The Waterfalls

[shannon_a]

So today I found my secret waterfalls that I'd hiked up to in North Berkeley,ten years ago. Just north of Codornices Park there's a path that you can take that drops down into a canyon. The walk up to falls is pretty short, but long enough to put some distance between you and the crowds at the Park proper. Then you're suddenly surrounded on all sides by greenery, and it feels like the city is a million miles away, then up ahead you can see Codornices Creek dropping down four levels, to the canyon below.

I thought I might be disappointed when I finally rediscovered the waterfall, but I wasn't. It was as beautiful as I remembered, and as amazing as I thought it was before, because of how it's so surrounded by North Berkeley and so secluded at the same time.

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When I hiked up past the waterfalls I found myself in increasingly swanky tiered North Berkeley. I hiked around a bit more up there and found the "Covert Path", one of over 100 public paths that cut up and down the hills of Berkeley. I decided to head up that too. It was a neat little path because it was genuinely covert. You started walking into it and suddenly you were in a tree tunnel, hopping over a (very small) creek then continuing up.

Past the end of Covert Path, I found Upper Covert Path, which I was very surprised to find is quite new. Apparently Berkeley set aside quite a bit of room for the hillside paths in the early 1900s, but the automobile came about before they finished building them all. And thus some have set, unimproved, largely unused, and sometimes unusable, for almost a century. But Upper Covert Path was one of several that have recently been completed.

I ordered a map of all the public paths in Berkeley, with the suggestion that Kimberly might like to hike around them with me. She would be happy just walking anywhere, but me, I like projects, as you might guess from my Bay Trail Project (though I don't give it a lot of effort nowadays, since I've covered everything local). So, that means that I think that hiking each and every of those public paths would be fun.

It also looks to me like the paths can be largely used to access Tilden Path from Codornices Park (without having to walk up steep roads, which is less easy & fun than walking stairs). I've suggested we try that hike someday too.

So, that was the last day of my three-day holiday. Tomorrow it's back to work. Reiner Knizia's Kingdoms awaits (though I expect to touch upon some other stuff before I really let the new game totally consume me).