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The staff at Otels hope you enjoy the following Travel Ideas
from travel writer (and enthusiastic naturalist) Mark Kolakowski
Best wishes on your next trip!
San Francisco, Marin County, & Yosemite
National Park
By Mark
Kolakowski
Copyright © 2005 by the author
San Francisco
San Francisco has many attractions, and one
can easily spend a week or more exploring them. Let me point out a
few:
1) The view from the Coit Tower on
Telegraph Hill is worth all the ink that has been spilled on it. Don’t
miss it.
2) While few tourists pass up a chance to ride the cable cars,
many are remiss by not also visiting the Cable Car Museum (at
1201 Mason Street, on Nob Hill). Actually,
this is the working nerve center of the system, where you can observe
the huge machinery that moves the cables. You also can see, in detail,
how the cars actually work.
3) The California Palace of the Legion of Honor is an excellent
art museum situated on a high bluff above the Pacific, in the
northwest corner of the city. Admission is free on Tuesday.
4) The National Parks Service administers Alcatraz Island, site
of the former federal prison. Daily ferry service departs from
Fisherman’s Wharf, run by the Blue & Gold fleet. The ride
is a short 15 minutes or so, and the views from the island are
outstanding. The boats book up in
advance, so make reservations as early as possible. Try to go in the morning, so that you will not be rushed to get the
last boat back.
5) The coastal highway (California Route 1) is very picturesque,
both south and north of San Francisco. South of the city, try to visit
the Fitzgerald Marine Sanctuary at low tide, when you observe sea
creatures trapped in the tidal pools until freed by the next high
tide. Farther south, Año Nuevo State Park is noted as a breeding
ground for the massive Elephant Seals. In early April, the big males
had largely moved out to sea, but the beaches were filled with young
calves born over the past few months. The one-way hike took over an
hour, but was well worth it for nature enthusiasts.
Marin County
A popular day trip destination north of San Francisco over the
Golden Gate Bridge is Marin County. The picturesque town of
Sausalito is an outstanding place to dine, especially at a
waterfront restaurant with a view of San Francisco across the bay of
the same name.
DINING NOTE: During my journeys to
the area, I look for two seafood delicacies. Sand dabs are small
members of the flounder family with a beguilingly sweet flavor. While
a number of restaurants in the Bay Area list them on the regular menu,
they actually are unavailable for most of the year. The one place
where I found them on this journey, a popular eatery south of the
city, in Princeton-by-the-Sea, served a disappointingly dull and
tasteless facsimile of the real thing. (I suspect that these had been
frozen. A maitre d’ at a major Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant in San
Francisco said in the spring that they hadn’t had sand dabs since
November.) My other big regional favorite is abalone. This
mollusk also has a somewhat sweet flavor. Unfortunately, due to many
years of over fishing, stocks are low and prices are high.
Muir Woods in Marin County is celebrated for its impressive stand of soaring redwood trees. If
you can, avoid it on weekends when tourists mob it and the parking
lots are filled to overflowing. Ideally, go early in the morning on a
weekday, when you can be by yourself and appreciate these imposing
trees in grandiose silence.
Nearby Mount Tamalpais State Park is most noteworthy for the
drive to the summit, from which you get great 360-degree views of the
region, including the city of San Francisco. Continuing west, you find
Point Reyes National Seashore on the Pacific coast. The windswept
peninsula on which the lighthouse stands is memorable for trees that
have grown practically horizontally as a result of the incessant
gusts.
Yosemite National Park
On the way to Yosemite National Park in April of 2005, I made a
brief detour to Columbia State Historic Park, a preserved gold rush
town. This was an interesting and enjoyable diversion.
Yosemite itself was very changeable in this season. The first day was
warm, in the 60s. However, the higher elevations still had significant
snow on the ground. Tioga Pass road, which reaches nearly 10,000 feet,
was still closed. It normally does not open until sometime in May. At
Tuolomne Grove, a stand of Giant Sequoia trees, the hike was slowed by
snowy trails. Nonetheless, seeing these imposing trees in the snow was
well worth it.
On my second day in Yosemite, I headed south for the Mariposa Grove of
Sequoias, the largest aggregation of these trees in the park. However,
the 2-mile long access road to the parking area was still closed. In
the grove itself, a combination of lingering snow and flowing water
from snowmelt limited the amount of exploration. Then unexpected,
un-forecasted precipitation arrived. In the grove, it was light snow.
As I descended the access road on foot, it turned to a steady, soaking
rain. On the way back to the Yosemite Valley, it was an accumulating
snow at elevations of 5,000 feet or more.
The park rules state that is required to carry tire chains at all
times. This surprise April storm presented me with a problem. I didn’t
have any in my rental car, and a ranger at a checkpoint turned me
back. Luckily, the Yosemite Valley, where I was staying, is at 4,000
feet and it was only raining there. So, my planned 35-mile return trip
became a 2-hour odyssey of over 2 hours’ duration, through the south
entrance of the park and north to the central entrance station at the
village of El Portal, along the Merced River. Happily, it was a
picturesque ride.
Moral of the story: in spring or fall, be prepared to use tire chains
at any time. Note that some gas stations in the town of Mariposa, west
of that El Portal entrance, will rent chains.
On my third and final day at Yosemite, the dusting of snow atop
landmarks such as Half Dome and El Capitan was very impressive, giving
a small taste of how the area looks in winter. More interesting yet
was seeing the Merced River choked with slush near the foot of
Yosemite Falls, a result of high country snow overnight. While the
Valley is at 4,000 feet elevation, the surrounding cliffs rise to over
7,000 feet.
Light snow was falling in the Valley, and the only exit open to cars
without chains was at El Portal, so I left in the morning to be safe.
On the way back to San Francisco, to catch a plane back home at night,
I made a great find at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge, west of
the city of Merced. I spent several hours here observing migrating
waterfowl, and could have spent more if I were not on a schedule to
make my plane. The refuge has many miles of well-maintained dirt roads
that give close looks at marshes where the waterfowl stop over.
.
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