A Long Hike

I arrived in San Francisco nearly 3 weeks ago, caught the Marin Airporter and ended up in a strip mall in Larkspur, CA. Since I had never been this far north in California, or in San Francisco proper, the city and the sights were pretty incredible. The day happened to be very clear, and picturesque whisps of fog were covering the peaks of the Golden Gate bridge. Several things struck me on that first ride: the incredibly different ecosystem of SF and surrounding areas, the seemingly random bunch of architectural styles, and the amount of green space.

Anyways, Mrs. McKenzie was nice enough to pick me up at this strip mall and take me back to her house, where I was able to unload all of my junk. We proceeded to actually go back into the city, as I had made advance plans to see a place in Outer Sunset (map provided below for those that don't know the city from <sanfrancisco.about.com>, I work approximately where the second "Y" is in "Hayes Valley," Outer Sunset is just south of western Golden Gate Park, more on city districts later):

So I had high hopes that I would be able to immediately move into this place in the city. Unfortunately, I was slightly misled on how convenient/nice the room actually was. Outer Sunset is remarkably difficult to get to with public transportation, and my commute to work would take at the least 45 minutes each way by bus or bike. There were also no places nearby to get food, get groceries, do laundry, go out, etc. -- it's a purely residential area. Moreover, the place was kind of dumpy. The last straw was the backyard (essentially a pile of dirt lacking anything green and with no view whatsoever) which the owner touted as the "best part of the deal." That was that, and I immediately hit up craigslist when Mrs. McKenzie and I returned to Kentfield.

Funny thing about craigslist in a city like this is that you never know what people are looking for in a potential tenant. And you hope that you're exactly what they're looking for, but since that's rarely the case, for every ten emails you send out, you're lucky to get one back. And that one probably won't work out in the end anyways. I, somehow, got lucky and scored a great apartment about two weeks later. More to come.

On Saturday, Sean arrived home after an arduous (15+ hours?) train ride. It was great to see him, especially since he knows the area very well and is always eager to be outside. Despite his tiredness and with the help of about 5 cups of coffee, we set out on what was to be a 25ish mile hike starting somewhere around western Mill Valley. We began heading sharply uphill, cutting on and off of ridges with spectacular views.

Soon after, we entered the Muir Woods National Monument, which has some ridiculously large redwoods (apparently I need to head north to see the biggest ones, which I'm hoping to do soon).

We then headed down the Dipsea Trail, which is actually the site of a famous 7.4 mile run from Mill Valley down to Stinson Beach. The trail took us quite uphill at first, and then plunged downward into this perpetually foggy area over a series of stairs (see really sweet moss all over trees below).

While Sean had been eating a huge bag of granola during the hike, I had failed to realize that I had missed lunch and had only eaten two Cliff bars, which was sufficient to completely deplete my energy stores. When we reached the beach, I headed straight to a grocery store to buy a loaf of bread and an Odwalla (I haven't changed).

We finished the hike by going up what I think was the Matt Davis Trail (Sean, you can correct me if I'm wrong) and meeting up with Sean's parents at the Pan Toll trailhead. By the time we finished, it was pitch black outside, but we were able to get some great views of the sunset over a layer of clouds that sat on the ocean.

And that was Saturday. I slept well. Most days will not be this detailed ... mostly because they're not that interesting and I didn't take pictures. Hope to finish up another post later today.