It’s Guest Blogger, Molly, again! Meagan, Chrissy, Michelle and I planned on having dinner at the Bean Bag Café to catch up and hang out. Meagan and I needed to get some more hikes in, so we planned a SF Beer Week Hike Part 2 to hit all the bars we didn’t the first time around. We had a 6 mile route planned, but the actual hike was going to depend on Meagan’s poison oak and how far she could comfortably walk. Guess the poison oak was feeling really lazy, so it called upon a skin infection to break Meagan out in hives and send her to emergency care. SF Beer Week Hike Part 2: Cancelled.
The three of us met for dinner anyways, which was quite tasty. Afterwards, Michelle left to go back to work (boo) but, we had a few hours before Chrissy had to go to a concert at the Independent, so we started a crawl of our own. We walked a block south on Divis to Madrone, where we both had a beer and enjoyed people watching (strange people in shorts and wasted wobbly people at 7pm). After hydrating at Madrone, we geared up for our arduous 4 block walk to Candybar. We walked in, but weren’t feeling the wine and cheese plate vibe, so we moved on. We hiked another block to Bar 821, which would end up being our final destination.
Hike #9.5: short, but sweet.
Lessons learned: every 0.003 miles counts, as Meagan so succinctly texted us from emergency care
Flora and Fauna: brown sugar cubes at Bar 821 look like croutons, but why would croutons be sitting in a bowl at a bar?
Location: San Francisco (SOMA, Mission, Lower Haight)
Distance: 6 miles (planned…actual – much, much shorter)
Entry fee: $0
Stop #1 - Anchor and Hope
Hello to the Meggawho Blogosphere! Molly here guest blogging for Hike #9, which Meagan unfortunately missed. Be nice, I’m an engineer by profession and haven’t written much since college, so bear with me. I’ll do my best to be as witty and informative as Meagan.
I received an email from a friend informing me that SF Beer Week was happening and we decided that it would be a great theme for an urban hike. For once, we planned our route early enough to have a bunch of friends join us. Everything was set until the very last minute when Meagan had to leave early for Santa Cruz and nurse her poison oak butt. However, that didn’t stop the rest of us from foraging on ahead without our fearless leader! Allie and I got out of work early, so we decided to add the Anchor and Hope event to the hike. I started the crawl with a delicious Czech Pilsner that has been brewed in since 1008.
To-Go-Cups
Next, we walked to City Beer Store – a fun little place with a wide selection of bottled beer that you can buy beers for either to go, or you can pay a fee and enjoy it right in the store. Next, we were set to meet Meagan’s replacement, Paul, at Rosamunde in the Mission…and since we thought we were in a hurry to meet him there,we decided to skip this leg of the walk and cab it over. Here, we had a specially tapped Stone IPA that I paired with my beer sausage dinner. Deeeelish. After fueling up at Rosamunde, we noticed our walk to Toronado was quite far and decided to get a beer to go. At the next corner store we got a Bud Light tall boy, which we split into the To-Go cups that Allie so thoughtful brought with her from work. But, after a few blocks of walking and the tall boy almost gone, we hopped into a cab.
Toronado ended up being the designated meeting place for a few more friends, which was great, but kinda derailed the remaining two stops on our hike. Oh well. While at Toronado, the Edel-Weiss beers were flowing and we started to miss our blogger extraordinaire. So, with the aid of my awesome and handy Droid, we sent her a series of photos and texts so she wouldn’t miss out.
Having FunBut sad at the same time (we missed you, Meagan!)
Hike #8: failure on actually “hiking,” but a success in enjoying delicious beers for SF Beer week
Lessons learned: without Meagan, I’m pretty lazy and can be talked out of actually “hiking” on an urban hike
Flora and Fauna: allie f, paul h, chrissy, allie c, ferg, carl, brian, and paul b: awesome friends to have beers with on a Friday night.
So that “rapidly escalating” case of poison oak from the second Mt. Tam hike has spread to my leg, side, and back, and is now a full-blown skin infection (I know, disgusting…that phrase comes in a (distant) second to mucus plug for words that should never be next to each other.) I am on steroids, antibiotics, benedryl…blah blah…anyway, point being, wearing clothes and walking really irritates everything. My condition has already postponed two scheduled urban hikes…so we are officially on hold until further notice. (This is especially disappointing because the past 10 days have been Beer Week in San Francisco, so we missed out on some awesome microbrews and presentations and tastings.) Oh well.
Because she is such a good friend, Molly will be guest blogging to cover a few hikes that I was scheduled to participate in but couldn’t attend. MOLLY ROCKS
While spending the weekend in Santa Cruz with Emily and Ashley, two of my closest friends from high school, I figured it might be a good time to knock out a hike in the area. Despite a rapidly escalating case of poison oak, I figured a short, flat stroll outdoors on wide, paved roads, far away from any questionable foliage with some old friends might be a nice way to spend the weekend.
Not entirely what happened. It would be misleading to say we did this hike as described in the book. We definitely went hiking in the Henry Cowell Redwood State Park, but our hike was 8 miles (not 4), the grade was pretty steep in some areas (not “steady and mostly downhill”), we never made it to the observation deck (despite convincing ourselves that we had), and half the time the river was on our left when it should have been on our right.
How did this happen? There are many theories. Ashley blamed the book. Emily blamed the guide (me). I kind of blamed Ashley, because I was under the impression that she had done the hike before (sorry Ash) and because I lacked any other defensible rationale for our situation.
About 10 minutes into the hike we (read: I) reference the book and see that, though we have apparently walked the right distance and are in the right location, the river is on our left instead of our right. So we are walking the wrong direction. Weird.
Oh, well…we turn around and continue walking another mile or two following what we believe is the right trail despite the fact that we a.) are not seeing any white, sandy trails as described in the book (we blame the rain and mud and point to some white rocks on the side of the trail…”yeah, see? there’s the white sand!”), b.) have yet to see the name of the trail we are supposed to be walking along on any trailhead post (we blame the book/trailheads being outdated), and c.) had long since passedthe mileage marker for the observation deck according to Emily’s pedometer.
Almost 3 miles in we come across a small clearing with a bench that looks out over the valley all the way down to Santa Cruz. “The observation deck!” we cry, wanting so badly to believe we are going the right way that we ignore the fact that there is absolutely no deck whatsoever near these benches, no “360 view” of Santa Cruz, and that there is a hill rising up behind us when the book says this deck is located on the highest summit in the area.
From here things became even less logical…we decided to take a detour (some people were getting bored with the paved road) and, going off of our location on the map (which wasn’t our real location at all), start down a muddy hill towards the river, thinking it would take us back to the car. Wrong. Dead ends into fallen trees and the rushing river. There are beware of mountain lion signs everywhere, which has Emily nervous. I pick up a big stick and start swinging it around to protect us as we walk. Back up the hill. Back to the fireroad which takes us to…a major thoroughfare, where a nice gentleman shows us that we have actually strayed so far south that we are now off the map entirely.
Long story short (too late), 5 miles later we made it back to the car.
Hike #8: failure. But good times anyway. And we saw a really cool huge bright yellow banana slug. Those things never get old.
Lessons learned: don’t give me the map
Flora and Fauna: blackberry bush (which I kept confusing with poison oak)
This hike yielded some of the best flora and fauna to date. And some of the most awesome views. I am falling in love with Mt Tam.
Molly and I had originally planned to do the Cataract Falls hike in the same area. We underestimated, however, the level of fun we would have the night before at Chrissy’s 29th birthday celebration (which started out at La Trappe…we should have known better). So after a late start to the day and taking into account the puke probability, a 7 mile “moderate” hike did not sound appealing…or even really possible. So we settled for the shorter, easier Phoenix Lake.
After driving through much of Marin (yes, we may have gotten lost on the way there), we pulled up to a line of cars waiting for a parking spot. Wtf. Lesson one: if you plan to do this hike, get there early. We only ended up waiting about 5 minutes (during which we ate about half the birthday cupcakes we had baked for Chrissy the day before…we had them in the car with the good intention of delivering them on the way home. Guess what didn’t happen.) Anyway, we finally parked and got our hike on.
Chrissy's cupcakes
The fireroad at the early part of the hike has relatively heavy traffic…the area is very popular with mountain bikers, and the very beginning of the fireroad is full of families and dogs and people just enjoying a nice stroll around the lake. Once you break off the fireroad onto Yolanda trail (which, surprise, we missed on the first flyby and had to backtrack to find), it empties out.
The first half of this hike is AWESOME. To begin with, the day was beautiful. The recent rain meant that all of the brooks and streams and waterfalls were flowing, and that the moss and mushrooms were all out and sporing (or whatever it is they do) making everything look soft and fuzzy and bright green and surreal.
We saw tons of birds (humming birds, robins, hawks, vultures–which freaked Molly out) and some really amazing views of the peak of Mt. Tam. We also identified a few flowers and plants, including the invasive broom (duh duh duh) and bluedicks (I’m not going to say anything in case my parents read this site).
Once you complete that part of the loop, you hit the fireroad again and, after about 300 yards, branch off into what is essentially a small redwood forest. While this part of the hike was less exciting (partially because we’ve spent a decent amount of time in redwood forests, partially because we were ready to get back to the car and eat more cupcakes) it was here that we saw some of our more exciting fauna, including: a huge banana slug (which, did you know, can weigh up to a quarter pound), and what we thought was a salamander but is actually a coast range newt.
(For all of you out there wondering what distinguishes a salamander from a newt…and I know you are….a newt is actually the common name for certain members of a family of relatively small salamanders.)
banana turd
Hike #7: hungover success! I know I said this about the last Mt Tam hike, but I really think THIS one might be my favorite so far.
Lessons learned: all newts are salamanders, but not all salamanders are newts
This hike borders on too short to be a hike, but considering the fact that it is
a.) on dirt trails
b.) requires you to climb some hills, and
c.) has some really spectacular views
I decided to count it. This is a perfect hike if you would like some fantastic viewage of the Bay and want to feel like you are in Nature…all while being a stone’s throw from 19th Ave.
Somebody had said that doing this hike at night during a full moon is really awesome. So on Saturday, with a break in the rain and the biggest full moon of the year on the docket, we decided that would be a perfect night to do just that.
Unfortunately, due to poor planning on our part, we arrived just after sunset and the moon didn’t crest the first hill until we were almost back at the place that we parked our car. So we did most of the hike in pitch black with no flashlights…which had the potential to be dangerous (lots of steps to trip on and cliffs to walk off of.) But we survived without major incident and even made the trip down to the cove rock beach, which was very cool (even in the dark) and got a good look at the stars (and thanks to the Google Sky app on Molly’s Droid, IDed a bunch of constellations.)
Once we rounded the final corner of the bay on our way back, the moon was indeed out and very, very bright. It lit up the bay over the bridge, making for an amazing panoramic that our wimpy little cameras simply could not capture.
Hike #6: a short success. I would like to go back and re-do it during the day.
Lessons learned: The reason pirates wore eye patches is so they could run below deck, switch their patch over to the other eye, and be able to see without a lantern, not because they had missing eyes (courtesy of Molly)
Flora and Fauna: Cassiopeia, Orion, Pleiades, Mars, Jupiter (I know, technically stars and planets aren’t flora or fauna….but it was dark out)
Location: San Francsico (Lower Pac Heights, Castro)
Distance: 6 miles
Entry fee: $0
Molly knew about the Seward Slides and neither of us had been before, so we figured it might be a good urban destination to check out before work one morning. We rose bright and early this morning (like, really effing early) for this hike. We met at Molly’s apartment at 5:15 (yes, A.M) and set off down California Street to hit a few local landmarks along the way.
The first landmark was the Atherton House. This place is apparently haunted by 4 ghosts, one of which is George Atherton, the owner, who died in Chile and whose body was shipped in a barrel of rum back to San Francisco for proper burial. Gross.
Next we stopped by Cottage Row, a historical row of TREA Victorians designed by William Hollis in the 1860s. It was pretty cool, there is even a little park in there, but we felt a little weird lurking outside of strangers houses in the dark at 5am taking pictures. So we quickly moved along to Castro Camera, the shop that Harvey Milk first bought when he arrived in SF which later became his campaign headquarters (today it’s a gift shop.)
Around the corner from Castro Camera a few blocks down is the Alfred E Clarke mansion. This building enormous and totally schizophrenic, with one side looking like an old victorian, the other like a baroque castle. (I don’t know anything about architecture, I had to look that up.) But really, this is a very cool building, worth checking out if you’re in the neighborhood.
From there up a steep hill and down Seward Street to the slides. We had heard so much about the slide troll and how awful the neighbors were…and there are signs that the park is closed sunrise to sunset (at this point it was about 6:30…so the sun wasn’t quite up) that we were a little paranoid about making too much noise and didn’t even fully enjoy the slide experience, which was a shame. We’ll have to go back.
So, with the sun rising, we walked along Market back up to Castro. Molly was hauling.
Hike #5: anticlimactic. Though it was nice to get a little walk in before work. Made it home by 7:15, just in time to see Paul off to his first day of work.
Lessons learned: uuhhh…San Francisco has haunted mansions?
Flora and Fauna: no slide troll, which we considered a success. And we saw a few pugs.
Distance: 4.7 miles (if you don’t get lost…for us, ~7 miles. you can see where this is going.)
Entry fee: $0
Three of us set out for this hike early to make it home in time for the NFL playoffs. We got to the parking lot at the trailhead and I…promptly locked the keys in the car.
After finding out it would take the tow truck almost an hour to make it into the boonies and get my keys out, we decided to head across the aptly-named Panoramic Highway to the Mountain Home Inn for some coffee. Everyone was really happy with me.
An hour later we finally started hiking. The trail (which was built by the boyscouts in 1931) almost immediately leads into some pretty dense foliage. It was raining on and off the whole time, but the area was so wooded there were times that we barely noticed.
On the trail there are groves of baby redwoods, a lot of weird looking moss, waterfalls and streams, colorful mushrooms…it really is an awesome hike to do in the winter. But get ready to get muddy. There are a lot of things that will tempt you to test your physical prowess. Like:
Tall trees:
Sideways trees:
Fallen trees:
…and branches suspended over ravines:
After about 2 hours Paul was starting to get antsy about making it home in time for the second game (we already had to sacrifice the first one because of the later start). According to the book we had only gone 3.3 miles…it kind of felt longer, but since no one had an pedometer we really had no idea. (As Molly put it, it felt like we were in a mileage warp). After following a short stretch of the Muir Woods trail (which was amazing) we hit the Lost Trail, which we knew was the last section of the hike and only about 1 mile from the finish line. Finally, we had a sense of security about where we were and how much further we had to go. Enter: poor trail markings.
We BOOKED IT up some serious inclines, ready to be back at the car and get some food. About halfway up the Lost Trail we hit an ambiguous clearing. We paused for a second, considered a few options, then without much discussion continued hiking aggressively down what we thought was the right trail. After 15 minutes, when we hadn’t seen the landmark that we were supposed to hit 0.3 miles after the clearing, I began to suspect that this “mileage warp” may be intrinsically linked to our inability to read a map. 20 minutes after the ambiguous clearing we ran into another hiker, who confirmed that yes, we had in fact been walking as fast as we could downhill for 20 minutes in the wrong direction. Turn around. 20 more minutes back uphill to the clearing. From there another 10 minutes steep uphill to the actual end of the trail. Goddammit.
Hike #4: quasi-success (to be honest, in my opinion, this was the best hike we’ve had so far…if we didn’t spend a good portion of it feeling and being lost, it would have been even better)
This is a fantastic hike if you don’t want to go too far outside the city (only about 20 min away) and are up for a little exercise but nothing obscenely strenuous. Exceptionally stunning views, lots of interesting vegetation.
Lessons Learned: bring a pedometer if you are on a tight schedule
Flora and Fauna: we saw a redwood that had sprouted a new trunk about 90 feet off the ground (this happens when the tops of redwoods break off as they mature. More info here.) It was pretty cool.
Location: San Francisco, CA (Pac Heights, The Marina, North Beach)
Distance: 5 miles
Entry fee: $0
Blisters: 2
This whole week it has been POURING, which has really put a damper (ha) on our ability to do any serious hiking. So on Thursday Molly and I decided we were going to brave the rain and set out on Urban Hike #1 (still trying to come up with a good name for it.) Decked out in rain gear and galoshes, we started out at my apartment, heading over Divisadero, through the Marina, up to Aquatic Park and North Beach, and finished up by the TransAmerica building in the Financial District. Because the weather was so bad, we decided we should probably take shelter periodically to avoid getting too cold and, you know, pneumonia.
Fish Bowl--stop 1
First shelter we found was the Fish Bowl, ~.6 miles from my home. I actually met Molly there. She was alone at the bar.
We made our way over Divis without much trouble. Molly demonstrated some of her x-treme hiking technique, but my camera is apparently not extreme enough to fully capture the skill involved at night in the rain.
DONAHUE'S!--stop 2
Though this wasn’t an originally scheduled stop on our trip, our spontaneous break at Donahue’s in the Marina turned out to be (not surprisingly, look at the name) one of the best of the night. We made a ton of new white, slightly overweight, middle-aged male friends and got some free drinks from the owner, Tommy Donahue. Sully, the bartender, also provided me with a few Donahue coasters. We’ll be going back.
Next we stopped by Ghirardelli Square to see the gazebo that Molly designed. It was VERY cool and made me feel like I have accomplished little in life, you should go see it. Or maybe even sit in it.
We also made a visit to the Buena Vista cafe, where the first Irish Coffee was made. Who knew. Molly’s roommate, Laura, met us there. She joined us for the remaining 1.3 miles.
La Trappe -- stop 4 (hydrating before recreating)
1.8 miles after Donahue’s we made a stop at La Trappe for a little taste of Belgium. The night quickly deteriorated from there.
We arrived Vesuvio, our final destination, about 2 blocks up the street from the Trans America building (on the left), just in time for me to catch a cab home and (almost) make my 10pm bedtime goal.
Urban hike #1: success…though we may need to readjust the bar:mile ratio for the next one.
Molly imitating art at Vasuvio -- stop 6
Lessons learned: the first Irish coffee wasn’t made in Ireland, hiking 5 miles in galoshes isn’t as bad as you would think, Molly should model
Rambulatory Ambulatory 
