January 3,2007

Jan. 3rd we arrived at Petaluma, California on a cold and rainy day. We are staying at a nice Elk's Lodge RV Park that has lots of room. Here we met two couples from Oregon that we enjoyed so much and are headed the same direction we are.
We drove to San Francisco the second day, we took pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge and we found the home of Rose Wilder Lane on 1019 Vallejo Street (picture). She is the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Author of the Little House On the Prairie Books). Laura spent time visiting and writing her last book here. What a time we had with our huge truck getting to her house and turning around to get out of there. Sharon walked ahead to find the house and scope it out as Kent couldn't find a place to park the truck. She asked some guy walking his dog if we could drive a 23' truck up the street and he said Yes!!! So with a wave at Kent to follow, the fun began. The lady who now owns the house came out as we were taking pictures and was so interesting and nice. She told us stories about the house and how people from all over as far as England have been there taking pictures. Sharon climbed back in the truck, pleased with the pictures we took to send to Kim and Lisa. Kent was left with the job of figuring out how to turn around the monster on such a narrow steep street that was on a dead end.
We spent about a week here touring San Francisco going to Alcatraz, (pictures) China town riding the cable cars and drinking Irish coffee at a local bar down by Fisherman's Wharf. We rode "BART" the train that goes through a tunnel that went underneath the bay to Oakland. We went across the Golden Gate bridge (picture) twice to retake our pictures that we somehow deleted by accident the first time. It didn't take near as long to take the pictures the second time. LOL The tour to Alcatraz is a self guided tour with an Ipod headset telling prison stories with the prison sounds and voices in the back ground it was really worth while. We went to the town of Sausalito a couple of times, it is on the San Francisco Bay and has neat shops.