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In Which I Return to Briones
Jun. 16th, 2019 10:35 pmAfter a heat wave early in the week that brought our temperature up to a ghastly 100 degrees (and which kept our bedroom frying for a few days straight), the marine layer descended suddenly, and by Saturday morning the high was set to be 60 degrees, it was entirely overcast, and I kept getting hit by moisture from the sky that one might call rain if it weren't so infrequent.
So, since I'm determined to make every remaining weekend count, I began to seek other places to go this Saturday.
Heading southward, to Hayward and Fremont, the temperature popped a couple of degrees, but not a lot. Darned marine layer.Fortunately I found warmer temperature the further I headed east on BART. Orinda was about the same as Berkeley, Lafayette was a few degrees warmer, and by the time I got Pleasant Hill I was seeing 73 instead of 60. So that's where I decided to go.
To be more precise, my destination was Briones Regional Park. I believe I'd been there three times before, once originating at the Reliez Valley Staging Area, once at the Lafayette Ridge Staging Area, and once at Panorama Drive. Oh, and I think I wandered over a corner of it when heading to Dave S's house in Pleasant Hill. What's amazing is that in those three trips, I've barely covered any of the same ground, except perhaps a quarter of a mile or so at Russell Peak. And that would largely be the case again this time, because it's a darned big park. (6,256 acres darned big, which is three times the size of my beloved Tilden Park, up above our house.)
This time I selected the Alhambra Creek Staging Area, which is up in the Northeast corner of the park. That means I rode in to Pleasant Hill BART (after having to single track from Walnut Creek, because BART is so often a mess nowadays), then took the western Canal Trail northwest until I broke for the hills, then followed Reliez Valley Road all the way around the park. There were several hundred feet of rise, but only a little bit of it was particularly steep. Most of the ride was pleasant, though occasionally the roads were too tight with cars, as happens over on that side of the hills.
And then I was at the Alhambra Creek Staging Area. Mind you, it was about 1.30 at this time, after a late morning, a BART ride, lunch at Wendy's, and a bike ride.
This time around I circled the north of the park: Orchard Trail, Pine Trail, Tonyon Canyon Trail, Briones Crest, Briones Road Trail, and then back along some of the same smaller trails to return to Alhambra Creek. (There was again just a quarter of a mile or so of repeat, this time along the Briones Road Trail.)
After some walks along scrub, the Tonyon Canyon Trail was the first really attractive walk, as I hiked near a creek, and then increasingly far above it. But it was the Briones Crest Trail, at about 1200 Feet, and toward the center of the park, that was the highlight. There were absolutely gorgeous views to the north there, looking down on Crockett, Martinez, beyond them the Carquinez Straights, and beyond that Vallejo and Benecia. All places I've biked to in the last few years, and great to see from this perspective. I was also really struck by how wide the waterway opened east of Martinez and Benecia. I felt like that was something I'd never seen before, and looking now I see that it's Grizzly Bay opening to the north. Those views definitely made the day.
On the way back, when I was about half-a-mile out from the Alhambra Creek Staging Area, I ran across a huge snake, four foot or so, lying across the trail. After I was momentarily frozen and shivering from waves of fear originating in the reptilian brain, I stopped and observed it for a while. Damned thing was moving really slowly, and looking pretty fat too. It was kind of green with diamond or hex patterns on it. I waited it out for a minute, but it wasn't going anywhere fast, and since it wasn't rattling at me (and didn't have a rattle that I saw), I finally walked behind it, and continued on my way.
Why'd it have to be snakes?
When I got back to the Alhambra Creek Staging Area, I looked at the little picture of snakes they had up on their signboard there, telling you not to murder them, and decided it was probably a happy gopher snake. The gopher was presumably less happy, which is a shame because they'd looked so cute when I saw many of them out by the Staging Area.
A nice hike despite the snake.
I decided to take the slightly longer route home by taking the Canal Trail down to a road that went to Walnut Creek BART. The idea was to avoid that single tracking between Pleasant Hill and Walnut Creek. But I don't learn: it was another crappy road, with too many cars going too fast, once I got past the area with bike lanes. And, my theory of avoiding the single tracking didn't help, because it just meant the whole BART system was a mess. When I got there, there should have been a train a minute or two earlier, but that clearly wasn't the case because the platform was jammed. And the next train was 13 minutes out.
While on the trains, I did my best to work on my D&D History book, specifically the "World of Greyhawk" folio article that's been open on my computer for ... honestly, months. I got everything re-edited, and got some work into the next section, which takes research, but that was it, and I didn't end up doing any more over the weekend.
Really, this probably isn't going to be a good year for my Designers & Dragons work. My free time is almost all going to preparing for the move, or keeping the household going, or putting together the little bit of blockchain writing I've got on the side.
Which means that it'll probably be 2020 before Designers & Dragons gets any real effort. Which is a darned shame. But by April 2020 the plan is to have more time for writing of this type, and that goal is in sight at this point. (There's just a house to pack and an ocean to cross first.)
So, since I'm determined to make every remaining weekend count, I began to seek other places to go this Saturday.
Heading southward, to Hayward and Fremont, the temperature popped a couple of degrees, but not a lot. Darned marine layer.Fortunately I found warmer temperature the further I headed east on BART. Orinda was about the same as Berkeley, Lafayette was a few degrees warmer, and by the time I got Pleasant Hill I was seeing 73 instead of 60. So that's where I decided to go.
To be more precise, my destination was Briones Regional Park. I believe I'd been there three times before, once originating at the Reliez Valley Staging Area, once at the Lafayette Ridge Staging Area, and once at Panorama Drive. Oh, and I think I wandered over a corner of it when heading to Dave S's house in Pleasant Hill. What's amazing is that in those three trips, I've barely covered any of the same ground, except perhaps a quarter of a mile or so at Russell Peak. And that would largely be the case again this time, because it's a darned big park. (6,256 acres darned big, which is three times the size of my beloved Tilden Park, up above our house.)
This time I selected the Alhambra Creek Staging Area, which is up in the Northeast corner of the park. That means I rode in to Pleasant Hill BART (after having to single track from Walnut Creek, because BART is so often a mess nowadays), then took the western Canal Trail northwest until I broke for the hills, then followed Reliez Valley Road all the way around the park. There were several hundred feet of rise, but only a little bit of it was particularly steep. Most of the ride was pleasant, though occasionally the roads were too tight with cars, as happens over on that side of the hills.
And then I was at the Alhambra Creek Staging Area. Mind you, it was about 1.30 at this time, after a late morning, a BART ride, lunch at Wendy's, and a bike ride.
This time around I circled the north of the park: Orchard Trail, Pine Trail, Tonyon Canyon Trail, Briones Crest, Briones Road Trail, and then back along some of the same smaller trails to return to Alhambra Creek. (There was again just a quarter of a mile or so of repeat, this time along the Briones Road Trail.)
After some walks along scrub, the Tonyon Canyon Trail was the first really attractive walk, as I hiked near a creek, and then increasingly far above it. But it was the Briones Crest Trail, at about 1200 Feet, and toward the center of the park, that was the highlight. There were absolutely gorgeous views to the north there, looking down on Crockett, Martinez, beyond them the Carquinez Straights, and beyond that Vallejo and Benecia. All places I've biked to in the last few years, and great to see from this perspective. I was also really struck by how wide the waterway opened east of Martinez and Benecia. I felt like that was something I'd never seen before, and looking now I see that it's Grizzly Bay opening to the north. Those views definitely made the day.
On the way back, when I was about half-a-mile out from the Alhambra Creek Staging Area, I ran across a huge snake, four foot or so, lying across the trail. After I was momentarily frozen and shivering from waves of fear originating in the reptilian brain, I stopped and observed it for a while. Damned thing was moving really slowly, and looking pretty fat too. It was kind of green with diamond or hex patterns on it. I waited it out for a minute, but it wasn't going anywhere fast, and since it wasn't rattling at me (and didn't have a rattle that I saw), I finally walked behind it, and continued on my way.
Why'd it have to be snakes?
When I got back to the Alhambra Creek Staging Area, I looked at the little picture of snakes they had up on their signboard there, telling you not to murder them, and decided it was probably a happy gopher snake. The gopher was presumably less happy, which is a shame because they'd looked so cute when I saw many of them out by the Staging Area.
A nice hike despite the snake.
I decided to take the slightly longer route home by taking the Canal Trail down to a road that went to Walnut Creek BART. The idea was to avoid that single tracking between Pleasant Hill and Walnut Creek. But I don't learn: it was another crappy road, with too many cars going too fast, once I got past the area with bike lanes. And, my theory of avoiding the single tracking didn't help, because it just meant the whole BART system was a mess. When I got there, there should have been a train a minute or two earlier, but that clearly wasn't the case because the platform was jammed. And the next train was 13 minutes out.
While on the trains, I did my best to work on my D&D History book, specifically the "World of Greyhawk" folio article that's been open on my computer for ... honestly, months. I got everything re-edited, and got some work into the next section, which takes research, but that was it, and I didn't end up doing any more over the weekend.
Really, this probably isn't going to be a good year for my Designers & Dragons work. My free time is almost all going to preparing for the move, or keeping the household going, or putting together the little bit of blockchain writing I've got on the side.
Which means that it'll probably be 2020 before Designers & Dragons gets any real effort. Which is a darned shame. But by April 2020 the plan is to have more time for writing of this type, and that goal is in sight at this point. (There's just a house to pack and an ocean to cross first.)