Friday 8/25/17
Time to move on
and leave Pt. Reyes behind. I had enjoyed my stay and could easily see myself coming back here again some time.
I’ll just double check the trail guides the next time. I would have liked to get closer to the
waterfall and there was something referred to as “the arch” in one of the trail
guides.
I pulled out of
Gilbert and Elizabeth’s driveway bright and early. Next stop San
Francisco…eventually. First stop was a place in downtown Pt. Reyes called
Toby’s for some coffee. Yes, it does
come back in the narrative.
A long time ago I
discovered a morning cup of coffee and a walk on the beach just seem to fit
together. With that thought I drove out
to Limantour Beach. It’s a quick walk
from the parking lot across a shallow march to the beach.
It was long past
sunrise and there was way too much coastal fog anyway. So, I walked out with my coffee in hand and
camera slung over my shoulder. I met two
older women coming back from the beach and we got to chatting. They asked where I bought my coffee. I told
them Toby’s. They get theirs from a
place called Bovine Bakery. They told me “,the coffee sucks, but the pastries
are delicious.”
The only other
people on the beach were from the Parks Service. They were studying the nests of the
endangered Western Snowy Plover and seemed happy with that they were
seeing. What they were unhappy about
were the unleashed dogs on the beach despite the signs posted in the parking lot and along the path to the beach. .
With the coffee
finished it was time to go. I worked my
day out of the park and back onto Hwy 1 due south. Everything was fine until I hit Stinson
Beach. The road was closed due to a rock slide.
I don’t especially like detours, and found myself zigzagging along a
mountain road for quite a while before finally finding my way back to Hwy 1.
Just before the
Bay Bridge into San Francisco, there’s an exit that takes you up to a series of overlooks of the
bridge and the city. There were no open
spaces as I drove by. When I turned
around and drove back, it seemed obvious I wasn’t going to see anything from
the furthest two overlooks. The fog was
just way too thick to see anything but a wall of white.
The overlook closest to the bridge sits on what was once Battery Spencer. The original battery was placed here in 1910 as part of the city's defenses. During WW1 some of the guns were taken out to be sent to Europe to support the fighting there. The remaining guns were removed during WWII to help feed the need for scrap metal.
The view from the bridge overlook wasn't quite what I expected. But, it was still well worth the effort.
Hwy 1 became 19th Avenue across the bridge and it was an easy time finding my sister's cross street. A few blocks late and there I was, the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center. My sister is a swami here and when she's not running the place she's teaching classes on yoga, meditation, nutrition and restoring the body's balance. I met some of the staff and a few students. It's hard to describe, but there's just a certain serenity to the place.
It's an amazing facility. While it's on a side street, it's still pretty busy outside. But, you can feel the calm atmosphere as soon as you walk in the door. She tells me deliverymen have stopped by to drop off packages, left and come back to comment on it.
Lunch was a delicious assortment of traditional southern Indian dishes I'll admit I had never heard of before. Lots of flavor and simply delicious.
After lunch we took a walk around the neighborhood, stopping into a Chinese run Italian ice cream place. The menu speaks for itself.
I had a scoop of chocolate mocha and one scoop of sesame which was very good, though an odd gray color. We also wandered into Pine Lake Park, a deeply bowl shaped park surrounded by thick trees. Midday it's mostly walkers and people using the dog park. But, on Sunday afternoons in the summer it's the site of the Stern Grove Festival, a series of outdoor concerts.
We checked the
weather around the Bay Bridge and some places said fog while others said it was
clearing. So, as dusk approached, we
took a drive north to Marina Avenue and around to Fort Point. The first fort was built on the site in 1794 by Spain to keep the British out. Mexico won its independence in 1821 and took control of the fort. In 1845 it was captured by U.S. troops and the canons spiked during the Mexican American War. The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers rebuilt the fort in 1853 to protect the city during the suddenly booming gold rush. It was manned during the Civil War but was never needed. Thirty years later the out of date guns were removed and sold for scrap.
The fort became a barracks, a storage facility and a military prison. Considering how much shipping came in and out of San Francisco during WWII, it's armament was updated and replaced. It was also a barracks for those manning the three minefields outside the harbor and the anti-submarine net inside the harbor.
Today it’s a national historic site and sits at the northern end of the
bay bridge.
You couldn’t
really see much with the fog and fading light and there didn’t seem to be that
much traffic on the water. It was just
the two of us, a fisherman and the blast of the fort’s foghorn every twenty
seconds.
One last stop to make. Ordinarily I wouldn't bother mentioning a stop at the grocery store. But, my sister was looking for something out of the ordinary, so we stopped into a place called the Rainbow Grocery. They specialize in vegetarian and organic foods. I was just taking it all in. There was just something intriguing and about the rich mixtures of new smells. Interesting place for sure.
Coming Up on Day 16,
We go searching for a punchline and it evades us all
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