A Weekend Exploration

Saturday morning…unless I have to work, it’s one of those days where there’s a lot of lazing around to recharge the jets from the week. Last Saturday, Julie asked if I wanted to hike along the Devil’s Slide area along an old section of Highway 1. I had read in the paper where they converted that section of highway into a bike and pedestrian trail a while back, and Julie remembered me talking about it and asked if I wanted to take a hike. Why not! So off we went.

First off, the Devil’s Slide area was one of the most treacherous bit of roadway in California. Lots of traffic accidents and quite a few rock slides that would close the road for weeks. It was a mess, and so Representative Tom Lantos was able to get some money from the Feds (about $450 million) to build tunnels and a bridge to bypass Devil’s Slide — which looks like this:

We went through the tunnels to find the trail head to Devil’s Slide, but overshot the exit and had to double back. Well, we got lucky and found parking and proceeded to take our walk. It’s a hilly bit of roadway with grades reaching 9% in some areas (I think it was steeper, but the signs were saying 9%, so I guess it was 9%). We stopped off to take a couple of selfies near one of the drop offs — which had a nice ocean view.

As we were walking back, Julie noticed a rather large tree growing out of a cliff:

Here’s a larger view:

A park ranger was there and pointed out a couple of hawks near the tree. Apparently, the hawks haven’t been in that area in a while, so it was exciting for the ranger to see them. Also, because the highway was there for so long, the birds in the area were accustomed to the traffic noise. However, now that there are only people walking around there, the birds are kind of freaked out by human sounds, so there are signs asking people not to yell out — which, you know, people do because they can be jerks.

Later, I asked Julie to stop off and look contemplative as she was looking at the ocean, and here’s what I got.

After our hike, we drove into the City and while trying to get to the Golden Gate Bridge, we stopped off at Sutro Heights Park (which is right above The Cliff House). We lived in San Francisco for years, but never went to that park (Honestly, I had no idea there was a park up there, but Julie did). It has some great views of Ocean Beach:

And one of the Cliff House:

We got stuck on Highway 1 near the Sea Cliff section of the City (where there are some really nice houses). Traffic was just gridlocked, and we stuck it out until there was another road that would take us to another approach to the bridge. Now, I should have known better than to try to cross the Golden Gate Bridge on a weekend because every tourist wants to do that on the weekends. But I thought I’d get lucky. Nope. We found our way back to the Bay Bridge and headed home — where Julie made a very nice halibut dinner (and yes, the halibut was good enough for Jehovah).

Overall, a very relaxing and fun day. Where was Maya this whole time? Well, she was in New York with her grandparents enjoying her high school graduation gift from them. Her gift was to spend time in a city of her choosing for a few days with them, so she chose New York City. Now she wants to move there, but only if Julie and I move there, too. Who knows, maybe in a couple of years, we’ll be NYC bound. I doubt it, but it’s not like we haven’t lived on the east coast before.