Gary-Summer: December 6, 2023 - Walk to Golden Gate Park

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

December 6, 2023 - Walk to Golden Gate Park

Title: December 6, 2023 - Walk to Golden Gate Park
Hike Info : Description : Trail Lessons : Background : : Extra Photo's

Hike Info:

Type: Walking

Trail head: Cow Hollow Inn

Trail: Various streets in San Francisco

Destination: Golden Gate Park

Distance: 8.65 miles

Start Time: 10:22

End Time: 5:22

Travel Time: 6:59 (1.24 mph)

Moving Time: 4:02 (2.14 mph)

Elevation Rise: 1,319'

Descent: 1,244‘

Maximum Elevation: 422'

GPS Tracks

Inside St Vincent de Paul

Description:

I did get a good night’s sleep and even slept in until 7:30. But there are a couple of knocks on our room at Cow Hollow Inn. First, even though we have a room which is quieter than being on Lombard St, we still could hear vehicles such as a siren, cars without mufflers, and a garbage truck. The second is that I think that in order to make a king-size bed, they combined a couple twins. This makes for a really good sized bed, but there is a high spot in the middle which makes it hard to snuggle with your wife. Still, I slept well.

Cow Hollow does not serve breakfast-we knew this coming here. So a bag of granola was brought and a carton of almond milk. I do not know how satisfactory this is for Sherri, buy for me, this is my usual breakfast. I make our usual peanut butter and Nutella sandwich. But Sherri has half of her sandwich left from yesterday, So she will also take that.

St Vincent de Paul Catholic Church

We leave our room at 9:40. The first thing we do is to go down a block to drop some cards at the Post Office. Then it is back over to Stenier St where we start our climb. We come to a Catholic Church which Sherri has read about, St Vincent de Paul. It is open, so we go in and admire the stained glass windows. I forget who said this about churches, particularly those of older style: the construction is made so there is a focal point. Not the speaker in front, but beyond that, Christ in the stained glass. That is how I see this. The apostles and the early church fathers are shown, but our eyes only look at them, but are drawn forward.

View from Alta Park

After leaving the church, I asked Sherri what she was thinking about when she was in the church. The beauty of the windows was the reply. Besides the thought I said above I was thinking about what makes a walk and what makes a walk a pilgrimage. I think that appreciation of the beauty of the place gets done in the head. But a pilgrim's heart is what gets affected by going to places like St Vincent de Paul. It moves from appreciation of beauty to a yearning of closeness with God.

Almost to Lone Mountain Stairway

Now my mind returns to the task at hand-the climb up Steiner. I realize I had not turned on my GPS, so we lose a couple hundred feet of elevation gain and a quarter mile of travel. And that travel is steep, real steep. This takes something out of me, and I think Sherri. But at the top is Alta Park and a good view of the City. It is pleasant up here, a bit windy, but still pleasant.

Our next objective is Lone Mountain. To get there, we will need to walk about a mile. Nothing as steep as Steiner, still there is a fair amount of up, and down. The final approach to Lone Mountain is still steep, but manageable. This gives us our first stairway. This one seems rather ordinary. No mural, no hedges, just a long walkway to Rossi Park. But according to the book, we should have gone to the top of Lone Mountain. From there we would have had a view of Alcatraz to the east and far to the west. But I think doing that would have just knocked us out.

From Rossi, it is a straight walk into the Golden Gate Park

Sherri playing with sound and color

. The hills have been punishing to us and we are tiring. We stop in front of the Conservancy of Flowers. It is closed, but there are benches in front of it. So we stop and have our lunch. At the end of lunch, the rain starts. After going about a hundred yards I realized I had left my bandana on the bench. Back I go, with Sherri waiting in the rain.

By this time, the rain is pretty steady and we think about hanging out at the California Academy of Science. The entrance fee is pretty steep, but maybe getting a membership will force us to get up to the City more often. It turns out with a senior membership, I can bring anybody in, including Sherri. So we get one. We just need to come one more time to get beyond break even.

Macaws in Rainforest

The idea was to take shelter in this place and maybe spend a couple of hours exhibits. And that is what we started to do. We wandered around some of the natural history areas. Some of it was showing fishes such as the blunt nose rays and other more visual fishes from the top. Then there was an exhibit showing how color and sound inhabited the natural world. What got me mesmerized, like it did when I was a child was the Foucault Pendulum. A docent explained that this was not the one I saw as a child, but it got restored due to popular demand.

It was still raining, so we looked a bit more and saw a domed exhibit. What caught my eye was the word Osher, like the lifelong learning classes I take. But this had to do with a rainforest exhibit. This is not a sophisticated stationary stuffed animal in a colored walled box. No! This you entered into a very large glass living forest, compete with macaws and butterflies and who knows what else. Temperature was in the mid 80’s with a 70-80% humidity. The environment was so green. The pathway snaked around the domed area, rising up through the various levels of the forest canopy till we were over it, looking down. The large blue butterfies would fly right up to you, circle you and fly off. I took awhile to get a good picture. This was truly mesmerizing-I know I have used that word earlier, but this topped my earlier infatuation.

Bluntnose Ray

Exiting the dome took us down to below the domed area into Steinhart Aquarium. There were fishes of course. The areas were separated out by various geographical environments. We were particularly interested in the California coastal area. More life is out there than I thought. This somehow transitioned into venomous creatures, particularly of California.

When we exited, the rain had stopped and we still had miles to go to return back to our room. There was a bit of weariness to our step. So we attempted our route to have the least amount of climbing. But being San Francisco that can be said easier than accomplished.

Getting out of Golden Gate Park I got turned around. But checking with our expert, Google Maps, I discover that I am taking a left turn instead of a right. Backtracking a hundred feet puts us traveling down 8th St. We follow this street for a ways. This is a good change of pace for us, at least not too much elevation change. We are slowing down a bit. As much as being in the Academy was a break, we were not refreshed, if anything, we are more tired.

Then as we are plodding up a hill, it starts to rain. Then we turn down a steep downhill and the skies open up, with a steady stream going fast by our feet. We decided to step under an overhanging front door’s alcove for protection. We wait for ten minutes and the rain lightens up.

Rain in Golden Gate Park

We have been making our way to the top of the Lyon Street Stairs. We know this more as “Cindy and Kay” Stairs as they were in the City over the Summer and showed some pictures of it on Facebook. These stairs are long and amazing. They are right beside the eastern boundary of the Presidio, leading down to the edge of Cow Hollow. There are homes right beside the stairs with hedges and gardens lining it. The only thing missing are flowers blooming filling the area with fragrance.

I am tiring even with this being a downhill section. I hang onto the stairway rails for stability. Even on my best days, looking down a long flight of stairs leaves me a little unstable. When we made it down, there was a sense of relief.

The end of the stairs is at a cul-de-sac. Even though there are no stairs here, it is a steep downhill. We navigate this successfully and then find a street just off of Lombard. We go down it until we reach our hotel.

Sherri coming down Lyon St Stairs

By the time, we are in our room, we are exhausted and lay down to rest. After an hour of getting close to being a zombie, we decide to figure out what we want to eat. Italian sounds good and there is a place next store to us: Ristoria Palma. We went down and found an empty store front. Sherri wants to check out the restaurant next door: Isa. as it turns out it cuisine is Mediterranean Cal-French, heavy into sea food. Neither of us are into sea food.

But the owner is very friendly and comes out and talks with us as we look over his menu. He understands our tastes and describes several other local restaurants. Maybe tomorrow night. But tonight, we just want something safe and go across the street to Amici’s. We were here last time when Andrea ran her 50K run. We enjoyed our meal and were satisfied.

Afterwards we retired to our room and watched the Golden State Warriors game on TV. We had thought about attending in person, but we would have been in the nose-bleed seats. We could see better on TV. After the Warriors won the game, we turn in. It has been a long tiring day and at 10:00 I am turning into a pumpkin.

Trail Lesson: Not all miles are the same.

Background

Book: Stairway Walks in San Francisco by Mary Burk with Adah Bakalinsky

Amici: Amici’s is a restaurant we visited often in Mountain View and once here. He serves good food with good sized servings at a reasonable price. The service was very good and close to our hotel.

California Academy of Science: This place has the WOW! factor going for it. We spent most of our time in the OSHER Rainforest, being mesmerized by the butterflies which seemed to want to be friends with us. There is so much more to see there than this which we did not explore. Being of that age, we got a senior membership which made the pricing pretty acceptable and will enable us to return several times.

Extra Photo's