cool shot of the beach and bridge
Panorama from the trail (definitely click on this one to make it larger)
One last shot of us. It was pretty chilly so Bridget really cinched down her hood... :)
So, by this point, it was getting pretty late. So, we thought about eating in San Francisco, but decided to head home and eat some of the leftovers we've been saving up. We have quite the stockpile, despite my diligence in eating lots of everything... :) So, it was a busy, but incredibly fun day. :)
This morning (Sunday), we met some friends from church at a cafe for breakfast and then went to church. After that, we came back and chilled before Bridget had to go nanny. She normally has to nanny Saturday nights, but they moved it to Sunday afternoon this weekend, which worked out well for our "adventure day" yesterday. :)
So, that's about all for now. We'll keep doing our best to lead entertaining lives to blog about! :)
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