Up Next: Vegas, baby!!!

GAY PRIDE PARADE

It's not every traveler who's lucky enough to find themselves in San Francisco in June. Nor is everyone's boyfriend, who happens to be visiting the same weekend. Imagine Ryan's surprise (and interest? shock?) at finding himself smack-dab in the middle of the biggest Gay Pride celebrations in the world.

Talk about fun and outrageous activities! Towards the end of the day, we found ourselves in S&M alley, where we got a little lesson on whips and restraints and...

....hmmm, time to stop with the details

Anyway, a fantastic time for sure. Enjoy the pictures!

P.S. Ryan was a great sport about it all, and Kendrah was loving the party!

Only in San Francisco! And what an appropriate mask to be wearing

Kendrah was in her element with the drag queens!

One of the (many) porn booths


The Dancing Cowboys


One of the cars we saw there. As Ryan pointed out, the entire trunk was totally for entertainment purposes. I just thought it looked pretty cool

NAPA

Ryan made his second visit to California at the end of June. For this visit, we decided to combine two of our favourite activities: drinking and traveling. This decided, we headed up to Napa Valley (in the town of Calistoga) for his second night here. We stayed at a cute B&B and managed to hit a total of 5 wineries in the two days we were there. A couple of the places were a little too snotty for my liking (like I know the difference between a wine aged in oak or .....hmmm....are they ever aged in anything else?). However, we found some places where the staff were friendly and the wines were tasty. In fact....we came home with 5 or 6 bottles of our favourite stuff.

August Briggs: one of the wineries we really enjoyed. It was small,
family-owned, and the staff were friendly

ALCATRAZ

After we checked out of our hotel and visited several more wineries (and emptied our bank accounts even further!) we headed back to the city for our first visit to Alcatraz. Every time we entered a new room, I kept trying to remember if I'd seen it in "The Rock". Sadly, aside from the kitchen, I couldn't recall too many other familiar scenes.....one crumbling wall looked like another crumbling wall after a while....

Waiting for the ferry to Alcatraz

Al Capone's cell

Some of the more "Infamous Inmates"

This cell belongs to one of the three men who are actually known to have made it out of the prison. Apparently, they carved fake heads of themselves to fool the guards and then managed to get out through ventilation holes they'd widened beneath their sinks...with spoons, or so the story goes. No one knows if they managed to survive their swim to shore, because they were never heard from again.

And, for those history buffs among you, if I got the story wrong, so be it. I loved the audio tape, but hell, it was vacation, not school. He he he

I thought this picture looked pretty cool. I shot it through a window that had a hole drilled into it. The glass was almost a foot thick...imagine trying to escape through that.

FIVE THINGS THAT MADE ME SMILE TODAY

1) Ryan is coming....

2) I cleaned my kitchen floor and it turned white again

3) I live in a place where 35 degrees feels like 35 degrees....forget the damn humidity

4) The SF Gay Pride parade is this weekend....wild times will be had by all....

5) Ryan is here now :)

BRAVING THE OCEAN

So, the point of living away from home is to do things I've never had the chance to do before, right? Well, my activities (mostly shopping and tanning) were getting to feel a little stagnant, so last week I decided I should do something about that. I didn't drive across the entire North American continent to spend my time (or at least not ALL of it) cruising Bath and Bodyworks stores and frying my skin by the apartment pool.

Activity #1: Kayaking
Location: Half Moon Bay
Temperature of Water: Nipply-cold
Enjoyment Factor: Awesome

likelihood I'll attempt it again: 100%

We signed up for a BSK (Beginner Sea Kayak) class in Half Moon Bay. It was an 8 hour course designed to teach us how to paddle, turn and generally keep from killing ourselves in the ocean. Fortunately, they teach the class in the protected waters of the harbor, so the likelihood of being swamped by a giant wave and drowning are minimal at this point. Now, I've canoed before, and though I'm not the best at steering the thing (but definitely better than Justin, who took us down some rapids SIDEWAYS), I'm a pretty decent paddler. And I like canoeing, but I'm hooked on kayaking. I love the fact that I can control the entire boat pretty easily and even learned how to rescue myself, should I manage to tip the boat during my escapades.

The most entertaining part of the day was surely when Kendrah was practicing her own self-rescue. There was a playful seal lying on one of the docks nearby and when he saw Kendrah go into the water he decided she'd make a good playmate. He kept getting closer and closer...it was all she could do to not scream like a scared little girl!

Activity #2: Surfing
Location: Santa Cruz
Temperature of Water: Chilly but tolerable
Enjoyment Factor: Wow!

likelihood I'll attempt it again: 100%

Michaela (another RN I work with) took me to Santa Cruz for my first surfing attempt, on a sunny Friday morning. Talk about intimidating: I was surrounded by a large group of surfers, many with those cool Aussie accents. I thought they'd all be stellar and it'd look just like the movies, and I'd be more the fool on my first attempt. Hmmm.....assumptions that shouldn't be made.....

Let's just say not everyone was quite as good as I first imagined

I wasn't anything pretty to look at, but I managed to get up about 50% of the time. And with each successful attempt, I'd throw my arms in the air and start shouting with excitement. Guess what that does to your balance?

LOL, but at least it didn't hurt when I fell.

**pictures to follow, but they were on a waterproof camera, so I'm working on getting them onto the computer