Land's End Trail Update

In the second edition of "Rick's Tips," Blue Heron's free newsletter of fun things to do in the Bay Area, I wrote about the Coastal Trail at Land's End. This beautiful walk takes you from Sea Cliff and the Legion of Honor to the Pacific Ocean near Cliff House.

If you've not done this walk recently, there are many improvements along the way. Most recently, a large parking lot was opened at the west end of the trail, just above Cliff House. Now there are plenty of spots for cars and buses to park so visitors can enjoy the trail, walk among the ruins of Sutro Bath, or eat at Cliff House or Louis' Restaurant.

The trail is much better signed now, both with directional arrows and waysides that help interpret the area. You'll be able to learn more about the streetcar and train that previously ran along Land's End, the Native Americans that lived here, and the many ships that wrecked outside the Golden Gate.

There are also improved seating areas for walkers to rest and gaze out over the Pacific.

If you haven't visited Land's End, I highly recommend the walk I called "the most beautiful urban walk in America." If you haven't walked the trail recently, it's time for a return visit.

If you would like to take a private, custom tour that includes Land's End, Sea Cliff, and/or the Legion of Honor, please phone me at (866) 326-4237 (toll free) or e-mail me by clicking here.

Summer in Muir Woods

Summer brings the crowds to Muir Woods, home to the coastal redwoods -- the tallest trees in the world. Parking can be difficult, especially on weekends when visitors may need to park a half-mile away from the entrance. Here are three tips for avoiding the crowds and making your visit more enjoyable:

1. Visit early or late. In the summer, Muir Woods is open from 8:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. If you arrive before 9:00 a.m. or after 6:00 p.m., not only will you avoid the crowds but you will not have to pay an entry fee. I recommend arriving before 9:30 a.m. or after 4:00 p.m. if you want to have a more peaceful experience.

2. Take a tour to the park. The scheduled tour operators all arrive around the same time, so you won't avoid the crowds. However, you will not have the hassle of finding a parking space. If you take a private tour, such as with Blue Heron Custom Tours and Travel, you can time your arrival so you are not there when the big tour buses are at the park.

3. Take public transit to the park. Golden Gate Transit runs shuttle buses to Muir Woods from Sausalito, Marin City, and the Manzanita parking lot at the Route 1 exit of US 101 on weekends and holidays through September 30. Buses that stop in Sausalito meet Golden Gate Transit's ferries to and from San Francisco.

Blue Heron provides private, custom tours that include Muir Woods. You also can visit Muir Woods as part of a tour of San Francisco or a tour of Wine Country. For more information, please call me at (866) 326-4237 (toll free) or e-mail me by clicking here.

Angel Island

Angel Island is a locals place. Visitors to San Francisco flock to Alcatraz Island, but far fewer visit Angel Island. Angel Island never captured the public's imagination like Alcatraz did when it housed notorious prisoners like Al Capone and the Birdman (Robert Stroud).

Today Angel Island is a state park. However, it's rich history includes periods when it was a military base, home to a quarantine station, and home to an immigration station where thousands of Chinese were detained for weeks and months between 1910 and 1940.

Cars are prohibited on Angel Island, so the park is a peaceful place for biking, hiking, and picnicking. If you chose to picnic, you may want to bring food with you as options are limited on the island.

If you walk the perimeter road, you will pass many of the island's historical sights including the immigration station. You can also hike to the top of Mt. Livermore for a 360 degree view of San Francisco Bay.

The Angel Island Immigration Station is currently being renovated. When the Immigration Station reopens in 2008, visitors will be able to learn more about the lives of those whose first home in America was Angel Island.

Angel Island is accessible by ferry from both San Francisco and Tiburon. More information about the island is available from the Angel Island association's excellent website: www.angelisland.org. More information on the Angel Island Immigration Station is available at www.aiisf.org.

Visiting Muir Woods

Muir Woods National Monument, a grove of old-growth coastal redwoods, is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Bay Area. The coastal redwoods are the tallest trees in the world and are found only along the coast of northern California and very southern Oregon. A new "tallest tree" was found last year in a state park in the far northern part of California. It measured 379.1 feet tall. The tallest trees in Muir Woods are about 280 feet tall, but you won't notice the difference.

With the winter rains leaving us and summer just around the corner, more and more visitors are taking the lovely stroll through the Woods. This means that the parking lots are filling up -- particularly on weekends.

Here are a few tips to make your visit more pleasant:

1. Visit the park early or late and avoid the crowds. Many people visit the park by taking a scheduled tour from San Francisco. These tours generally arrive about 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. Plan your visit so you are in the park before 10:00 a.m. or after 3:30 p.m. and you'll avoid some of the crowds.

2. Visit on a weekday. Locals enjoy visiting the park so weekends are often very busy. Both parking lots can fill up and you may have to walk 3/4 mile along the road just to get from your parking spot to the park entrance.

3. Bring a sweater. San Francisco can be sunny while Muir Woods can be shrouded in fog. Last week I left San Francisco, which was foggy but dry, and arrived in Muir Woods to find pouring rain. Rain is rare in the summer but cold fog is not.

4. Take a private tour with Blue Heron Custom Tours that includes a visit to Muir Woods. You will not have to worry about parking and we can time the visit to avoid the crowds. To schedule your tour, call me at (866) 326-4237 (toll free) or e-mail me by clicking here.

Point Bonita Lighthouse

There's something romantic about lighthouses. I know the real story is that lighthouse keepers worked long hours, performed gruelling tasks -- often in miserable weather, and received little pay. Nevertheless, whenever I see a lighthouse I immediately want to visit it, learn the history, and fantasize about the keeper's life.

One of my favorite lighthouses is located at Point Bonita on the north side of the entrance to the Golden Gate. The original lighthouse, built in 1855, was the third on the West Coast. The site was too high and fog frequently obscured the beam. As a result, the lighthouse was moved to its current site in 1877.

Point Bonita, on a sunny day, provides one of the area's special views. On one side the Pacific crashes against the bluff. On the other side sits San Francisco, just across the Bay. Docents are available to tell you about the lighthouse, its keepers, and the area's history.

The drive to the lighthouse, along Conzelman Road in the Marin Headlands, offers spectacular vistas of the Golden Gate, the Bridge, and San Francisco. Stop at Battery Spencer and walk to the edge of the cliff for an up-close view of the Golden Gate Bridge. After arriving at the parking lot, you will walk along a half-mile trail through a hand-cut tunnel and across a narrow suspension bridge to get to the light. Unfortunately visitors hours are extremely limited. The lighthouse is open only Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays from 12:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m.

If you visit, make sure you bring a sweater as Point Bonita is frequently swept by strong winds. More information on the lighthouse can be found on the Golden Gate National Recreation Area's website: http://www.nps.gov/goga/pobo.htm.

If you would like a private tour of San Francisco and/or Muir Woods that includes a visit to the Point Bonita Lighthouse, please call me at (866) 326-4237 (toll free) or e-mail me by clicking here.

Free San Francisco Walking Tours

San Francisco is a compact city -- just 46 square miles. With 750,000 people calling the city home, some of the neighborhoods are quite congested. Chinatown has the densest population in the United States outside of Manhattan.

My half-day tours of San Francisco provide a good overview of the City and the full-day tours enable visitors to see more of the city's neighborhoods. However, many of the neighborhoods are best explored on foot.

If you enjoy walking and want to see San Francisco up close, I highly recommend taking one or more walking tours during your stay. Commercial walking tour companies operate in some neighborhoods. However, City Guides provides free walking tours throughout San Francisco.

Operating under the auspices of the San Francisco Public Library, City Guides' volunteer docents will lead you on explorations of neighborhoods as diverse as Pacific Heights, Haight Ashbury, and the Financial District. Tours are offered seven days per week in both the morning and afternoon. The summer schedule is more expansive than the winter schedule. Regardless of the date you chose for your tour, you are bound to find a one of interest. Full schedules are available on City Guides' website: www.sfcityguides.org.

If you would like some help planning your San Francisco vacation, and want to include a walking tour, I would be pleased to assist you. Feel free to phone me at (866) 326-4237 or e-mail me by clicking here.

Point Reyes Lighthouse

I recently took some guests to Point Reyes National Seashore, one of my favorite spots in the Bay Area. We drove all the way out to the Point where we visited the Point Reyes Lighthouse. Opened in 1870, this lighthouse is home to a first order Fresnel lens.

The lighthouse is open Thursday through Monday from 10:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. To get to the Point Reyes Lighthouse, visitors must walk a quarter of a mile from the parking lot and then down (and back up) 308 steps. So the walk is not for the faint hearted. There are benches along the way if you want to rest while climbing back up the steps. Also, be warned that this is perhaps the windiest spot in California. Winds in excess of 40 mph are not uncommon.

If you do visit the lighthouse, you will be rewarded with a spectacular view of the Pacific and exhibits on Pacific maritime history. During the late fall and late winter/early spring, you may sea gray whales on the way between Alaska and Baja California. During whale watching season, you will need to take a shuttle bus to the Point on weekends and holidays.

To learn more about Point Reyes and West Marin County, visit the Blue Heron website and read "Rick's Tips" Numbers 11 and 12.

If you want to take a private tour to Point Reyes National seashore, please call me at (866) 326-4237 (toll free) or e-mail me by clicking here.

Escape to Elk Update

Two years ago, "Rick's Tips," Blue Heron's free, quarterly newsletter of fun things to do in the Bay Area, focused on Elk, California. Elk is located about three hours north of San Francisco and overlooks a spectacular cove on the California Coast.

Recently we returned to Elk and found many things unchanged, along with a few changes. The spot is still lovely -- we had sunny skies and 70 degree weather. There is still little to do in town other than walk on the beach and sit on a chair overlooking the cove and watch the waves crash. Ledford House in Albion still breaks the rule that the better the view, the worse the view. Lisa Geer's food is still delicious. Service is friendly. Watching the sun slowly set while nursing a glass of wine is an experience that can't be beat.

Sandpiper House Inn appears to have gone out of business, at least temporarily house. Griffin House Inn has remodeled its cottages.

Mendocino, the coastside village about 30 minutes north of Elk, still has some interesting shops and galleries. There were a few newcomers, but many of the shops have been there for as long as we can remember.

The Point Cabrillo Lighthouse, 2 miles north of Mendocino, has been restored and is open to the public daily from 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. A bed and breakfast will open any day in one of the restored lightkeeper houses.

If you are interested in a custom-designed vacation along the spectacular Sonoma and Mendocino coasts, call (866) 326-4237 (toll free). I would be pleased to work with you to plan a vacation that you are sure to enjoy.

Hiking Among the Elk

The rains seem to have ended for the season and the days are bright and sunny. Now is the perfect time to visit Point Reyes National Seashore; one to two hours north of San Francisco, depending on the part of the park you wish to explore. (For more information, read "Rick's Tips, No. 12."

This past Sunday we left a sunny San Francisco hoping to find an equal amount of sunshine at Point Reyes, where we planed to hike to Tomales Point, one of our favorite trails in the Bay Area. We were not disappointed when we arrived. The sky was bright blue with a few wispy and puffy clouds. The temperature was in the sixties with a fair amount of wind. Nearly perfect hiking weather.

The Tomales Point Trail starts at the historic Pierce Ranch, an old dairy farm, and ends 4.7 miles later at the northern most spot in the park - Tomales Point. The trail travels over rolling hills with breathtaking views of Tomales Bay on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. After our heavy rains this winter, there were an abundance of wild flowers in bloom -- California Poppies, Queen Ann's Lace, iris, thistle, lupine, and others. Plus dozens of tule elk were easily visible from the trail.

As you start the hike, the Pacific Ocean, North and South Beaches, Point Reyes, and McClure's Beach are clearly visible to your left. Further down the trail the panorama moves to your left, where you can see Tomales Bay, the villages of Marshall and Dillon Beach, and Mt. St. Helena in the distance. As you climb what appears to be the last hill, you soon discover that you have not yet reached the end of your journey. There are two more false ends before you finally reach Tomales Point. Here your view includes most of the aforementioned sights, plus Bodega Head straight in front of you.

Prepare for the hike by dressing in layers as the weather at Point Reyes is usually colder and windier than anywhere else in the Bay Area. While it is windy on Tomales Point, you can sit in areas protected from the winds so a picnic lunch is a perfect reward for reaching the point. You can pick up supplies in nearby Point Reyes Station and Inverness. Lastly, there are no restrooms on the trail, but they are available at Abbott's Lagoon and McClure's Beach, which are near the trailhead at Pierce Ranch.

If you want to take a private custom tour that includes a visit to Point Reyes, try our Point Reyes Ramblings Tour. You may book a tour by calling (866) 326-4237 (toll free) or e-mailing me by clicking here.

Stunning Views from Mount Tamalpais

Recently some guests asked me to take them to the summit of Mount Tamalpais (affectionately known as Mt. Tam to locals). I had not been there for awhile and was once again awed by the 360 degree view of the Bay Area. The East Peak is approximately 2,600 feet above sea level and provides views of San Francisco, West Marin, the North Bay, and parts of the East Bay. Two trails depart from the parking lot. One is an easy, level walk around the summit. The second climbs to the observation tower atop the summit. Both offer incredible views.

We lunched at the Mountain Home Inn. This nearby bed and breakfast has an outdoor veranda with lovely views of Mill Valley. The menu includes sandwiches, salads, and other simple dishes. The restaurant is open Wednesday through Sunday. I suggest you call ahead to reserve a table, especially on weekends. The Inn is located at 810 Panoramic Hwy. in Mill Valley. Reservations can be made for both the restaurant and lodging by calling (415) 381-9000.

If you would like to take a tour that includes a visit to Mount Tamalpais, our Oceanside Vistas Tour is the perfect fit. You can book a private, custom tour by calling (866) 326-4237 (toll free) or by e-mailing me by clicking here.