Thanksgiving in NorCal, Part 2

Wednesday in San Francisco was much colder and rainy.  We started off by waiting in a cold, wet line to get on a cable car.  We rode it to the end of the line, the kids rang the bell once everyone had disembarked, then they helped turn the car around to begin again.  We rode the car back up the line and got off at the stop for the Cable Car Museum, where we learned about and saw some of the network of cables under the streets of San Francisco.  It was also fun to peruse the gift shop and find a few souvenirs.  We got on another cable car that would take us to lunch, but then we felt like we got a bonus experience for our Day of Cable Car: we got in a wreck.  A car turning left tried to cut in front of the cable car and even though the driver pulled the emergency brake, there was still a small collision.  We waited on the car for a while, filled out an incident report, checked my nephew's bit lip (the worst injury sustained in the accident), and were finally told to find an alternative method of transportation.  A few minutes later a couple of Lyft cars picked us up and we went to a mall with a big food court and a cool curving escalator.

Our last official San Francisco activity took place as we left the city: we drove down Lombard Street, then across the Golden Gate Bridge and into Sausalito.  This detour added two hours to the drive back to Andy's house, probably largely due to holiday traffic, but the kids were happy watching movies in the car so that made it a lot easier.  We stopped for dinner once we were back in Andy's town, Andy and Amy got the last of the groceries they'd need for Thanksgiving, and we were all happy to crash at the house that night.

The womenfolk worked on pies and fixin's Thursday morning, while the menfolk supervised the smoking of the meat, except for that brief episode when Andy let Sawyer play with pie crust dough in the middle of the pie-making zone during crunch time.  Oops.  (A note about the meat: Andy wanted to smoke something for our big meal and we all thought pulled pork sounded good, so we went with that.  But Jack continued to insist that we hadn't had a Thanksgiving meal even days later, since we didn't eat turkey.)  Other than cooking, we lounged around the house, talking, watching TV, coloring, kids playing with toys, and adults playing games after the kids were down.  It was great.

Our last full day in California was mostly spent hanging out around the house again.  It felt good to do a lot of nothing.  We did get out of the house to see "Ralph Breaks the Internet" (but took a picture with the fun "Grinch" display instead).  And Grammy gave the kids hair chalk, so Eliza had a blast doing her own, and the younger boys' hair in bright colors.  They don't really show in the last picture, so you'll just have to trust me that she did a fabulous job.  That night the adults stayed up and watched a movie, then Grammy and I stayed up even longer having a good chat.  One of the highlights of the trip for me.

We found out that there was a severe snowstorm in Utah the day we were leaving, which gave us a good excuse to linger a little longer in the morning.  But finally we knew we needed to get on the road, so we did.  The ride home seemed to take longer (in a way, it does, since you gain an hour when driving west and lose an hour when driving east) but we got home without any problems.  We sure enjoyed our California Thanksgiving adventure!  (And writing that reminded me that it was the second Thanksgiving we'd spent with Andy and Amy in California - the first one was in 2012 when they were not yet married and I was pregnant with Luke.)

Saying goodbye to Andy and Amy was much easier, since we knew we'd see them again in December AND January.  Alas, we'll be waiting until summer to see Grammy again.  Darn 2000 miles.