More photos by Sonja, captions by Andy:
By the time we finished packing and left the house on Friday, it was late. So we didn’t make it to the campground until 8:45 pm! It was full with the reservation system, but fortunately, the campground host found a cancellation. And the next day too, so we didn’t even have to move the tent.
It was barely light, and Leilani was sleeping in the car already, so I set up the tent with a flashlight. It’s a walk-in campground, so I had to make several trips to the car to get everything.
The next day, Saturday, was beautiful, so we headed to Mt Tam to hike the Steep Ravine and Dipsea trails up from Hwy 1. That side still gets lots of moisture, so there were still flowers in many places. Leilani was really good at hiking and did a lot of uphill, including a big set of stairs out of the ravine. It helps that Nemo is a long story, and as long as she hikes, we tell the story, and vice versa.
But there was sunshine on the trail too, and we weren’t the only ones out enjoying it. This is a yellow bellied racer, according to this cool website for identifying snakes:
I didn’t even get to set a bad example and cross this tree bridge, Leilani and Sonja did it together without me.
After climbing out of the forest, we were on a nice ridge with views of the ocean:
We cut the hike short because I mentioned going to the beach, and Leilani immediately wanted to do that, and we didn’t want it to get too cold. So we drove down to Stinson Beach and fed Leilani fish and chips then went to the beach. Right across the street was a small playground, so we spent time there too. We walked up and down the beach, and since it was the end of the day, we found lots of lost sand toys. I guess we forgot to take pictures…
Sunday was father’s day, and Leilani gave me a great scrapbook that she made with all her own photos and artwork. It is really cool, especially since Leilani made really nicely decorated pages all by herself–even the one with dinosaurs. We also fooled around at the campground before we packed it all up:
Then we did a short hike around the sleeping turtle hill nearby. It’s a very pretty area, right next to the bay. The orange color in the flat marshy areas is some sort of parasite weed that seems to feed on the salt-tolerant plants.
It was harder to make Leilani walk on the second day, but here’s one part where she did walk:
After the short hike, we went to the China Camp itself, a fishing village where Chinese immigrants caught and processed shrimp to export back to China in the 1890’s-1930’s. The little shacks reminded me of Kaua’i style cottages. We had a picnic there and Leilani played on the beach again. We left mid-afternoon to beat the traffic home.
That was a good idea because we got home quickly, put away the camping equipment, and still had time for another hike! I got to pick, so we went to Junipero Serra County Park, the one right in San Bruno. We hiked to the top of the hill and back down to the San Bruno City park that it connects to. Leilani was still full of energy so I ran around the playground (literally) with her for almost 30 minutes.
