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shannon_aMy number of Saturdays in the Bay Area is rapidly diminishing. The next two will be spent in Prague, then summer will slowly ebb away, and there will only be rain and cold left.
So I'm trying to take best advantage of the scant free Saturdays I have left.
Last weekend I went to Coyote Hills, west of Fremont. It's been on my map to visit for years, but heading all the way down to Fremont is a bit of a trek, so I've usually visited closer places.
On the way, I forgot that Union City existed. Probably not the first time that's happened to someone. But I looked at the distance to Coyote Hills from South Hayward and then the distance from Fremont, and decided that Fremont was the closer BART station. So I watched South Hayward go by, then I jumped off at the next BART station. And I was confused, because it looked wrong: too fancy and high-tech and nice looking to be the Fremont BART station. And that's when I remembered that Union City existed and I'd gotten off there.
Close enough: have bike, will travel.
Funny story #1: I used to travel to the Union City BART station really regularly. Back when I worked for Sun in the mid '90s, that was where you got off to take the Sun shuttle across the Bay to Mountain View. But, that was like 25 years ago.
Funny story #2: Union City BART was actually the station closest to Coyote Hills, not South Hayward, and not Fremont.
The trek to Coyote Hills is great, because it's almost entirely along the Alameda Creek Trail, which is a pleasant creek-side trail. (Well, creek undersells it. It's a big marshy waterway that's mostly dried up this time of year and where you often can't see that the water because of all the plants. But you get the idea.) Also, like those creek-side trails just a bit further south in San Jose, it ducks under all the road crossings. So you literally can bike without stop for miles and miles.
I've written elsewhere that Fremont's bikeways are pretty crappy going north-south, not picking up until you hit Milpitas. And that's true. But this east-west trail is great.
As you go along it, you see all kinds of neighborhoods. A lot look like the quiet, tree-covered suburban neighborhoods that remind me more of St. Louis than where I grew up. (Where I grew up in San Jose didn't have many trees, being a new subdivision, and no public areas, like some of the parks I spotted near the Creek Trail in Fremont.) But there were also condos nearer the highway that were clearly very expensive despite their tiny, soulless footprints. And then as I got quite near the Bay, everything turned more industrial, and I felt like I was biking through a wasteland.
I'm pretty sure I've never been to Coyote Hills before. It was a very nice park.
That was obvious from the start due to its bike-friendliness. The Alameda Creek Trail took you to paths that took you straight across the park to its center, where the visitor center was. No having to bike up a car-filled main road to get there! And, it was clear that this easy, accessible route was well used. I saw large numbers of bicyclists on the Alameda Creek Trail and on these paths into the park itself.
The park had a lot more amenities than most East Bay Regional parks that I've visited. As I said, there was a visitor center. And right next to it a butterfly garden (that, truth to tell, didn't have a lot of butterflies). The visitor center also spent a lot of effort advertising the whole East Bay Regional park system. There was one map that showed them all and allowed you to flag what you liked about your "favorite". (There were no blank flags, but I probably would have been a Berkeley loyalist and said, "TILDEN, for quiet lunches at Jewel Lake and for connecting paths to all the nearby parks and trails." From Tilden you can literally walk to San Pablo, Pleasant Hill, or Castro Valley, never stepping off a park trail, except to cross an occasional street.) There was also a whole display of brochures with maps of various East Park parks. I looked in despair at how many I still hadn't visited. Ah well, I've seen a lot more than most East Bay residents, I expect. And I did grab maps for two parks I want to see near Castro Valley: one just north of the city and one just south.
That'll be one of my scant remaining Saturdays, maybe as it starts to chill, and I'm looking southward for warmer places.
The park itself is an impressive and beautiful interface of marshland and hills. When I looked across parts of the park where I could see both, it was breathtaking.
I did a little bit of hiking while out there, just up to the top of the ridge overlooking the Bay and back. It was pretty, but a rare case where it was nicer looking back at the land on the near side of the Bay.
And after that I took my bike out to circle around the back of the hills by the Bayside trail. Also pretty, and probably a bit of the Bay Trail that I'd never done before, but I've long ago given up trying to circle the south bay on the trail: it's just all too far from public transit (though with my riding to and from San Jose in recent years, I've probably ridden most of the Bay Trail from the Guadalupe River in San Jose eastward, with other travels taking me all the way to Benicia and Martinez, but to the west I don't think I've ridden anything from the Guadalupe River up to SFO.
Overall, a park well worth visiting, though I enjoyed the ride along the Alameda Creek almost as much.
This Saturday was supposed to be gaming, but D. and M. both had other plans, so instead it was a bonus free-day. Which isn't a bad thing when I'm going to Prague in less than a week.
I'd been thinking about Point Richmond lately, I think because I'd been reading about work on the trails leading to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, so I decided to go up there, and also to visit the nice little hamburger place in Point Richmond which is the closest I've found to Oscar's since they sold out.
I rode the Ohlone and Richmond Greenways, and wondered if it might be my last bikeride along them. Maybe not: there are four months left. But that's not the sort of thing I'm likely to do when I'm back in town visiting, as the Ford GoBikes annoying limit you to 30 or 45 minute trips, making you swap out bikes a few times if you want to do a longer ride. (The one place that I felt had a reasonable bike share was Berlin, which used DonkeyRepublic and allowed you to rent a bike for a day, not the ridiculous $12/hour of the GoBikes if you go past the 30 or 45 minutes. Maybe other places will catch up with them.)
As usual, the Ohlone Greenway was pleasant and under construction. (Currently, the construction is at the El Cerrito Del Norte BART station, and doesn't actually impact the Greenway at the moment, though there are fences up against it.) As usual, the Richmond Greenway travels through a post-apocalyptic urban wasteland. Most of that continues to be on the eastern half, where the Greenway was actual clean today, but there was knee-high rubbish adjacent to the Greenway everywhere. The western half, meanwhile, continues to try and become a true community resource with even more parks and benches going in thanks to the new construction of an apartment complex ... but most of the actual people on the Greenway continue to be homeless.
And I was shocked when I left the Richmond Greenway east of the Richmond Parkway to find that there was indeed new bicycle infrastructure. It used to just dump you out into the street, because they'd never been able to get access to the unused last few blocks of old railway right-of-way. But now that street had a bollard-protected cycle way. It was never too bad a street to ride on, but nonetheless yay! Even more importantly, there's a new crosswalk linked to the cycleway on the north side of the Richmond Parkway. This used to be a critical gap in the biking infrastructure, because you had to cross three sides of a busy street with a very slow light to get into Point Richmond. No more! The cycleway leads right to a walk button, and then on the other side continues all the way into Point Richmond. Amazing!
I had my lunch, and it was an acceptable Oscar's substitute, and then I followed the signs promising access to the Richmond-Point Rafael bridge.
The bridge was supposed to open to bicyclists this Spring. It of course, did not, because CalTrans never met a schedule that they didn't miss. The newest date is fall, which could mean as late as 10 days before we leave, but I actually suspect will be later and thus going on the (personal) trash heap of things that opened too late in the Bay Area for us to enjoy, right alongside Berryessa BART (which I think is hitting a year late, after they said it was going to open *early*).
Anywho, I knew I wasn't going to get on the bridge, but I hoped I might get to see the path up there and maybe get over to Point Molate, an otherwise inaccessible bit of Bay Area land.
No love! I could see the paths that go under the highway to Point Molate, and they looked done, but they were all still closed off. I also got my closest view of Point Molate from bike, and I hadn't realized what an industrial wasteland it was. (On the maps it looks just like a big empty space.)
Ah well. The industrial wasteland was probably sour.
So after that I biked back to Knox Miller Regional Shore, which is on the backside of Point Richmond. It's a nice little park with a lake and views of the Bay and lots of tables. I've enjoyed working out here many a time, though I have to ask if this is a last too.
I'm typing and posting this from one of those picnic tables.
So I'm trying to take best advantage of the scant free Saturdays I have left.
Last weekend I went to Coyote Hills, west of Fremont. It's been on my map to visit for years, but heading all the way down to Fremont is a bit of a trek, so I've usually visited closer places.
On the way, I forgot that Union City existed. Probably not the first time that's happened to someone. But I looked at the distance to Coyote Hills from South Hayward and then the distance from Fremont, and decided that Fremont was the closer BART station. So I watched South Hayward go by, then I jumped off at the next BART station. And I was confused, because it looked wrong: too fancy and high-tech and nice looking to be the Fremont BART station. And that's when I remembered that Union City existed and I'd gotten off there.
Close enough: have bike, will travel.
Funny story #1: I used to travel to the Union City BART station really regularly. Back when I worked for Sun in the mid '90s, that was where you got off to take the Sun shuttle across the Bay to Mountain View. But, that was like 25 years ago.
Funny story #2: Union City BART was actually the station closest to Coyote Hills, not South Hayward, and not Fremont.
The trek to Coyote Hills is great, because it's almost entirely along the Alameda Creek Trail, which is a pleasant creek-side trail. (Well, creek undersells it. It's a big marshy waterway that's mostly dried up this time of year and where you often can't see that the water because of all the plants. But you get the idea.) Also, like those creek-side trails just a bit further south in San Jose, it ducks under all the road crossings. So you literally can bike without stop for miles and miles.
I've written elsewhere that Fremont's bikeways are pretty crappy going north-south, not picking up until you hit Milpitas. And that's true. But this east-west trail is great.
As you go along it, you see all kinds of neighborhoods. A lot look like the quiet, tree-covered suburban neighborhoods that remind me more of St. Louis than where I grew up. (Where I grew up in San Jose didn't have many trees, being a new subdivision, and no public areas, like some of the parks I spotted near the Creek Trail in Fremont.) But there were also condos nearer the highway that were clearly very expensive despite their tiny, soulless footprints. And then as I got quite near the Bay, everything turned more industrial, and I felt like I was biking through a wasteland.
I'm pretty sure I've never been to Coyote Hills before. It was a very nice park.
That was obvious from the start due to its bike-friendliness. The Alameda Creek Trail took you to paths that took you straight across the park to its center, where the visitor center was. No having to bike up a car-filled main road to get there! And, it was clear that this easy, accessible route was well used. I saw large numbers of bicyclists on the Alameda Creek Trail and on these paths into the park itself.
The park had a lot more amenities than most East Bay Regional parks that I've visited. As I said, there was a visitor center. And right next to it a butterfly garden (that, truth to tell, didn't have a lot of butterflies). The visitor center also spent a lot of effort advertising the whole East Bay Regional park system. There was one map that showed them all and allowed you to flag what you liked about your "favorite". (There were no blank flags, but I probably would have been a Berkeley loyalist and said, "TILDEN, for quiet lunches at Jewel Lake and for connecting paths to all the nearby parks and trails." From Tilden you can literally walk to San Pablo, Pleasant Hill, or Castro Valley, never stepping off a park trail, except to cross an occasional street.) There was also a whole display of brochures with maps of various East Park parks. I looked in despair at how many I still hadn't visited. Ah well, I've seen a lot more than most East Bay residents, I expect. And I did grab maps for two parks I want to see near Castro Valley: one just north of the city and one just south.
That'll be one of my scant remaining Saturdays, maybe as it starts to chill, and I'm looking southward for warmer places.
The park itself is an impressive and beautiful interface of marshland and hills. When I looked across parts of the park where I could see both, it was breathtaking.
I did a little bit of hiking while out there, just up to the top of the ridge overlooking the Bay and back. It was pretty, but a rare case where it was nicer looking back at the land on the near side of the Bay.
And after that I took my bike out to circle around the back of the hills by the Bayside trail. Also pretty, and probably a bit of the Bay Trail that I'd never done before, but I've long ago given up trying to circle the south bay on the trail: it's just all too far from public transit (though with my riding to and from San Jose in recent years, I've probably ridden most of the Bay Trail from the Guadalupe River in San Jose eastward, with other travels taking me all the way to Benicia and Martinez, but to the west I don't think I've ridden anything from the Guadalupe River up to SFO.
Overall, a park well worth visiting, though I enjoyed the ride along the Alameda Creek almost as much.
This Saturday was supposed to be gaming, but D. and M. both had other plans, so instead it was a bonus free-day. Which isn't a bad thing when I'm going to Prague in less than a week.
I'd been thinking about Point Richmond lately, I think because I'd been reading about work on the trails leading to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, so I decided to go up there, and also to visit the nice little hamburger place in Point Richmond which is the closest I've found to Oscar's since they sold out.
I rode the Ohlone and Richmond Greenways, and wondered if it might be my last bikeride along them. Maybe not: there are four months left. But that's not the sort of thing I'm likely to do when I'm back in town visiting, as the Ford GoBikes annoying limit you to 30 or 45 minute trips, making you swap out bikes a few times if you want to do a longer ride. (The one place that I felt had a reasonable bike share was Berlin, which used DonkeyRepublic and allowed you to rent a bike for a day, not the ridiculous $12/hour of the GoBikes if you go past the 30 or 45 minutes. Maybe other places will catch up with them.)
As usual, the Ohlone Greenway was pleasant and under construction. (Currently, the construction is at the El Cerrito Del Norte BART station, and doesn't actually impact the Greenway at the moment, though there are fences up against it.) As usual, the Richmond Greenway travels through a post-apocalyptic urban wasteland. Most of that continues to be on the eastern half, where the Greenway was actual clean today, but there was knee-high rubbish adjacent to the Greenway everywhere. The western half, meanwhile, continues to try and become a true community resource with even more parks and benches going in thanks to the new construction of an apartment complex ... but most of the actual people on the Greenway continue to be homeless.
And I was shocked when I left the Richmond Greenway east of the Richmond Parkway to find that there was indeed new bicycle infrastructure. It used to just dump you out into the street, because they'd never been able to get access to the unused last few blocks of old railway right-of-way. But now that street had a bollard-protected cycle way. It was never too bad a street to ride on, but nonetheless yay! Even more importantly, there's a new crosswalk linked to the cycleway on the north side of the Richmond Parkway. This used to be a critical gap in the biking infrastructure, because you had to cross three sides of a busy street with a very slow light to get into Point Richmond. No more! The cycleway leads right to a walk button, and then on the other side continues all the way into Point Richmond. Amazing!
I had my lunch, and it was an acceptable Oscar's substitute, and then I followed the signs promising access to the Richmond-Point Rafael bridge.
The bridge was supposed to open to bicyclists this Spring. It of course, did not, because CalTrans never met a schedule that they didn't miss. The newest date is fall, which could mean as late as 10 days before we leave, but I actually suspect will be later and thus going on the (personal) trash heap of things that opened too late in the Bay Area for us to enjoy, right alongside Berryessa BART (which I think is hitting a year late, after they said it was going to open *early*).
Anywho, I knew I wasn't going to get on the bridge, but I hoped I might get to see the path up there and maybe get over to Point Molate, an otherwise inaccessible bit of Bay Area land.
No love! I could see the paths that go under the highway to Point Molate, and they looked done, but they were all still closed off. I also got my closest view of Point Molate from bike, and I hadn't realized what an industrial wasteland it was. (On the maps it looks just like a big empty space.)
Ah well. The industrial wasteland was probably sour.
So after that I biked back to Knox Miller Regional Shore, which is on the backside of Point Richmond. It's a nice little park with a lake and views of the Bay and lots of tables. I've enjoyed working out here many a time, though I have to ask if this is a last too.
I'm typing and posting this from one of those picnic tables.