We woke up early on Saturday morning and drove an Nour and a half to Pinnacles National Park. Jere came with and helped us know where to go.
The trailhead was hard to get to because the rangers were blocking it off due to “10-15 cars up there circling for spots.” We convinced them to let us through to drop off another man who was trying to get back to his family at the trailhead. They said we could go through on condition that we returned immediately. But when we got to the trail head, there were no cars circling and a ton of open parking spots! We didn’t know what to do but eventually just parked because we couldn’t find a ranger to talk to.
The trail was amazing, and the ladybugs were swarming. There were literal clouds of ladybugs, and Clarissa was content to just stand in the clouds and try to let as many crawl over her as possible. The other kids loved it too, but Clarissa almost could not be persuaded to move from the clouds.
Poison Oak 
After the Pinnacles, we drove back to San Francisco. We first parked in China Town and trekked to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory. We bought a lot of fortune cookies and then parked near Little Italy. From there we walked down to Pier 39 to watch the seals, and then we hiked up to Coit Tower to watch the sun set.
After that we went to Tony’s Pizza and got some slices to go. We sat in a park by the Washington Square church and ate our pizzas at the end of the long, very fun day.
But our day was not over yet! After we got the kids down at 10pm, we rushed to shower and get to our friends, the Hongs. We visited from 10:30-midnight. It was SO fun to see them. Jon and Abe have been friends almost their whole lives, and Shirley and I text a lot. It was wonderful to visit in person. We love them so much!
