TEMPTED BY THE CHEAP
airfare displayed on
my computer screen,
I wondered aloud if
we could, or should, plan
a trip to San Francisco
three weeks out.

LAST-MINUTE FUN
One family’s
quick trip to
California BY ERICA RIMLINGER
28 WashingtonFAMILY JUNE 2019
“Sure. We could finally go to Yosemite
National Park,” my husband, Kevin, said.

I’ve visited San Francisco often enough
to know its summer streets are crammed
with tourists shivering in the cold weather
they didn’t expect. And Yosemite? At the
last minute?
“Impossible,” my friend, Felicia Sapp,
asserted. “You’ll never find a place to stay.”
Except for low airfare, the trip had noth-
ing going for it: wrong season, no advance
planning and a one-week time limit. It
would be our 14-year-old son Max’s first
visit to California, and I worried his first
impression of this iconic city would be one
of pervasive fog.

I’d discounted, however, one advantage:
expert advice. For the past 15-plus years,
San Francisco-based friends have shared
their apartment keys and California know-
how. Felicia, an emergency-room doctor,
is an avid Yosemite hiker who recently
returned from a 16-day adven-
ture on the John Muir Trail.

Her husband, Barry Beach, an
artist and art professor, is the
biggest San Francisco foodie I
know. And Robert Strong, who
grew up in Frederick County, is
a comedian-magician-performer and Ted
Talk-er whose phone never stops ringing.

My husband and I call him “the mayor” for
his knowledge of everyone and everything in
San Francisco. With these friends in mind,
I bought the tickets. The following local
advice guided our spontaneous trip.

Think Outside the Square
We lost the option of crashing for free
in San Francisco when our friends
reluctantly assumed that mantle of