Hi guys!
For Lee's birthday, we did part one of the legendary SF Cross Town Trail!
It was pretty neat. A few of Lee's friends came with us. It turned out to be very nice weather and a great day to hike. We took a lyft to Candlestick Park and began out on a peninsula in the bay, on a wooden dock in fact!
Then we hiked along the water and explored a broken dock and old boat that was broken in half. The trail cut inland and we walked through some neat old neighborhoods Lee and I had never seen.
About 30 mins in we came across a coffee shop that was made for Cross Town Trail hikers! It had a sign in the window that welcomed Cross Town hikers and they were selling t-shirts and hats with the CrossTown symbol on them. They also had a sign that said "Complimentary banana and water refill for any hikers"! Wow! Lee and I ate the complimentary banana! Lee's friends had lavendar lattes that had little sprigs of lavendar clothespinned to the cups with tiny clothespins, what!
Then we went through a series of amazing gardens in Visitacion Valley that wound up through a neighborhood. I guess it's a "green belt." The final one was a locked garden that we were supposed to hike around... but Lee jokingly tried to pick the lock and succeeded to everyone's amazement! (It was a lock dial with letters and the password was "DIRT" so Lee felt very proud of herself. The letters "IRT" were already there though... so it wasn't that crazy. But all the Spelling Bee training certainly helped.) So we got to see that cool garden first-hand.
At the top of the greenbelt, we walked off trail to a neat overlook to take in the view. There was an old hippie-type house covered in art nearby. The garage door opened and a tiny old lady with long gray dreadlocks emerged. She said "Are you CrossTown Trail hikers?" and we said yes. Then she told us really cool stories of how she helped save the green belt land and all about the history of this neighborhood and valley. Being big SF history buffs, Lee and I were so excited! She could sense our excitement and told us more about how the original owner of the house was one of 3 lady psychiatrists in SF in the 1940s. And she was the first to say that being gay wasn't a mental illness. Wow!
The lady, who calls herself Opal Minded, took us into her garden, which was full of old burningman sculptures and cool art everywhere. Around the corner was a 13th Century giant sleeping Buddha statue from Thailand- WHAT!
Opal couldn't believe our enthusiasm so she then took us inside her "famous" house and showed us the adobe arch built in the 1800s as a fort and the wooden ceiling made from the timber of old gold rush ships. Opal was a wealth of ancient SF lore and it's crazy that we just happened to stumble her way and meet her. Now she and Lee are friends on facebook, hoo!
The trail wound up to a cool high point, McLaren Park. The views were awesome and then we wound down through a bunch of neat woods. There were lots of turtle statues along the way that we played on.
We got to cross a giant highway through a neat bridge fence thing. Then through the neat houses of Glen Park. The first section was only 5 miles, but we did it very leisurely (with an Opal detour) so it took us 4 hours. We got celebratory tacos and the taco lady only charged Lee for 2 tacos (instead of 3) because it was her birthday! Hooray!
Lee put some pics up on nibstagram because I was too lazy to deal with imgur:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B7PJd-6BQ7I/
Anysneech, can't wait to explore the other 12 miles of trail!
What a neat birthday adventure!