Babies cried for the last three hours, but we finally made it home late last night. On Sunday we drove from Oceanside to San Francisco, and yesterday we returned.
Overall the traveling went well — something like 700 miles with three kids in the car. No major meltdowns, no poop incidents, no flat tires, etc. (When we stopped at McDonald’s Ethan asked if he could have an Angry Meal instead of a Happy Meal. Wow. He’s all about opposites right now.)
On the downside: Maria and I both got sick (she was much worse); I listened to Raffi sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” about a billion times; I scraped the side of our van when backing out of a skinny S.F. driveway (will probably cost $500-$800 to fix); and Maria and I didn’t have as much of a “date” as we would’ve liked, though we did sneak away for a couple of pints of Guinness at the Blarney Stone (an old Irish bar in the Richmond District, where Maria’s family lives).
One of the highlights was renting a boat and going around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. I lived in San Francisco for 10 years but never did this. One of those things you do when you have kids, I guess.
It was a lot of fun. We saw blue herons and turtles and ducks and egrets. Ethan steered, I paddled…
Stow Lake Waterfall…
And here’s Ethan patrolling the mean streets of San Francisco with his scooter…
(Photos all taken with my camera phone, which is why they suck.)