Friday, April 8, 2011

San Francisco, Alcatraz, Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39, Cable Car, Chinatown's Cathay House, St. Ignatius Church and The Oakland LDS Temple

I got to go on Lone Peak's Choir tour to San Fransisco as a chaperon. It was a blast and Abby is the star of the pictures since she was the only child I had there. We did a lot of fun things that I hadn't done when we lived there years ago. Of course then, I had only one baby and no descent photography skills. We did get a picture of baby Rick at the Golden Gate Bridge one week and a picture of him the next week in New York at the Statue of Liberty though which was pretty cool.

I did take all my pictures in Jpeg this time instead of Raw as a sort of experiment (I didn't take a computer to download all my huge RAW files). I have to say, I won't do that again if I can help it. I couldn't save a lot of my photo's where I just couldn't help the lighting and after processing them in Lightroom some of them look a little fake. A real photographer wouldn't even consider taking pictures in some of the bad lighting situations that I did.

Driving in over the Bay Bridge brought back lots of memories, plus I like taking pictures of bridges- kind of like I like my feet

The first thing we did is take a ferry to Alcatraz. Conner Wood and Sam Bunderson were in our group

Cute Steven insisted on carrying my big, heavy camera bag all day and then at the end of the day I found out he has slipped disk problems because he was limping and I asked him about it!


Inside the ferry you can even find cool pictures to take

Alcatraz Island



I was in charge of 7 kids for the day. I must say that they were very well behaved


There were lots of the coolest walls to take pictures at



Inside the actual prison, we took an audio tour and it was really interesting. We got to hear about how life was there, the fights, the famous inmates and even the famous escape attempts. Even the kids were fascinated by it the entire time

Showers

A typical cell room


An unfortunate inmate

Solitary confinement cell

Cute Zack Larsen


The reason they finally abandoned Alcatraz was because they couldn't afford to keep it up. The weather batters the buildings as you can see

They did have a gorgeous view of San Fransisco


And the Golden Gate Bridge

There were cool tunnels


It was such a beautiful day. It was over 70 degrees and sunny. For April that is amazing apparently

The ferry ride back was fun too. See that nice man trying to stay out of my picture! People are so great!

Lunch was next at Pier 39. We ate fresh seafood and it was fantastic!

We sampled the bath soap

And of course it was a pier so there had to be boats

We just happened to be staying across the street from Pier 39 at the Radisson Hotel. It was a great hotel but they must have contacts and a reputation because we were not the only high school group staying there. There were at least 3 others coming and going while we were there. They even taped their kids in at night like we did. We had to make sure all our kids were in at 11 pm and then we would put tape on the doors and if it was broken in the morning- well you know what happens to kids who break tape!

There were some yummy shops

This is my reflection picture

At the end of the pier you make a sharp left and there are the sea lions

I wish I could lay around and cuddle in the sun all day!

There were interesting shops

This is the view of Pier 39 that we had from our hotel room

That night we took the famous San Fransisco Cable Car trip to Chinatown

There are lots of interesting people in San Fransisco



There were fantastic views from the back of the cable car


We made it to Chinatown and had to find our restaurant the Cathay House


The Cathay House must have had a reputation too since there was another school eating there when we got there. It did have great food!

Chinatown at night

We did a little shopping after eating

Think of these next three shots as a panorama starting at the Golden Gate Bridge and ending at downtown San Fransisco


Our bus driver took us up to this cool lookout above San Fransisco. He must have known how much I love vista's. It wasn't even on our itinerary. Thanks Dwight!


Now there is a real photographer!




Then we went to the Golden Gate State Park. We saw some different Chinese people doing this thing. I don't know what it was. I wish I did

Beautiful fountains

An Ampitheatre of some sort

Then we got to cross the Golden Gate Bridge and we walked on the other side of it


It was another beautiful day!


Abby with Zac Larsen and Steven Maddox

Abby with Emily Pflueger and Olivia

That night some of the lucky girls got treated to a show by a couple of the Chaperons Patty and Paula. This was their 11th consecutive year on A'capella Choir Tour and did they know how to have fun!

The Choir got to perform in the beautiful St. Ignatius Cathedral. It was gorgeous inside!





This is Mama J and I don't know how she does it. She trains these kids so well and they performed beautifully. And then she keeps them all out of trouble on tour every year! She is truly amazing.


At first I thought these cables were a menace to my pictures but then I kind of got to like them. On the bus going back home, Paula and Patty were telling the kids about how they had these "Painted Ladies" in San Fransisco but they didn't tell them what they actually were. So Dwight was kind enough to drive us by them.

The Painted Ladies were delightful!

That night we did some shopping. I had never heard of H&M before, but after $300 I now know who they are

Our hotel had a fire pit outside. It was great fun for the kids

We had a pizza party and some of the kids were playing this new game called Ninja Warrior. It actually looked pretty fun

Sunday morning we watched conference up at the Oakland Temple. It was breathtaking






We hung out with Zac and Steven a lot. They were a lot of fun

We spent a lot of time on this bus (there were two) and with these drivers. They were great

We ate at Johnny Rocket's and they had great shakes and burgers plus some cute girls

Look at those gorgeous eyes!

Emily, Olivia and Abby decided to buy some hats and so we had some fun with that






Just trying to work with the light



This guy beat his drums all day every day that we were there. I think he deserved a big tip- plus he let me take his picture!

Hats and Cotton Candy- what could be better



And that was the end of a fantastic trip to San Fransisco!




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