Happy Tuesday and for those of you who had yesterday off, I hope that you had a great long weekend! I had an adventure filled several days actually, and drove more last weekend than I have in a couple of months! First was a stop to
Grass Valley, a town where gold was discovered in 1850. Their main mine, the Empire Mine was the richest hard rock mine in California, producing 5.8 million ounces of gold in its operating history of 106 years. Just to put that in perspective, currently one ounce of gold is sold for about $2,000.00! I spent a couple of days spending time with family, playing games and hiking around Empire Mine, which is now a park with dirt paths for hiking.
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| Mill St. Grass Valley in December |
Next, I headed to Monterey and Carmel for the annual MLK girls trip with K, A & L. We had a great time searching through the tidepools for fancy shells, eating candy, playing in the waves and watching the sea otters try to crack things while floating on their backs (they are so cute!) We also drove the 17 mile drive, which winds along the coast and has some great views! I think the girls were happier to just find shells on the beach and were not as impressed by the drive, but we had fun all the same! It rained a bit on Saturday and Sunday, but overall we had pretty good weather and I even got a tad burnt!
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| Carmel Beach |
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| Lone Cypress Tree - 17 Mile Drive |
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| L looking for otters at the Monterey pier. |
On Monday, I went with a friend to hike San Francisco's
crosstown trail, which is a 17 mile trail that goes from Candlestick Point, which is on the southeast side of town to the Cliff House, which is on the northwest side of town.
It is actually a really cool taste of the city, and goes through some neighborhoods and parks that I had never been in before. It also tries to go on a lot of dirt, so it would randomly just pop into the trees on a path that you may not have even noticed. It also went on a lot of hidden stairways (
which I have talked about before) and I found some of those too that I had not been on before. All in all, it was a great way to see the city in a different way than I had seen. However, it did go through some of the places on my
10 things to do in San Francisco list too, for example, we went on Irving Street and stopped there for pho!
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| 16th Ave. tiled steps - very cool mosaic! |
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| 16th Ave. stairs with Ocean Beach in background. |
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| Moraga stairs with downtown San Francisco in background. |
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| Ocean Beach |
This was the second "town tour" walk I have done in the last month; the first was the same kind of thing in the city of Pacifica on new year's weekend. So now I think I need to make one or find one for Oakland and that can be the next one in the tour of the town series! Maybe I will try to include
some of my favorite nooks and crannies on my next tour!
How was your weekend!? Have you ever been to the California coast? Have you ever done a walking tour or a long walk around the neighborhoods of your town?
