CA day 12: Marin Headlands, Golden Gate, Kirby Cove

Today was Easter. We'd normally be at Natasha and Izzy's doing their big egg hunt with all of our friends. Before the trip, the kids were devastated when they found out we'd miss the Easter event, and they complained constantly. The funny thing was that neither kid was excited about the trip beforehand at all. Due to Simon's obsession with disasters, he was convinced we would die in a plane crash, earthquake, tsunami or wildfire. Alice was just really mad she was missing the Dragonfly Dash, the school's annual running fundraiser. When we didn't die on the plane and when we saw the big trees on that first day, both kids agreed that maybe this trip was worth it after all. But, out of fear of lingering resentment, Zac and I had a pact to not mention that it was Easter all day. It was easy given that we were having so much fun.

When planning the itinerary, I had wanted to end the trip back near San Francisco so that I wouldn't have to stress about having some catastrophe out in the hinterlands and not making it back in time to catch our flight home. So for the next two days, we would explore the beautiful areas just north of San Francisco. We had zero interest in trying to do anything in the city with the kids.

On this Easter morning, our plan was to explore an area called the Marin Headlands. Wanting to avoid spoilers, I hadn't researched it much beyond looking at the green space on a Google map, zooming in enough to see parking lots and trails, and deciding we'd find something fun to do here. We sure did. It was gorgeous. We have sandy beaches in NC, so the rocky coast is very scenic and more interesting to us. The green hills and cliffs reminded me of my trips to England and Ireland over twenty years ago.

Our plan for the day was basically to just drive to an area near Point Bonita, and then start driving east, stopping wherever we wanted and getting closer and closer to the Golden Gate Bridge. It turns out this vague plan worked perfectly. You simply couldn't go wrong out here.

After a while, we went to the Point Bonita trailhead, where we could walk most of the way down to the Point Bonita Lighthouse, having great views of the Golden Gate Bridge along the way. 

We eventually could go no further, as the metal door through the rock tunnel was firmly locked, since the lighthouse was only open for tours twice a week. I forgot to take a picture of the door, so just picture something like the door to Moria in Lord of the Rings.

We have never snacked with such spectacular views as we have on this trip.

Eventually we headed over to check out the nearby Battery Mendell, an old defensive fort from 1905. There were many of these coastal fortifications all along the cliffs here to guard the bay. The kids had a lot of fun climbing around on it.

From here, you could see views of the Point Bonita Lighthouse in the very distant distance. The fun thing about today what that we were constantly looking at places we were going or had been, from different vantage points.

After playing at the battery for a while, we drove east a bit, found another parking spot, and hiked up a short path alongside a road to a great viewpoint.

While we were up there, I kept saying, "I want to be down there where the trees are!" It turned out that we would indeed walk down there a while later along the road you can see cut into the hillside.

Because I hate hiking beside roads, we decided to get back in our car and drive down the road a bit to a place where we could actually hike. As far as I could tell from the map, if we parked close to the Golden Gate Bridge viewing area, we could get to the trailhead and hike down to those trees and Kirby Beach. We weren't sure we'd be able to find a parking spot, but we were lucky and got one fairly easily. We walked to all the overlooks and had great views of the bridge, the bay, and San Francisco in the distance. Zac and I sat down and had a snack and enjoyed the views for a while, as the kids chased each other around the battery behind the lookout points.

And then we headed down to the trees. The "path" was a boring wide road because there were a few campsites at the bottom that people were allowed to drive to. But it was a short easy walk at least.

We couldn't believe how beautiful it was at the bottom!

We still had great views of the bridge, the bay and the city, while we were in our own slice of paradise, away from the crowds and roads.

It was such a fun spot because if you looked west, you saw only cliffs and nature. If you looked east, you saw the bridge and city. 

 

The kids quickly got to work playing. The sun was warm but the wind was very cold, so they weren't really tempted to touch the water today. Instead, they made the most of the sand and the rocky beach.

Alice worked on an impressive nature art creation, that was supposed to a restaurant.

Meanwhile, Simon got right to work digging a hole. 

I guess he was inspired by the batteries we saw earlier in the day, because he fortified it with stones.

Zac and I, happy that the kids were happy, explored a bit but mostly sat around snacking and enjoying the incredible views.

Eventually it was time to bid farewell to this beautiful beach and head back up to our car.

While on the beach, I had looked for a Chinese food restaurant somewhere between our location and our hotel. The kids always liked Chinese food and it seemed so much healthier than fast food. At least it would contain vegetables and no mayochup. I found a place called Tommy's Wok that had good reviews and was on the way. Earlier in the trip, we had gotten food from another restaurant called Tommy's Wok near Monterrey and I had thought it was an independent restaurant at that time, but now I thought it must be a chain. (Later research revealed that we had eaten at the only two Tommy's Woks in the United States, and they appeared to be completely unrelated.)

We got to Tommy's Wok in Sausalito and I was a bit worried. There was a shiny red corvette in the parking lot and we were all in our hiking clothes and Simon was filthy from the beach. I panicked. Had I accidentally chosen a swanky restaurant? Oh well, we were starving and it was early on a Sunday evening so the restaurant wasn't crowded. They welcomed us and we sat at a table with a fish tank. The food was fast and amazingly delicious. We failed to take a picture, but don't worry: someone on the internet had one. I circled where we sat.

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CA day 11: Rock City and Mt. Diablo

We did a lot of driving today. We needed to get from Groveland, just west of Yosemite, all the way to Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco, about 4 hours of driving straight, but our excursion to Mt. Diablo State Park turned out to involve a lot of additional driving. It was a rainy morning, so it actually worked out great to be in the car for several hours. All things considered, we'd been really lucky with the weather on this trip.

We stopped for an early lunch at a great fast-food restaurant called El Pollo Loco. The annoying part of this trip was that I would always have to spend part of each ride searching for restaurants and missing the views. At the restaurant, we ate outside where Simon and Alice really liked to watch the traffic go by and comment on the different vehicles.

When planning the trip, I had just been cruising around on Google Maps looking for a fun place to go on our way to Mill Valley, and I was immediately intrigued simply by the name of this state park: Mt. Diablo. I clicked around a bit and saw that we could drive to the top of the mountain and that there was a place called Rock City where the kids could climb a large rock.  It seemed like a good place to spend a few hours in the afternoon. 

My problem with researching trips in that I don't want to know too much beforehand because I like to be surprised, so I usually do just enough research to get a sense of if it will be a good place to go, and then I stop. Although the name "Rock City" should've been a clue, I thought that there would just be one large rock for them to scramble around on, then we'd drive to the top of the mountain and do a little loop walk there. But Rock City in Mt. Diablo State Park turned out to be way better than expected. There were so many fun rocks to climb, in addition to the "Wind Caves" the kids could crawl in. We ended up spending two hours here.

We eventually left Rock City to drive further up Mt. Diablo to the summit. It was a long, winding drive, but we were rewarded with spectacular views along the way and at the top. When we were at Rock City the peak had been shrouded in clouds, but it had cleared up and we could see all the way to the San Francisco Bay. Unfortunately, it was also really windy and freezing cold, so we nixed the idea of hiking around up there and just looked at the views for a while then drove back down. Plus, it was getting late and we still had a chunk of driving left to get to our hotel for the night.

From the summit of Mt. Diablo, we still had an hour and half drive to get to our hotel in Mill Valley. All the routes were quite interesting in and of themselves just because we got to see different areas, so we never minded the drives. They were also a time to rest from all our hikes. The only bad part about the drives was that sometimes the kids would go bonkers in the backseat and we'd have to yell at them and threaten them a lot to get them to settle down. At the trip went on, they were getting worse and worse as they devised new games to annoy each other and us.

When we got near our hotel, we stopped for supper at In and Out Burger. It should have been simple, but since we are still new to eating out and we forgot our lessons from earlier in the trip, we failed to anticipate that the burgers would come with a "special sauce" that the kids found disgusting. I think it was just a mixture of mayo and ketchup, but it ruined supper for them. Alice made due and just ate the bottom half of her burger, but Simon just sat there in despair. Given that the restaurant was cheap, Zac just eventually went in and got a plain burger for Simon. We'll get the hang of this at some point!  We ate outside in an area that had in some distant past been the drive-thru and watched elegantly-clad couples who had come to this fast food joint on their prom night.

The next stop was the Safeway grocery store to restock on snacks, fruit, and sandwich supplies. We hadn't been to a grocery store since before Yosemite five days ago. Since the kids were a bit crazy, we thought it would be quicker and easier if Zac stayed in the car with them and I just ran in to quickly grab the groceries. It turned out to be the most frustrating grocery shopping trip ever, even worse than the eternal quest for fruit snacks at the Santa Cruz Safeway. This time I couldn't find the most sought-after item on my grocery list: yogurt covered raisins, which Simon had recently become obsessed with. After going up and down every plausible aisle twice, they turned out to be in the fresh fruit section. But guess what wasn't in the fresh fruit section? The strawberries. They turned out to be near the front of the store on the other side of the floral department. And they were nearly out, with just a couple containers of overripe or shriveled ones left. This seemed particularly ironic as we had passed so many fruit stands boasting fresh strawberries on our drive that day. And plums--they just didn't have any, even although they had every exotic and bizarre fruit imaginable. When I finally had gathered enough items and abandoned the unattainable, only one checkout was open and it had a long line. I didn't actually keep track of the time, but it seemed like the quick run into the store ended up taking nearly an hour. I desperately missed my little Aldi back home where I knew where everything was.

Then we were finally on our way to check into the Wyndham Travel Lodge in Mill Valley, where we would stay for two nights. Our room here was pretty basic, but it did have a high wooden ceiling, and a tiny balcony with a view of a tidal swamp and some expensive houses built up into the hillside. Alice read her book on the balcony and Zac took Simon out for a little walk around once we were settled in. Apparently, he found a nest.