Fleet Week & The Blue Angels... kind of

Last Saturday Brad and I ventured into San Francisco to check out Fleet Week. There are so many activities during it, but our main goal for the day was to watch the air shows- which conclude with the Blue Angels.

We took BART into the city and walked around Union Square, North Beach, and of course China Town. You can't walk around San Francisco with Brad Hardcastle and not go to China Town.


After the excitement of China Town, we made our way down to Aquatic Park where we snagged free cans of Cherry Dr. Pepper (wohoo for Brad!) and In N Out for lunch (wohoo for us both!). We found a great little pier where we watched the air shows for a couple hours.

Alcatraz Island (which acts as a center point for the air shows) in the background

It was a little chilly near the water, like it always is in San Fran, but it was a beautiful day. That is, until 3:00 when the Angels were supposed to fly. That's when the fog rolled in, and apparently Blue Angels can't fly when fog settles below 1,500 feet. So all we got were 3 'fly-bys' of the Angels before they cut the show and headed out. I wasn't too disappointed because they were sooo loud and my neck was hurting after 2+ hours of looking into the sky. (I soon realized that many of the people we were next to didn't take the news quite as well!)

Their precision is incredible! And I couldn't believe how close to the ground they fly. Wow!

It would have been nice to see the whole show, but there's always next year! We would love to watch the Parade of Ships next time too. Overall it was a great day with my hubby, and would have been a great day for Flat Luke if we hadn't already mailed him back ;) Darn!

Does this make me your favorite sister?

A couple weeks ago I got a call from Luke, my 7 year old brother. He had just read the book Flat Stanley in class and wanted to send his own "Flat Luke" out to explore beautiful Walnut Creek.

(Who knew, but Flat Stanley is a story about a boy named Stanley who gets squished flat as a pancake and gets to explore the world through the mail.)

Luke was so cute on the phone. He said we could take him to the park, to the Golden Gate Bridge, to San Francisco, etc. I had to laugh because in the 1+ year we have lived here, I've only visited the GG Bridge once-- and that was with my family last Thanksgiving! It's not exactly a frequented stop on our weekly agenda.

After much persuasion, I was able to get Brad to take Flat Luke with him into the city. He got a picture of Flat Luke with the Bay Bridge behind him.

Can you tell how *thrilled* Brad was to ask a coworker to take this pic?

When we called Luke to tell him about where we took Flat Luke (is this getting confusing to anyone else?) he said, "No Brad, that's not the right one! You need to take him to the red bridge." It was pretty cute.

Well, Flat Luke never made it to the "red bridge", but we did take him on a few other adventures before we mailed him back, which included:

Hiking Castle Rock

Hiding in secret caves

Exploring Lafayette Reservoir

Thanks for sending us Flat Luke, Luke! He was the easiest house guest we've had yet! ;)