16 February 2013 - San Francisco

Here I am in San Francisco, spending a weekend with my sister. I arrived Friday evening, so we could start bright and early Saturday. Over breakfast we decided to go walk the Lands End Coastal Trail-- or at least part of it.  But as usual, things didn't go quite as planned. Driving along the shoreline toward the Golden Gate Bridge we saw the fire boat was not only right in front of Alcatraz but was shooting off all the water cannons. This is really a beautiful thing to see. It makes the boat look like a butterfly. 

We pulled into the first available parking spot, grabbed our cameras and ran. We were trying to decide what was happening that would make the fire boat show up in full honor mode. 

We saw a three masted schooner and another large sailboat near by, but couldn't see any reason for all the fanfare. Turns out the the large sailboat was an Italian boat that just completed a record time sailing from New York to San Francisco. He beat the previous record by 10 days, and was even more gratified because the previous record holder was from France.The schooner was full of people cheering him on.



We watched until the fire boat quit flowering then continued on our way to Lands End. I mentioned that if we found a place to stop, I wouldn't mind a bathroom. Robin pulls a quick lane change, an even quicker turn and pulls into the Legion of Honor parking lot while explaining that she has a membership through the art museum and that we can get in free. 

Oh my! Classy! Once in the Legion of Honor, you can't just use the facilities and leave, so we walked through several of the exhibits. It was amazing!  An hour later we were back in the car once again heading toward Lands End. 


Lands End is on northwest side of SF. The trail starts at the ruins of the Sutro Baths and wanders north from high rocky cliffs down to equally rocky beaches and through dense wooded areas and flowering hillsides. Lovely!

 

 In its heyday, the Sutro Baths were a destination. The buildings housed
seven swimming pools, 100 private dressing rooms, a concert hall, a skating rink and a museum. 

It must have been a wonderous place.  I would have loved to see it in all its glory. The picture of the Sutro Baths (above) is very  reminiscent of Saltair which also had a ballroom and pools. 

Saltair was a fixture on the edge of the Great Salt Lake and even had its own special train to get people out there and back. It too is now another long gone treasure, with just a few pilings left sticking up out of the lake to mark where its passing.

Today, there are only the footings left at the bottom of the cliff where the Sutro Baths stood. This is the start of our trail. It was especially fun, as Robin had not walked this trail before so it was new to both of us.   

As we started the trail, the uphill side was sunny and the spring oxalis was in full bloom. The downhill side was steep to the ocean but afforded us some great views of the ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.   

Because it was a three day weekend, the park was full of people with dogs and children, but there was plenty of room on the trail to walk at your own pace and not be hemmed in or overwhelmed by people.

After walking a good half hour we started to hear a WHUMP. Almost sounded like a cannon shot. As we got closer to where the path dropped down to the shore, we realized that the tide was coming in hard. The whump was the waves smacking the backside of the rocks. The resulting crash of water was a spectacle worth savoring, so we sat on the shore and watched the water get closer and closer. 

 

The beach was very rocky, but the rocks were beautiful: large and  beaten smooth by the waves. 

The green rocks are serpentinite, the state rock of California. The gray and/or black with white veins is basalt, the red is chert, and the solid  gray is greywacke--a kind of sandstone. Greywacke. What a great name.  The rocks looked pretty drab until the tide washed over them. Then the shoreline became a veritable rainbow.

 

 There was a small cavern under the cliff that Robin had to drag me out of, but it was so intriguing. One side was all chert, the other side serpentinite. I wanted to see it as the incoming tide wet it down. Can you imagine how gorgeous the colors would be wet? But it would have been more dangerous than my (or Robin's) risk factor would have allowed. 

The shore was devoid of life. No crabs scuttling about. No kelp washed up with the waves. We saw a few mussels that had been dropped by seagulls. The one piece of life we did see was a find:  barnacles on a mussel shell. Looks like an art project.We helped it back into the water.

 

Earlier I mentioned densely wooded portions of the trail. Did I mention steep trails and steeper stairs?  

This is part of the  path down to the beach. By the time we climbed down and back up we were both having some twinges in the calves. 

And I thought we were both in such good shape. Ha.
 


 

From the beach you can  see the overlook. That tiny stick near the edge is a person. Directly below him on the beach is the red and green stone cavern. 

The side of the cliff was covered in flowers: some wild, some escaped. Here we have ice plant and allysum. 










At the top of the overlook, a local artist had created a maze. At the center was a bouquet of dried roses and a valentine to San Francisco. Here is Robin celebrating the center. 

We found some fabulous places to sit. 
Back at the start of the trail we discovered we could try on some antlers. Not something you can do on many shopping trips.

 Last view from the top of the cliff as we left Lands End. 

Leaving the park, we stopped again at the Legion of Honor and serendipity struck. Are we lucky or what? We discovered an organ concert was in progress. 




 Hidden behind walls painted to look like marble were the 4,500 pipes, ranging in size from 1/2 inch to 32 feet high. The apse over the Rodin sculpture is some of the trompe l'oeil marble. This must have been the idea behind surround sound. All those pipes and that big sound? Fabulous! The organ even has a thunderstorm pedal, which he demonstrated in a short pastoral. Great fun. It felt like we were sitting on a woofer.

At the concert we ran into a friend of Robin's who is quite the organ afficionado. He regaled us with all kinds of information about the organ, the organists, and its history. One of the things I found most interesting is that the frieze over the main entrance to the museum is made of plaster and can be cranked open on rails so that the music can be heard in the Court of Honor. Wow. 

After the concert we went into a special exhibit: Royal Treasures from the Louvre: Louis XIV to Marie-Antoinette. It was fascinating and totally over the top. Everything was encrusted with gems. Wood furniture was inlaid with semiprecious stones until you could hardly see wood. It was amazing to see, but there was nothing there I would ever want to own. Even this tiny miniature is encrusted with diamonds. The snuff box collection was eye popping. Makes you wonder how many snuff boxes one king can use. It was an interesting look at decorative objects from the mid 1700s.

All that on the first day. What's next?