Exploring Beyond San Francisco
- ckesta
- Aug 9, 2024
- 5 min read
As well-known as the city of San Francisco is, many visitors don't just come to, as former president William Howard Taft proclaimed, "The city that knows how." They often come through it to destinations beyond. Within a few hours drive is the world-famous Wine County of Napa and Sonoma Valleys. A few hours south and east from there is Yosemite National Park. Out of 63 national parks, Yosemite had 3,897,070 visitors pass through its gates in 2023.
Watch any car commercial (or the original Escape from Witch Mountain), you will probably see the Bixby Bridge on Highway One just south of Carmel, and just a little over a hundred miles south of San Francisco. In fact, from Pebble Beach to Cannery Row, the Monterey/Carmel area has been popular with visitors long before Clint Eastwood and Kim Novak moved there.
Napa and Yosemite are well known enough that their names are well established. There are however, many wonderful hidden treasures within an hours drive from San Francisco that many locals don’t know about, but deserve to be discovered.
Along Highway Nine, north of Santa Cruz, rests the Loch Lomand Reservoir. Although it is the main water source for the city of Santa Cruz, this secluded man-made lake rests atop a mountain, accessed only by a meandering road reaching the summit. There is not much there, save for a little snack shop and tackle store. However, you can rent paddle boats and canoes for the day. Once you are on the water, don't be surprised if you think you are in Swiss Alps. It's that stunning.
Loch Lomand Reservoir, Santa Cruz
What is less well known are the many parks and beaches on Highway One, along the San Francisco Peninsula. One of these easy-to-miss treasures is the Pigeon Point Lighthouse. Built in 1871, the Pigeon Point Lighthouse stands on a windswept bluff with stunning views of the Pacific Ocean. The adjacent hostel is quaint and a good place to spend a couple of nights. After a full day of exploring, relax with the soothing sounds of the ocean as you drift off to sleep.
Pigeon Point Lighthouse
When the weather is good, which it is most of the year, every Thursday through Monday park docents share the lighthouse’s storied history while leading visitors through the historic buildings peppered around the grounds. There are also rotating exhibits and a bookstore on site as well.
Stanford University is not the first place one thinks of when discussing bay area attractions. Surprisingly it has a number of interesting venues where you can view art, Polynesian culture, or just get a nice view. Stanford Live, their live arts program features performances from around the world, and even boasts its own philharmonic orchestra, the Stanford Philharmonia. Completed in 1941, the Hoover Tower stands 285 ft. above the campus, and as there are no other tall buildings or mountains nearby, the vista stretches for miles.
The Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden at Stanford University
What looks like a grove suddenly becomes a menagerie of faces and animals. For the most unique display of indigenous art, the Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden features traditional Polynesian sculpture, carved into the trees in the middle of the Stanford University campus.
For most people the University of California, Berkeley is a world-famous institution of higher learning, whose alumni include movie star Gregory Peck, Apple creator Steve Wozniak, actor John Cho, writer and journalist Joan Didion, and my grandmother. It has been so cemented in our pop culture zeitgeist, that the films Oppenheimer and Ant Man II shot on location there.
It is the home of the Free Speech movement, which paved the way for the antiwar and civil rights protests of the 1960s. Like Stanford, it offers an array of artistic and cultural activities. And like Stanford they have a tower you can ride to the top of. The Sather Tower (more commonly known as the Campanile) is 307 feet tall, and from the top on a clear day you can see all the way from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oakland skyline.
There is no shortage of cultural activities at UC Berkeley, and the adjacent area. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive have featured contemporary art and eclectic film programing for half a century. A few blocks off campus is the world-renowned Berkeley Rep Theater and the Central Works Theater Company.
Eclipsing everything else is Mt. Tamalpais. At 2571 feet it can be seen from all over the San Francisco bay area. As you can imagine it is a popular place to hike and camp, yet it was sacred to the native people who called the San Francisco bay area home for five thousand years. So sacred in fact, that the original indigenous native Americans believed it was inhabited by spirits and never set foot on it. In fact, no one crossed the mountain's threshold until the arrival of the Spanish explorers in 1776.
One of the spectacular views from Mt. Tamalpais
Today, of course, it is one of the most popular state parks, with no shortage of hiking trails, campgrounds, and even a natural amphitheater which features plays and other kinds of musical performances. And yes, you can drive to the top of the mountain for breathtaking views.
Adjacent to Mt. Tamalpais, but no less popular are the Muir Woods hiking trails, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The GGNRA is actually a national monument, like the Jefferson Memorial or Mt. Rushmore. In fact, it stretches several miles from the coastline of Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and along the western shores of San Francisco.
Choosing one of the of the many hiking options in Muir Woods
The jewel of this crown of course, is the Muir Woods National Monument. Connected by a series of interlocking trails, like fingers over the rolling green hills, this lattice work of pathways range from ocean walks to dense old-growth Redwood forests. One of my favorite excursions is hiking part of the Muir Woods Trail and taking a break at the Mountain Home Inn for lunch.
This century old Alpine-themed lodge is also a Bed and Breakfast with quaint rooms (each with its own fireplace), and a deck which hangs over the Redwood trees of Mill Valley. Once you have a nice nosh and recharged your cells, then continue to the many other rustic trails.
Napa and Sonoma Valleys wineries welcome millions of visitors a year. Less well known are the wineries of the Livermore Valley Wine Country.
Yes, I did say the Livermore Wine Country.
One of the 50 wineries in the Livermore/Tri Valley Region
The Livermore area east of the Oakland hills boasts 50 wineries alone, but few people know they exist. Thanks to the movie Sideways, the wineries of Santa Barbara county are now on the itinerary of vino-philes. Yet some of the wineries in the Livermore/Tri Valley region date back to 1846, when Robert Livermore planted the valley's first commercial wine grapes. Viticulturists tell me that many of the Livermore wineries are as good, if not better, than anything you will find in Napa or Sonoma.
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