Even though a few years back we walked the Golden Gate Bridge with Mitch and Frank (for the first time ever), we only walked about 1/4 of it as it was too windy, cold and foggy that day.

So Tobia and I returned there determined to walk the rest of the bridge. It just felt long overdue.

We got into SF right around noon and took about an hour to walk to the end and back. The weather was nice, visibility was great and the wind was gentle. I came across some stats/facts about the bridge in the parking lot after our walk. The most interesting to me was that the total amount of wire used for the bridge is roughly 80,000 miles.

Following our walk, we did another first- we drove to Tiburon just north of the bridge. I thought Tiburon was quite beautiful: just far enough away from the Bay Area to be quiet and slow, and yet had great views of almost all of SF, views of Mount Tamalpais, and in and of itself nice with bay waters coming right into it. We got some views of Angel Island as well but decided not to head there.

Instead we headed back to SF, had dinner at Plant Cafe and returned home after walking quite a large chunk of the wharf past pier 39 for some caramel apples.

On a recent weekend, Tobia and I headed to Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz. Interestingly enough, we had been to the Santa Cruz Lighthouse just east of this place in fairly recent years and I had never heard of it.

We got there on a an early Saturday afternoon, pulled up the car in the short parking area and went to explore. I thought it was quite nice and it reminded me of Twin Rocks at Rockaway Beach in Oregon. There were some surfers and quite a few beach-goers, but the water was too cold for me to fully enter.

We spent a little while there, then continued to Pink Godzilla, a nearby Japanese restaurant we’ve enjoyed over the years.