Training Log Archive: jennycas

There really wasn't anywhere to run from the Redwoods River Resort (resort meaning: more Northern-Territory-rustic than Pacific-Island-luxury, but it did have a good bar and bartender) apart from straight down to the river and back up again, so I skipped that option and we went to drive through the middle of a giant redwood tree http://www.drivethrutree.com/ because I'd seen it on a postcard from my grandparents over 30 years ago. Then we drove south and the scenery, while still mountainous, became drier with more oak trees and less conifers, and in Lake County, with evidence of wildfires from last summer. We stopped for a short walk on Mt St Helena, to the site of the cabin where Robert Louis Stevenson spent his honeymoon and wrote a book (don't know what his wife did meanwhile, because it's pretty isolated there) and ended up tonight in Calistoga at the top of the Napa Valley.

Before-dinner run was past some nicely-painted wooden houses (they pride themselves on being Victorian-era around here) which were all getting their Fourth on in terms of decorations (Independence Day's only a week away) and the park where a band was playing in the rotunda to people listening on the grass - just like the fictitious Stars Hollow, which reference anyone who's ever watched Gilmore Girls will understand! Dinner was the fanciest we've had so far, to celebrate our last night in California, and washed down with an excellent local pinot gris. This was one meal we didn't mind tipping for...

C • what his wife did 4

Q: How long does it take to drive 205 miles?
A: About 6 hours if via the Shoreline Highway.

Therefore I went for a short farewell-to-Stinson-Beach run before breakfast. Followed the switchbacks of a walking trail up to Table Rock about 600 feet above the town, and admired the view of the bay in the sunshine. Would have liked to stay around here for longer and do some hiking in the Mt Tamalpais area & explore Point Reyes some more, but we have a bit more of California to see, yet, and anyway the fog had rolled in by the time I was back down at the beach again.

Yeah, so the coastal route (Highway 1 in fact) makes the back roads of NZ look like super-highways. Not that it isn't an incredibly scenic road, but there were often times when zigzagging from sea level to a few hundred feet up the hillside was done just to come back down again, or when a river running out to sea was such a gulch that the road had to go inland a couple of miles to a bridge, then back out to the coast. And often the towns weren't much more than a line of houses/shops sandwiched between the road and the shoreline...there were so many signposts directing us towards tiny beaches (often filled with picnickers and campers) where I would have loved to stop but we had to keep going because it really was A Long Way and G was kindly driving at a pace which I found manageable (i.e. not too much of a rollercoaster on the narrow and shockingly-cambered road).

Eventually the road turned inland and wound its way through tall redwoods (and shorter conifers as we ascended higher) up & over the ranges to join the main inland Highway 101 at Leggett (population 122) and we are now staying at the Redwoods River Resort which is a campground/motel among tall trees on the South Fork of the Eel River - truly in the middle of nowhere but with an abundance of bluejays & squirrels. Today even though it wasn't a highly-trafficked road I spotted numberplates from Alaska, British Columbia and Pennsylvania. And a surprising number of cyclists, all headed the opposite direction - I guess then the wind's at their backs?

C • NZ back roads 3

After a leisurely morning exploring the thriving metropolis of Stinson Beach on foot (the excellent bookstore promotes itself as being located "directly on the San Andreas Fault") we drove north to Point Reyes National Seashore, a triangular national park whose eastern boundary is effectively the San Andreas Fault, here manifested as a long narrow inlet, Tomales Bay, extending from the northwest to southeast and if you follow that up to its headwaters then the valley running SE from there along the Shoreline Hwy flows into Bolinas Bay, the lagoon behind Stinson Beach, so it's possible to clearly understand where the fault line lies.

From the park headquarters at Bear Valley (Douglas firs and grassy meadows) we took a short stroll around the Earthquake Trail where it was in fact very obvious that the ground had jumped 16 feet in 1906. I'd hoped to drive all the way out to the lighthouse at Point Reyes (SW tip of the park) but since the lighthouse isn't open currently, we drove north instead, first over the Inverness Ridge and then through grassy dairy-grazing country (current dairying in a national park!) to Pierce Point Ranch, which had been a substantial dairy farm from the late 1800s to 1940s - it turns out that this grassland was never forested. It's now a tule elk preserve, and we saw some of these with impressive antlers on our walk down through lovely coastal wildflowers following an eroded gulch to a deserted beach. I was even more excited though to see - and photograph - a pair of California quail.

Back at Stinson Beach I went for a coastal run just after the tide had turned, so there was a bit of wave-dodging. An hour or so earlier we'd been at Bolinas on the north side of the lagoon outlet, watching the tide flow inwards with surprising velocity; when we'd driven past there at lunchtime the lagoon was basically a mudflat!

Yay, we escaped the city! Picked up a hire car from Fisherman's Wharf (only 400m to walk at either end from a bus route, with our gear) and headed north over the GGB with the intention of exploring Marin Headlands which, at this time of year, are the colour which gave the Golden Gate its name. On a cool grey morning however, the hills were highly reminiscent of Scotland, or else NZ as Geoff said. I was disappointed that we couldn't get to the Point Bonita lighthouse because the tunnel through the cliff to it is only open in the afternoons, by which time we needed to to be at Muir Woods because our parking reservation was for 1pm.

$8 to park, and $15 each to enter the valley of the giant coastal redwoods, which is admittedly spectacular due to their height and the more so for its contrast with the otherwise bare hills & valleys around. Also very popular with other humans, unsurprisingly, and I think we had both preferred spending the same amount of time and money on getting to/being at Angel Island. It is interesting though that this forested valley was preserved from being dammed over 100 years ago and that the trees get 50% of their water supply from the fog. Also in the car park I managed to see Wisconsin, Rhode Island and American Samoa (I bet even Blair can't top that last one!) so now I'm up to 50% of the US states plus a few extras.

Tonight/tomorrow we're staying in the Sandpiper Lodge at Stinson Beach, a lovely little seaside village which, for anyone who's ever orienteered at Woodhill, is not unlike Muriwai except that there's no gannet colony, and instead a lagoon behind the beach where the brown pelicans congregate. After winding mountain-and-coast roads (poor Geoff, having to drive on the wrong side of the road for the first time with me as not very spatially-aware passenger) I needed some fresh air so ran west along the beach to the mouth of the lagoon - Bolinas is the village on a headland over the other side - then decided to come back along the road which follows the middle of the sand spit, past some fairly fancy houses and with very little traffic. Only when I reached the townwards end of this road did I realise that it had been through a gated/private community - oops.

C • Number plates 9

Slept badly again and then through my alarm so having missed the first conference session already and not seeing anything particularly interesting on the rest of the day's schedule (plus not wanting to be shut up indoors on a glorious sunny Sunday), decided to prioritise for today the thing I'd most wanted to do all week - a ferry trip out to Angel Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. The island is roughly the same size and height as Rangitoto in Auckland Harbour but not volcanic, obviously, and has been used as an immigration/detention station in times gone by. And yesterday they held a half marathon on the trails around it, which is why Angel Island had caught my attention.

I stuffed up and misread the ferry timetable (departure vs arrival at each end) and we'd just missed one ferry from Fishermans Wharf and had to wait 2 1/2 hours in that tourist trap for another, which significantly curtailed our time on the island (I'd hoped to be able to run around it) but we still had time to hike to 'Mount' Livermore which at 788 feet is only slightly higher than the towers on the GGB, which were today above the fogline which burned off as the day wore on. With 360-degree views of the Bay Area from the summit, this hike was totally worth it, especially to get away from Too Many Humans (even if we did then spend half an hour in the ferry queue at the bottom...)

Back at the hotel, I realised that I hadn't seen the famed Lombard Street yet so I ran to there, and then up it. Whoever says SF isn't steep doesn't know what they're talking about! This was a very stop-start run because of all the traffic lights but I did get to see numberplates from Utah, New Jersey and even Quebec :)

C • Steepness in SF 2

From the conference hotel (we're not staying there because it's $600/night) which is two blocks away from the Ferry Building (rejuvenated as a gourmet marketplace after the overhead freeway collapsed in the 1989 earthquake), along the waterfront to Pier 41, at which point the Crowds Of Humans became all too much so I turned around and retraced my steps. I guess everyone's outdoors getting toasty pink on a sunny summer Saturday afternoon.

Brain melted from too much conferencing, and legs still hammered, so walking to the Hyatt Regency and back was enough for today. I'd managed to find a tiny unbadged hotel about 15 min walk away, for less than $200 USD/night including tax (I booked about 4 months ago) and while it's not in a dodgy area, there are odd characters everywhere talking to themselves in downtown SF. When we headed out for dinner G & I were accosted by someone who possibly didn't have a home to go to and definitely didn't have access to a shower and probably didn't have complete sanity; he accompanied us for quite a few blocks rambling cheerfully and we really didn't know how to get rid of him. This reality contrasts with the affluence on display in the shops - it's Pride Month in the Rainbow City and every department store has a window tarted up with ROYGBV (they've all forgotten the indigo) but most doorways have people sleeping wrapped in cardboard/newspapers.

C • Housing in SF 7