Angel Island

After a jam packed, and amazingly fun time in San Francisco.  We left our slip, and the sea lions at pier 39 yesterday morning.  We anchored at Treasure Island and had a low key day of decompressing.  For Lars and Odin, that meant Lego and lots of time playing cable car in the foc'sle, complete with lines strung up to act as bell cords.  For Tor and me it was having time to get the boat back in order. We never even went up on deck while we were there, just spent the whole day below.  Just what was needed after our very full visit to SF which included many cable car and electric trolley rides, visits with friends and museums, and shopping at Trader Joe's. :)

This morning we got up and underway early on our way to Angel Island, a state park in SF bay.  The island has loads of military history and is notorious as an immigration station for the West coast from 1910-1940 because of the detention of Chinese and Japanese immigrants. It's also just a beautiful, natural place to be with great views of the city and the rest of the bay.

After seeing a cannon firing demonstration, and consulting the map in the visitor guide, we set out to walk the whole perimeter road.  With a map scale marked at 400 ft, it seemed reasonable for the five year old legs.  Turns out something is wonky with the map, and the whole hike is 5 miles! Despite the distance, the boys did great. They hiked the whole way with very minimal complaining...it was truly amazing, and fun. 

The Bay Bridge is lit up at night.  This is where we were anchored last night.  The car traffic is way quieter than sea lions!

The boat through the trees on Angel Island. Here you need to tie to mooring balls both bow and stern...something we've never done and that was painfully obvious!  Fortunately people from two separate boats took pity on us came over to help us get our lines on the two moorings.  What a (slightly embarrassing) mess!

Our awesome hikers!

Cannon demonstration!  Golden Gate Bridge in the background.  The cannon was an 12 lb mountain howitzer.  Might have been more cool for Mama than the boys, they were very worried about how loud it would be.

Using dividers to check the scale in the map...we get ~8600 ft, not 5 miles! Sleep happened very quickly tonight!

Tomorrow morning we get underway early to catch the tide through the Golden Gate.  We're sorry to be leaving, but it's feeling like it's time to make southward progress.