OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED: San Francisco

OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED

In the beginning, JD adamantly only wanted two children. I thought that four would be perfect. Once we caught God's vision of putting orphans into families, our plan was multiplied by God. We are currently blessed with 12 children; five biological, six adopted and one more waiting in Ethiopia. Our first adoption was from the U.S., the next three were from Liberia, West Africa, and our last two were from Ethiopia. We are supporting our 12th child in Ethiopia after her adoption could not pass court.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

San Francisco

We just returned from our trip to San Francisco last night. I feel about it much like I do New York City - nice place to visit, but I'd never want to live there. San Francisco is much more crowded and pricey than even San Diego. I was especially impressed with the fee of $57 a day to park a car at the hotel!

The city was beautiful and we really enjoyed seeing as much of it as our time allowed.

Not a bad picture for a phone!

Nice of this gull to land for the photo

The reason we went was for the commissioning of the new amphibious landing, helicopter attack ship, the USS AMERICA. I had never attended a commissioning before this one and it is a really big deal. The AMERICA is home to 1,000 Sailors and can also accommodate an additional 1,700 Marines. It is impressive to say the least.

We attended some functions there that were work related for JD.

Two of them were rather formal.

We covered many tourist spots in San Francisco, but my favorite was Alcatraz. We had to get up at 4 a.m. to be in line by 5 a.m. to get one of the only 100 available same-day tickets; otherwise they are sold out weeks in advance. It was an awesome tour and has some fascinating history. It actually has an interesting history as a war post in the Civil War and military prison before it was converted to a federal maximum security prison.

Another interesting piece of information is that the American Indians claimed it in 1971 as "their" land. President Nixon allowed them to remain in possession of the island for about 19 months until they burnt down the warden's house and the light-house that was still in use. Why they would want to live in an old prison with no plumbing, water or electricity is beyond me, but the marks from their time is still there.

We did an extensive audio tour that even walked through the few attempted escapes, including one successful one until they probably drowned trying to swim the bay.