May 5th, 2021 – San Francisco in Hurry

If you know us or have read any of our blogs in the past, we don’t make very many plans when it comes to what we will be doing. Laying in bed this morning right before Kevin and I got up, we talked about getting coffee then getting kids up and ready for school. Then Kevin said, “Why don’t we just wake up the kids and go to the Golden Gate Bridge?”. In a hurry we got up and ready to go! We hit the road about 20 mins after everyone was awake.

The drive was about one hour and forty mins to get there. Which wasn’t bad although we had to be back by 6:00pm to meet someone. First stop was to see the Golden Gate Bridge, we took the tunnel route to get to the view point. To be thoroughly disappointed by all the fog when we got to the top. We could just barely see the tip top of the bridge. We all had a good laugh taking pictures of all the fog from the view point.

After that we headed down to the one and only Golden Gate Bridge. We were pretty excited about driving across it only to be disappointed again by the fog. We couldn’t even see the bridge as we crossed but, we can say that we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Although The Golden Gate Bridge may not be golden, it still shines in many ways. Being the longest main suspension bridge, The Golden Gate Bridge spans 1.7 miles, connecting San Francisco to Marin County, California. Now, The Oakland Bay Bridge may look longer than The Golden Gate Bridge, but in reality, the main suspended part of the bridge is longer than any other bridge on this planet. An idea of the world’s largest suspension bridge was thought impossible at first, but on January 5, 1933, construction had started. Building the bridge wasn’t as merry as you would think, nearly 11 men had died during the construction of this beast of a bridge. Even though we didn’t get to see the whole bridge due to the foggy weather, it was still neat knowing what lay beyond the fog, the world’s greatest bridge feat.

Noah Misiurski

Our journey didn’t stop there, I mean We had to see the “Full House” house while there of course. We found the address on Google and knew it was the place once we passed it cause there was people taking pictures in front of it. That meant we had to stop and get our picture there as well. When Lita was a baby and the theme song from “Full House” would play she would stop whatever she was doing and rock out to the song.

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A few days ago I was talking to my brother about San Francisco and he said you can’t miss Pier 39. When we got there, the parking garage was too low of clearance for the truck. We had to drive around a bit until we found an outdoor parking lot. It was right behind the Boudin restaurant. First thing we see when we got out and walked around was a boat tour to the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. Which sounded like a lot of fun but, there was so much to do and see we wanted to walk around a little bit before we committed to that.

We saw the SS Jeremiah O’Brien which was a huge ship right off the pier. Of course we had to get closer. This image was actually from the boat tour we took.

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SS Jeremiah O’Brien, a liberty ship built for WWII is a rare survivor of the war and remains perfectly intact. Only SS Jeremiah O’brien and two other liberty ships (SS John W. Brown, and SS Hellas Liberty) are the only remaining liberty ships that have survived, out of the 2,710 built. You may be thinking, “What even is a liberty ship?” well, it was a cargo ship, designed off of a British design, and was used for its low cost of production and use. This ship was built in just 56 days, and was launched on June 19, 1943. This ship may not be of use right now, but it is still a really cool thing to see.

Noah Misiurski

When you have this many kids it seems like someone is always hungry. We took a break and went back to the Boudin Bakery for lunch with the kids. We passed a few stores, and the Ripley’s Believe it Or Not along the way. It was like sight seeing overload. Noah got his favourite clam chowder in a bread bowl, and we all got some awesome food from the Boudin Bakery. We discussed what would be the best activity to do as a family today since we had limited time. We voted on the Red and White Fleet Tour.

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We went under the Golden Gate Bridge, saw sea lions, lots of seagulls, circled Alcatraz, watched windsurfers and kite surfers in the wake of our ship, saw the Oakland Bay Bridge and learned a bunch of cool facts about San Francisco.

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Alcatraz opened in 1934 and at the time, it was the most secure prison in all of America at the time. The first inmates to arrive at Alcatraz were Al (Scarface) Capone, George (Machine Gun) Kelly, and Harvey Bailey. In March 21, 1963 Alcatraz closed due to it being too expensive to run. After 29 years of being open, Alcatraz only had 28 deaths; 8 murdered, 5 suicidal deaths, 15 natural disease deaths. To this day, Frank Morris, Clarence Anglin, and John Anglin remain the only people who have escaped Alcatraz though are prophesied to be dead when they tried to swim back to shore.

Malachi Misiurski

When we finished our tour we had to start heading back. At this point we learned about the Oakland Bay Bridge and had to go back that way. It was pretty neat going through the bridge, as all the traffic is on one level and the other direction is another level. Here is an image of the Oakland Bay Bridge from the ship.

The Oakland Bay Bridge was built on July 9, 1933, and took 5 and a half years. 8000 people worked on the bridge, 24 of which sadly died. The Oakland Bay Bridge cost over 6 billion dollars to build. The Oakland Bay Bridge was built before the Golden Gate Bridge and was built to help people get across the river faster. Oakland Bay Bridge consists of two bridges and a tunnel, the entire bridge is eight miles long.

Malachi Misiurski