My Uncle Bud highly recommended this little detour as I drove into the Bay Area: As you approach the Golden Gate bridge on Highway 101 (which is, in fact, a bit past my target exit for 580 to Oakland), take the road before the toll and bear witness to the most beautiful view of the city from the scenic Marin Headlands. This only really works if it's a sunny day, of course. And you'd be hard-pressed to find many sunny days around here in the winter. But for some awesome reason, the weather has been smiling on my whole trip down the coast, and I haven't had a foggy day or a drop of rain since I left Portland.
As expected, a sunny Saturday in the Bay brought everyone out of their hibernation: tourists, locals, drivers, cyclists, runners and hikers. So parking was a bit of a challenge. But I found a little parking lot on the non-vista side of the road near an access point of the Coastal Trail and managed to park in a real spot (not on the road, like some crazy people), and to not get parked in (as some unfortunate, law-abiding folks were in the roadside vista lots. But to get the best views, I had to hike. There's not really a shoulder for this section of road, but there is a path of sorts that winds next to the road outside the guard rails, so I felt reasonably safe. And everyone was doing it. And the short walk up hill was most certainly worth the view at the end, as was the people-watching. From stereotypical dressed-up Japanese tourists with killer-cool cameras who asked me to take their group photo... to young and old couples sharing a photo op... to parents speaking in many languages telling their kids to "smile for Grandma and Grandpa" and to "take off that hoodie, please?"... I enjoyed sitting on a bench and watching it all in the warm afternoon sunshine with a perfectly soft breeze coming in off the ocean.
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| Footpath along Coastal Highway 101 in the Marin Headlands |
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| View of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco from about halfway along my hike. |
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| Ooh, scenic and pretty. |
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| View from the bench I sat on |
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| The view I was looking for. |
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