Berkeley/San Francisco 2024, Days 4-6: Sutro Baths, Golden Gate Park, Muir Woods, and Berkeley Botanical Gardens

Continuing our Spring Break recaps. Since my brother and sister in law had to work and my niece had school, we had several days with my parents to see the sights of San Francisco and Berkeley.

One place I really wanted to visit was the Sutro Baths. They are what are left of a public bathouses that were built on the coast of the Pacific Ocean by millionaire Adolph Sutro in the 1890s. It was a huge complex with seven swimming pools, water slides, diving boards and the like. But then the place became too expensive and eventually in the 1960s it was sold to developers who started to demolish the site. Then in 1966 there was a fire and the developers collected the insurance money and abandoned the project. The site is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Back in the early 2000s when I worked in San Francisco, the Sutro Baths was one of my favorite places to go on a free day- I would take the bus all the way to the end of the line and walk down to the ruins of the Baths where I would spend an afternoon at the there, enjoying the brisk windy air, gazing at the ocean, and wandering among the ruins, imagining what it must have been like to come here on vacation over a century ago.

On Monday morning, we left the house around 10am and took the BART into San Francisco and I re-lived those youthful summers, once again taking the bus all the way to the end of the line. Google maps actually told us to get off a couple blocks before the ocean, but the bus driver asked, “Are you guys going to the ocean?”

“Yes!” we said.

“Don’t get off at this stop. Get off at the next stop. I don’t know why Google always tells people to get off at 44t street.”

We got off at the recommended stop – the driver even giving us directions on how to get the right bus back – and then headed towards the ocean and the Baths. I’ve always loved approaching the ocean – hearing the surf and feeling the wind even before that endless sky in front of you coalesces into the ocean. I will never not find the ocean breathtaking.

The Sutro Baths were just as romantic as I remember, perhaps a little more graffiti on the walls than twenty years ago. It is easy to imagine that these ruins are older than they are, that these last standing remnants of walls and crumbling concrete are the product of centuries of decay a la Rome. Of course the reality is that it’s just a 1960s destruction project that had been abandoned. We wandered around the runs, walked around the paths, watched the ocean waves. We spent two hours there, then headed on foot to our next destination.

Taking a page out of Elisabeth’s book, I had googled “Hidden Gems San Francisco” to find places to visit. One of the things that came up on several searches was the Queen Wilhelmina Gardens where we could find an authentic Dutch windmill. The gardens were about a mile away from the Sutro Baths, so we headed there on foot walking down the Great Highway, parallel to Ocean Beach, and some amazing clouds. We stopped at a hippie little coffee shop/surf shop called Andytown Roasters for hot chocolate (the kids), a matcha latte (me) and a mocha (the Husband). Then we went to the Safeway across the street to pick up some food for lunch.

Lunch in hand, we made our way to the Gardens and it was like stepping across the pond to the Netherlands. A huge windmill loomed and all around there were beds of tulips. Tulip season had already peaked so the flowers were a mix of poppies and tulips, but still very beautiful. We sat on a benches and ate our lunch while basking in the sunshine. After they were done eating, the 12 year old ran around the garden taking pictures and the little kids just ran around. There were large grassy areas perfect for frolicking. I thought the whole things was a little ironic because even though we were in Amsterdam last Spring Break, we didn’t see any tulips or windmills, even though it was peak tulip season. It would have required booking either a tour or a rental car to have gone to see the tulip fields. And yet here we were, a year later, in San Francisco, among tulips, under the shade of a windmill. We took pictures and sent them to my sister-in-law in Amsterdam to see if she also enjoyed the irony.

Our next stop after the garden was to a bison paddock, which was also in Golden Gate Park. I had a colleague who had spent ten years working for the opera in San Francisco and she had sent me a list of things to see while we were there and the Bison Paddock was one of those things. We wandered to the Paddock via some unpaved trails. One thing I thought was amazing were the calla lilies growing wildly along the trail, some of them taller than the four year old. I’ve always thought of calla lilies as a hot house flower, so it was very surprising to see them out in the wild.

The Husband loves bison, so the Bison Paddock in Golden Gate Park was an obvious stop for us. Bison were first brought to Golden Gate Park in 1891, and in the early days, the Golden Gate bison were part of a breeding program to grow America’s dwindling Bison population. All the bison currently in the paddock are female – apparently females are less aggressive, and they were certainly a very calm bunch. I sat on a bench and just watched them going about with life and it was very calming.

Soon it got to be 3pm and we started heading back to Berkeley, via bus and BART. We got back around 5:00pm and spent the next ninety minutes relaxing around the house. I might even have taken a nap. We had dinner plans that evening with friends so headed in that direction around 6pm. One of the 12 year old’s friends from preschool had moved to Berkeley two years ago and we were super excited for a chance to visit her and her family and catch up. (Fun coincidence – they are renting a house that belongs to the good friend of my sister-in-law a house that I visited with her in 20013. Small world.) We met our preschool friends at a Chinese restaurant in the same plaza as the Ranch 99, which is a huge Chinese supermarket chain.

The restaurant itself was a little disappointing because we thought they would serve the dim sum menu, even though it was a weekday night, but they didn’t. They literally gave us the dim sum menu then pointed at one page of it and said that was all we could order off of that menu. Otherwise we could order from the main menu. I had been all psyched up to have my favorite dim sum dishes like chang fen and egg tarts, and my hopes were dashed. Oh well, it’s not like we starved – we ended up ordering a bunch of dumplings and shu mai as well as dumplings, Chinese broccoli, kung pao chicken, noodles… so much food!

After dinner we went to get some boba. There were something like THREE boba places in this little strip mall. THREE! At home, I only have one in a two mile radius. The one the kids went to was called Dessert Lab and was chosen because it had the best cups. Go figure. I neglected to get a pictures of these cups, but they were pretty cute. Dessert Lab also had a row of those claw machines – you know where you put in money and you get a chance to use the claw to win a prize. The 12 year old managed to win a prize, and then it caused a bit of a meltdown because the 7 year old got jealous and mad that he couldn’t figure it out and used his tokens to no avail. I had to explain to all the kids that the game is rigged and the 12 year old is not more skilled at the claw game than the 7 year old. (Okay in my googling it appears that some jurisdictions consider claw machines a form of gambling… I find that so interesting!) Everyone got some form of boba, which made it a very lovely, albeit late evening by the time everyone got their drinks and were sitting down. Nonetheless it was great to catch up and see old friends again. Before we parted ways for the evening, they invited us over to hang out later in the week.

Tuesday was our day to go to Muir Woods and see the giant Redwood trees. This was the only activity for which I got reservations advance because my brother had warned me that the Muir Woods parking lot often fills up early in the day, so best to get parking reservations in advance. (We didn’t actually pay for the park because we had a National Parks Pass – yay for using that!). The drive from Berkeley is about an hour, and we stopped at a grocery store and got sandwiches and snacks to eat for lunch while in Muir Woods.

At the park, just by the visitor’s station there was a park ranger with a little display about Redwoods. We learned some cool things about redwood trees – like Muir woods has Coastal Redwoods (vs. Sequoias at Yosemite. I didn’t realize that Sequoias are redwoods), redwood trees are conifers (which I don’t think I had realized, but they are so tall, it’s hard to tell), they grow through both seedlings and through sprouting from their base, and though there aren’t that many left, they are not protected and the ranger often sees truckloads of cut down redwood trees on the highway and it makes her sad. We then took off down the trail. The hike through the park is initially quite easy- there is a boardwalk through the forest that takes one on a two mile loop. The trees were much skinnier than I had expected, yet they were so so so so tall. An improbable feat of nature and physics.

The trail ran alongside a river and there were lots of placards to read along the way. I love a good placard. The placard at this group of trees explained how the trees grow by sprouting from the base of the original tree and can even keep growing if the original tree is damaged. It’s a little hard to make out, but you can see the stump of the original tree within the circle of growing trees:

One of my favorite places was Cathedral Grove where there are signs asking people to be quiet so visitors can savor all the sounds of the forest. It was magical – the tall tall trees reaching up up up and the sounds of the stream and the birds.

I thought this was funny – the 12 year old got a camera for Christmas and she brought it on this trip and took lots of pictures:

And then for scale – you can see how tall the tree are compared to the people on the bridge:

There are also trails that branch off the loop to Ben Johnson Trail. We took Ben Johnson Trail, hoping that it would connect to Dipsea Trail which would have a good view of the San Francisco Bay. Ben Johnson Trail was a little steeper and more challenging since the path was skinnier and there were a couple times we crossed over the river via a footbridge. Before we got to the spur to the Dipsea Trail however, I saw online that that the bridge at the end of the trail that would take us back to the parking lot was closed for salmon spawning, and there was an additional mile detour to take. Normally an mile is not a big deal, but sometimes when hiking it can take up to 40 minutes to walk a mile with the kids and since we had to be back to Berkeley by 5:00pm, we didn’t really have time for an additional mile detour. So we found a spot on the side of the trail to sit and eat our lunch and then headed back to my brother’s place. We had at one point thought about finding a park nearby, but the one park we found was near a school and when we drove there, it was dismissal time and there was no where to park. So we just skipped it and went home. For dinner, my sister in law made a really tasty frittata with eggs from her chickens! Then we had another chill evening at home.

Wednesday we stayed in Berkeley since my niece gets out of school early on Wednesdays. To pass the morning, we decided to go to the Berkeley Botanical Gardens. Because we had a membership at a museum with reciprocal privileges, we got to go to the Botanical Gardens for free.

(We have a membership at the Walker Museum in Minneapolis. We don’t live in Minneapolis, but the Husband was there last September to visit the Minnesota State Fair and visited the Walker while there. Turns out, a membership there would cover the cost of going to the museum with his friends, and becauase the Walker is part of NARM (North American Reciprocal Museum Association), it gives us admissions at a bunch of other museums and botanical gardens around the country. Some of the museums are even here in DC! It makes it worth keeping our Walker subscription in the future even though we don’t plan to be back any time soon.)

Anyhow, at the Botanical Gardens, my favorite things were the South African Garden which was a riot of colour, being in full bloom, the Japanese Pond, and the Succulent green houses. I thought the Arid House was cool because there was a cool room and a hot room and you could really tell how cool weather cacti were different form warm weather cacti.

There were newts in the Japanese pond, in various stages and sizes of metamorphosis, seimming through the water with their paddle like tails. The kids liked looking for newts in the murky water and jumping from rock to rock. And then, of course, the four year old missed a rick and ended up shin deep in the pond. I might have let out a panicked squawk/ shriek. At first we thought that we should just go home at that point, but then decided that, okay maybe having to walk around in wet shoes was sufficient punishment.

We played out Rainbow Game at the Bontanical Gardens too, the blooming Sough African garden making the game almost too easy – despite the grey and almost drizzly weather, there were so many colours to see around us. And I found something indigo!!! And even a passable blue.

After the Botanical Gardens, we decided to check of another of our “Must Do” items on our list and went to lunch at In-N-Out. For those who don’t know, In-N-Out is an iconic burger chain in California. Their menu is pretty much just burger, fries, soft drinks, milk shakes. There might also be a hot dog option. (My brother who is a vegetarian goes there too, and he basically gets the bun, with the special sauce, cheese, lettuce, grilled onions and tomatoes… lest you think there isn’t something for everyone. But this isn’t on the menu – there is a secret In-N-Out menu. Well, not so secret because you can just google it.)

There is no In=N-Out in Berkeley, so we drove about twenty minutes away to Alameda. When we pulled up, we saw that the drive through line was unbelievably long. It snaked out of the parking lot – there were actually In-N-Out workers walking down the drive through line taking orders. At first I was nervous that it was going to be a while, but inside, there was actually no line at all and we got our food pretty quickly. It was delicious.

After lunch we headed back to Berkeley where we relaxed at my brother’s house for an hour before heading over to our pre-school friend’s place. Since the kids got out of school early, we had been invited over to hang out for the afternoon. We brought our niece with us and it was a pretty chill afternoon. The little kids and I built Duplo train tracks around the dining room and the older kids played with my friend’s VR set. I thought it was pretty hilarious watching them swipe at air with that headset on.

Around six o’clock we headed out to get on the BART to meet my brother for dinner at a dumpling restaurant, New Dumpling. My brother is a huge foodie and this unassuming tiny restaurant has a Michelin star, and its Bib Gourmand designation, given to restaurants that have excellent food at a lower price point. In addition to dumplings, they had scallion pancakes, beef noodle soup, and a variety of salads/ side dishes. It was all really tasty; I really liked their shredded potato salad – kind of like spicy salt and vinegar chips in a salad form – and the beef noodle soup. The dumpling were tasty, though I still like our hometown favorite dumpling place better.

Bellies full of dumplings, we headed back to my brother’s place – some folks with their car, and some on BART. It was hard to believe we were over halfway through our trip! But we still had some good adventures to come.

Side note – while hanging out at my brother’s house, I was looking at old issues of the New Yorker, and came across this cartoon, which I thought was hilarious – I laughed so so so hard. I’m going to leave it right here for you – does it make you laugh?