San Fran | October 2023

This October, Shawn and I took advantage of a work trip he had scheduled in San Fran and followed the work portion with a date weekend! 

He had worked Monday through Thursday night. I arrived on Thursday night. After what felt like a long flight and then an Uber into the city, Shawn and I met at The Barnes Hotel in Union Square and walked across to Johnny Foley’s Irish Pub. It was fun to jump right into a date night out!

The next morning, we had breakfast in the hotel lobby and walked around the area a bit. We found a Peet’s coffee and a super cool hotel lobby decked out in autumn colors!

After breakfast, we pretty quickly made the most of the day by jumping on some Bay Wheels bikes and heading to the west side of the city. We biked and walked through Golden Gate Park, taking the scenic route to Ocean Beach. Ocean Beach is an expansive sandy beach, great surf spot and very scenic with Seal Rocks and other landforms along the shoreline. 

We parked our bikes to enjoy some time near the water. We were very excited to find a place called Beach Chalet Brewery. All the things we love!

We had incredible brussel sprouts, a burger and a salad.

We then continued our adventure - with a loose plan to follow the shoreline clockwise back to our hotel.  We biked some, we hiked some and we scootered some!

We biked over to the Sutro Heights area, where we hiked up to a beautiful overlook.

 

 

We continued the route along the Lands End Lookout, took the Coastal Trail (with views of the Golden Gate Bridge), made it through Presidio (with barely enough battery on our scooters!) and stopped for a drink at Barrio in Ghirardelli Square.

At this point, we headed back toward the hotel to try to make it back in the daylight. 

We loved the view from our hotel room - so many cargo ships out in the bay.

We visited 21st Amendment Brewing a few times throughout the weekend - they came to know Shawn by name...

A  few other highlights from the weekend included:

Renting a car for the day to visit Muir Woods...

A stop in Saulsulito...

Hanging out at the Ferry Building...

Biking down to Oracle Park and up to Pier 39 / Fisherman's Wharf...

And meeting up with Martina and Chris at 47 Hills Brewing Co just before our flight out!!

Such a great adventure weekend!

Colorado | August 2023

This year (since we still have the daycare gap before school starts), we jumped on some cheap flights to Denver and planned a trip around that!

We stared with an overnight in Fort Collins. Shawn took the boys on a hike to Horseshoe Falls while I caught up with Michelle at her house. Then we went to Odell Brewery. Shawn had also made a quick stop at New Belgium Brewing with the boys for a beer and lunch beforehand.

We spent the evening at Michelle's. The kids played, and chatted, and giggled, we ordered food in and it was all in all a fantastic evening :) So fun to catch up with my old college roommate who Shawn and I have both known for 23 years!!

The next morning, we slept in a bit, had breakfast at our hotel (in Fort Collins) and then drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park. We were lucky to get a time slot the night before - probably due to the unusual rain Colorado has been having. We had a few raindrops and mist during our hike, but it actually made it very comfortable and beautiful. 

Since we were essentially driving through, we chose one hike to do in the park before heading through to Grandby. We hiked to Nymph Lake, Dream Lake and Emerald Lake. We saw lots of chipmunks (which Brecken loved and named!), we saw three Elk, and lots of birds.  

Brecken and his love for animals!




One of my favorite parts of the hike was when we made it to Emerald Lake, the clouds parted for a short time and we were able to see the giant mountain peaks way up in the sky above us!

In an effort to keep the overview of our time in Grandby brief, some of the highlights include:

Pickelball at our Sun Outdoors Resort (formerly River Run Resort):

Swimming and hot tubbing in the late afternoon / evenings:

Our day at Winter Park - playing mini golf, doing the ropes course multiple times, the climbing wall, laps on the alpine slides, and taking the gondola up for a hike with the mountain bike trails all around us:

Whitewater rafting on the Colorado River - and the unexpected hot springs and cliff jumping!

Kayaking on Grand Lake (on of my favorite things on the trip!):

Panning for gemstones at the resort:

And spending lots of time on the porch of our tiny house with Shawn in the mornings and evenings - and our one night of cribbage!

(Watching the storms from our porch!)

We flew back on August 30th, so the Delta crew was kind enough to announce his birthday before take off :) Such a beautiful part of the country and a great time to travel and spend time together before the start of the school year.