This area northwest of San Francisco has historically been dairy country, with an abundance of lush grasses.
i have never seen these fields so brown and shriveled. Farmers are trucking in hay.
California is in the midst of a three year drought, and it shows. The coast has always been lush and green when i have passed through in the past. Water levels in many of the state’s reservoirs are at record low levels, and forest fires an take out whole towns, as recently occurred in Weed, near the Oregon border. Indeed, a huge fire last year west of Yosemite burned the family camp where I first met Meri when I was fourteen, about whom I wrote just a few posts back, and where I took my own family about ten years ago.
Last night I camped at Samuel P. Taylor State Park, near Point Reyes peninsula. The campground was open and full, but the showers in the restrooms have been shut off due to the lack of water.
The softness of the road from the campground at the Marin Headlands
Tonight, Sunday, I’m at the Haypress primitive campground in the Marin Headlands, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. This means that I’m camping quite near to the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco, although I’m down in a small valley and can see neither. Being “primitive” means no plumbing, showers, or power to change my devices, but also no RVs, hook ups, no fires and no lights.
Tomorrow morning I’ll ride over the GG Bridge into the Big City, then take public transportation out to the suburbs to stay with Johanna’s mom for a few days, visit a bit, regroup and plan the latter stages of my travel. What changes I have felt as I have neared San Francisco! Much of it has been building, yet still quite sudden. Last night I share camp space with a dozen other cyclists in the “biker/hiker overflow site”, and tonight I’m the only cyclist; all the others continued into the city and their prearranged destinations. Riding through Marin County, I must have passed seven bike shops, as well as at least sixty road cyclists on their $5,000 carbon bikes.
As darkness fell fully at the campground, I talked with other campers there, Brits who were walking the coast. Where I am camping not a single artificial light is visible around me. Yet the city lights make a flashlight nearly unnecessary. We could fairly well see each others’ silhouettes due to the urban glow reflected off the atmosphere. Later in the night the ocean fog rolled in, and the darkness became much more complete.
After a still and silent night (save for one rustle in the bushes that turned out to be a skunk) I awoke to the fog and began my day, aware of how ice this quiet and private camp ws, so close to the urban bustle. i rode down to sea level and through Sausalito.
A beautifully crafted mermaid in Sausalito, incongruously perched between a car wash and a liquor store
Sort of reminds me of when I was single, decades ago…
Approaching the Golden Gate Bridge from the north
Beginning the bridge crossing
Reaching out to those who are contemplating suicide by jumping from the bridge