San Fran or bust!

In early March, we decided to do something crazy with Nacho's week of vacation falling as it did during the girls' Spring Break week. Since he's so new to the company, he didn't get any time off in the summer, so we figured it might as well be our family vacation for the year.  Which got us thinking about where to travel. He's been flying out West so much to both LA and San Fran that the girls even asked if they could go to California too one day. "Since Papa always goes there by himself." Yes, they too feel the wanderlust and jealousy. So it was with that idea we started building a trip around a few days in San Francisco. The fact that the flights looked wide open 5 weeks out also gave us a certain amount of confidence. Even if the 100s of seats open started to disappear, we'd probably squeak through on standby. Right? Sure! Why not?  It's always so much fun to plan these kind of adventures because everything seems somehow limitless at first. After a few days looking at hotels and thinking about a visit to Yosemite while we're that close, we started to book it. Hotels and a rental car were confirmed. Shit was getting real. Now normally, we are the kind of travelers who wait until we have our boarding passes and are almost seated on a full plane before we pay for hotels and cars. With standby, you just never know. But given that it was Spring Break, we didn't have that luxury. I did so little research it was pathetic, and yet somehow I think we ended up with good deals in both SF and Yosemite. A few weeks passed and it all seemed like a distant dream. But no, April was closing in and it was almost time to pack and get out of here! 

Little did we realize until about 2 days out that JFK-SFO direct flights were not looking great. We had the option to fly into LAX and then catch a shuttle up to SFO, but even those flights were starting to be oversold. Not great for a family of 4 trying to hitch a free ride on the company's dime. Nacho began obsessing checking flights on what seemed like an hourly basis the day before. We talked about alternate routes and leaving a day earlier. That meant I would need to wake up on Sunday and pack before heading out to my communion shoot...after a night out drinking with the ladies. Could I do it? You bet your ass. So we made plans to fly to Salt Lake City on Sunday afternoon and stay the night. The next day we had options to go into Oakland or elsewhere on the West Coast. Fortunately, the hotel rooms and rental car combined were about $100 (still less than one way airfare for a family of 4). We booked a place with an indoor pool and consoled ourselves that at least the girls would be ecstatic. And they were. Unfortunately, when we woke up the next day, Nacho realized our best chance to get out of SLC and on to CA was to catch a flight at nearly 10:00 a.m. The leisurely dip in the pool turned into a frantic dash to say we'd done it while I took a shower and prepared our luggage. I quickly rinsed the girls off on their return and we hustled out of there and back to the airport in record time. The girls tried McDonald's hot cakes for the first time at the airport and I have to say it was all feeling like it was going to work out. Somehow. I had faith. 

And really as a nonrever, that's all you need. It keeps you going when you wonder why in the world you would put up with all that air travel involves even if you DON'T get on the flight. It also helped that everyone in the security line at that airport smelled so freshly showered and nice. Way to start us off, Salt Lake. So with that newborn confidence, we made it to the gate and onto our flight to Oakland--which was of course NOT where we'd rented our car from. Oh no. That would have been too easy. We had already booked a rental car out of SFO for the week. So once we touched down, we debated the best mode of transport to get us to our beloved coche. That's where Nacho upped his game and called us an Uber for the first time ever. With the promo discount, it turned out to be only about $34 which was way better than our other options. And again, the expense was still MUCH cheaper than paying for airfare. I have to keep repeating that when the shit goes awry, as it always does, when you are traveling like this. But really, landing in San Fran metro before noon on Monday was just about as perfect as we could have hoped for. With clear skies and mid-60s temps we hit the ground running with lunch near Twin Peaks, a run up those gorgeous hills, a drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and an ice cream in Sausalito, followed by a closer look at the bridge and a drive up to Muir Woods before checking out the sunset at Muir Beach Overlook. It was everything I had hoped to see and more in just the first 8 hours. And it totally revived my love of travel--even with kids. San Fran or Bust, baby!