I apologize in advance to all of my east coast friends who are currently stuck in a blizzard (I’ve been getting updates from my family in New Jersey and it sounds crazy! Stay safe everyone!), but today I’m taking you along on a little adventure from this past weekend when it was 70 DEGREES here in San Francisco. Seriously, 70 degrees. After the mega cold of Chicago and growing up on the east coast, I still absolutely cannot believe this “winter”. California is quite the change!

Anyway, I have been absolutely dying to head to the ocean since we moved out to San Francisco – it’s one of those things that is super close, yet just far enough away from where we live where we have to plan it out in advance and rent a car. As soon as I saw the “record breaking temperatures” forecast (when I saw that headline I initially thought meant it was going to snow here or something crazy. I have been in cold climates for far too long!), I knew that this was the perfect weekend to head west and check out the coast.

So for our first ocean excursion we hit up the ruins of the Sutro Baths, and I’ll let the photos speak for themselves for a second before telling you more…

See that hole in the rock? It looks like a heart at just the riiiiight angle!

Someone was very happy to be on her first California hiking excursion

These two… I am the luckiest girl in the world

Watching the sun set into the ocean was stunning

Okay, more about the Sutro Baths: they were a privately owned swimming complex built in   1896 – think huge indoor saltwater pools, waterslides, rope swings, and even an ice skating rink and museum. It could hold up to 10,000 people at a time and used the Pacific Ocean’s currents to fill the 1.7 million gallons of water needed for the pools and even swap the water out for new water as a filtration system. Unfortunately the entrepreneur (and former SF mayor), Adolph Sutro died in 1898 and although his family maintained the baths, attendance dwindled as the Great Depression sunk in and public transportation to the location became difficult. They ended up closing and falling in disrepair, with the demolition site burning down in 1966, leaving the ruins as they are today.

Crazy, right?! If you have a moment, Google “Sutro Baths” and take a look at the site in it’s prime – it was insane. It was amazing to see the remains of the mega pools and the views that the location has of the ocean and cliffs along the coastline. Definitely a really unique experience (I still can’t believe this is within the city I now live in!) and bonus points for a San Francisco adventure with free parking and within a national park.