Despite the fact that we live less than three hours away from NYC, neither Mike or myself have spent much time in the city. We've both taken occasional trips with family and friends, but we hadn't been in the city together since 2015. So when our good friends wanted to take a day trip together, we were happy to adventure to Manhattan again!

Pinnacles National Park, California

Pinnacles National Park is located about two hours southeast of San Francisco. The park is slightly odd in that there is no road through the middle of it, so you have to chose to enter on the east or west side. If you want to see the other side of the park, you either hike to it or drive an hour around to the other side.

We only had a day in this park so we opted to go on the east side because it was closer to our main route. We had a delightful 12-mile loop planned and we were excited to hike it. We arrived around 8:30am to find that all the parking lots close to the main trail head were already full. This is normally not a big deal, as the park service runs a shuttle service from the remote parking to the trail head. However, despite that it was one of the busiest time of the year, they weren't running it that day.

Bummer.

The park ranger told us "it's only a 3-mile hike to the trail head!" "3 miles round trip or each way?" "Each Way."

So off we went. Because we were forced to add an extra six miles to our hike that we hadn't anticipated, we opted to shorten the hike we had originally planned.

Fort Point, San Francisco, CA

 Fort Point National Historic Site sits just under the famous red bridge at the entrance to the Golden Gate. The "Golden Gate" actually refers to the narrow entrance between the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay. The fort was built in 1853, many years before the bridge was built. The gate is an important location, so the fort was built to guard against any attacks made on the San Francisco Bay. The fort never saw any actual battles and was preserved by the NPS in 1970.