OK, I had time to go through more photos, so this is a continuation of my trip to California in March 2019.
Cousin Ted and I did some hiking in the Marin Headlands, and also made a stop at the Marine Mammal Center where he volunteers. Our first stop was a hike on the Slacker Ridge Trail:
We parked along Conzelman Road and walked to the Trail Head.
Here are a ton of photos:
Look closely at this rock – it is radiolarian chert, made up of billions of fossils of single cell organisms falling to the bottom of the prehistoric ocean. It was folded and turned because of the tremendous forces of the San Andreas Fault (it is horizontal layers of rock from the bottom of the ocean floor, that was turned vertical)
This photo doesn’t even begin to show how steep this trail is!
The big island is Angel Island
You can see the Bay Bridge in the hazy distance:
This view of San Francisco shows Golden Gate park – the dark part splitting the two lighter areas
California Poppies!
View overlooking Rodeo Beach
The parking area in the middle is an old Nike Missile site
Kenn looking at Elephant Rock – it really does look like an elephant! We had a picnic lunch here.
Another hike after lunch – going up from Rodeo Beach
Rugged terrain!
If you look closely you can just make out the buoy out in the water. We could hear the bell ringing!
Calla lilies – probably left over from when the army had residences here, back in the day
Then, on to the Marine Mammal Center!
You can see Elephant Rock in the distance
Because Ted volunteers at the center, he was able to get me a ‘behind the scenes up close’ look!
Feeding a baby. First someone has to go in and throw a wet towel over the baby’s head, and then gently get on top of it to hold it down. Then a tube full of fish mash custom-made for each baby is force fed. Once the babies can eat fish on their own (learned by eating a fish on a string), they can feed themselves and they are released back to the wild. I didn’t get a photo but I saw one baby – Anton – eat his first fish on a string!
After the feeding was done, it was time to move on. I had mentioned to Ted that I hadn’t walk on the Golden Gate bridge in years, so, that was our next stop!
This cafe used to be the place to go to for breakfast back in the day, but now it’s just a coffee shop.
Fort Point
We got to see the ‘Zipper Car’ do its magic! It is driving against traffic (hence going left in the photo) and moving the zipper over to open up another lane for traffic leaving SF during the afternoon/evening commute. Pretty darn cool!
We had a great day of hiking and sightseeing – thanks Tour Guide Ted!