One advantage of living up in the Oakland Hills is that you have no excuse not to go walking in them. When you have a dog, it’s even more tempting. In the last few weeks I’ve been to Robert Sibley Volcanic Preserve (and no that’s not a brand of hot chili jam), and to Redwood Regional Park.
The first time I went with Friend Jason, who is a lot more outdoorsy than me, and has good shoes. In fact, halfway around the trail in Sibley we sat and rested, adjusted laces and so on, and I discovered that the trainers I was wearing, and have been wearing for dog-walking every day for the past few years, had worn through the sole, and were basically now only yardwork-worthy. On Jason’s recommendation I bought a pair of Keens, and now I’m super hikey man (almost).
On that first walk, we encountered some black cows, lounging in the bushes out of the sun. Gordon was a little perturbed at first (“WHAT ARE THOSE OMG”), but overall mellow about this:
The second trek was into Redwood Regional Park, which is like the little sibling of Redwood National Park, which has all the amazing huge trees. The regional one was not quite as amazing, but beautiful nonetheless. I took the trail that led down along the creek, among all the sequoias, and it was a lovely quiet spot. I used my phone to take a fancy 360 panorama.
Yesterday I took Gordon back up the Sibley trail, and at the top of one of the hills, I took another 360 panorama. From that location I could actually see the whole of San Francisco, from the Sutro Tower, to the Bay Bridge, then the Golden Gate Bridge with Alcatraz in the foreground. You can’t really make that out from the image though. It was a lot sunnier than it appears in the photo too – limitations of a phone camera.
I’ll be checking out more of the parks through the year. I only ended up at Redwood because I took a wrong turn on Skyline Boulevard. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up buying some of those trousers that zip off into shorts?