We took a break yesterday from gardening so Sirenita could show me some of her old haunts. She's part mermaid, so we wound up exploring the Pacific shoreline around the Golden Gate - though it was a foggy, drizzly day, it was beautiful and mysterious and unlike anything I've seen before.
The trees here look like Middle Earth.
Near a place called the Sutro Baths, jagged little islets rear up out of the surf.
The breakers were dramatic.
North of Sutro Baths is Baker Beach - the dunes here are held in place by native plants in shades of silver and green.
There was a stairway into the sky.
A view from the stairs. Wherever I go I'm interested in the local flora, and the plants here were especially fascinating. There are artemisias of some kind mixed with other salt-tolerant shrubs and weird little succulents and the over-all visual effect is rich and textural and, for me, almost surreal.
I fell in love with this landscape, it's like another planet.
A red flower and a dew-glistening artemisia.
Lupines!
The north end of Baker Beach is a clothing-optional area, but the few people we saw there were completely not nekkid. By way of compensation, the Golden Gate Bridge loomed impressively out of the mist.
Hi!
Splash! In the background here you can see Marin County and a giant container ship leaving the Bay for points unknown. Right after taking this shot I tried to climb lower down on the rocks for a close-up of the waves breaking, but Sirenita yelled at me that I could get drowned and it seemed best to defer to her knowledge of the area.
As dusk closed in, the fog lifted off the bridge.
China Beach. By this time it was fully dark, and before too long the police rolled up and shined a spotlight in our faces and said we had to hit the road. Ah well, it was a fantastic afternoon of sightseeing, and I was lucky to have Sirenita as a tour guide and a story-teller for the wonderful places we visited.
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Sirenita Lake
jmac1949
DiBi
Joan H.
Man Talk Now
Michael Luick-Thrams
Salon.com
Comments
Great photos.
You having 60's hippy flashbacks, dude?
(is so, PLEASE no pictures of you smoking hemp in a tie dyed tshirt, K?)
of the color of a northern sea & middle earth.
those plants are my old friends
the scrubby ones, close to the shore.
Baker Beach was beautiful. I wish I could sit on that lovely beach and watch a day go by.
Isn't it amazing how freaking cold it is there in the morning?
From the title, I thought this post was going to be about a stripper.
You saw the out of control breakers at Sutro, we surf just the other side of Seal Rocks, Kelly's Cove it is called.
The most dramatic surf spot for scenery is Ft.Point, directly under the bridge- nothing like it anywhere.
But, my favorite, and the one you most likely couldn't find, is in-between Bakers Beach and the Golden Gate, and called DeadMan's Reef, and that is for a reason, so, heed the call and don't get too close to the breakers ... SF is not known for small waves or playful surf, but instead for the roughest beachbreak on the coast, and, just a few miles south at Half Moon Bay, Mavericks- the largest waves outside Hawaii.
Enjoy the American Mediterranean! If you miss the Plains head to Tommy's Joint on Van Ness for the best Buffalo Stew on the coast, or, if you want the West Coast fully green vegetarian deal, Cafe Gratitude on Harrison.
Great to see you in our world!
Aloha Kakou
Blown away beautiful, I can't tell you.
Beautiful photos of mystical area, you captured well those misty foggy days. Yes, middle earth. Aptly titled, it has an ancient feel to it yet at the same time it's very much new and alive.
I lingered over these a long time. The first one and Baker beach made me want to run and leap around like when I was a frolicking teen. (Insert much sighing here.) Great photo of the Golden Gate with the fog lifting.
It would be nice to go home, thanks for bringing some of it to us. It's good to think of you enjoying it there. Thank you to Sirenita for yelling at you to stay away from the breakers.
Asia, the stairway was awesome and was nearly as good of a workout as the stairway up from China Beach when we fled from the cops.
Amy, this place would make Rush Limbaugh as groovy as Grace Slick. Everything here is organic and/or compostable.
Send to Two's Favorite Bloggers Who Cuss too!
`
the paranoid editor
making sure he put
you on enemy list
`
I'll visit a Wi-Fly
and swat a Bug
and smile too
`
California gardeners
name new children
Sam throth Fran
& Grouch Oh ha
`
watching news
cranky punches
waving politicos
`
You Two Best Behave.
I Bet You Two do Too.
You sit in Lupine Bed.
Foggy beaches are a true heartfelt favorite.
Thanks for sharing these Nana..
In Humboldt county further north of you they have lupine bashing parties as those lupines are not native and they're taking over the more native succulent and artemisia-like ones...I think of those succulents as Icelandic poppies, but I'm not sure/doubt they are...
So glad you are getting to see more of the beautiful parts of our country : )
...and not just Sirenita...
How long are you out here for?
B1, it's always fun when things loom unexpectedly.
Amen, Phyllis. I once went to a nudist party in Lawrence (the only hotbed of godless hedonistic liberalism in Kansas, it's so disgustingly liberal that William S. Burroughs retired there) and it was surprisingly not very fun. Everyone stood around drinking cocktails while trying to appear relaxed and unconcerned at all the genitalia on display.
I Love Life; me too!
John, I feel lucky to have been able to visit such a place and to meet people as gracious and hospitable as Sirenita and Mark.
Thanks for the happy b-day, Don. I share mine with Eric Clapton and Sultan Mehmet II and, sadly, Celine Dion.
Larry, I had to change the title when I realized "Misty Beach" was a porn star who specializes in squirting champagne out of her anus.
AKA, sometimes overcast conditions bring out more color and texture than bright sunshine.
It's great to be here Oahu. I loved the beaches down in Baja and around San Diego, but there's a wholly different sort of beauty on this coast, a wilder feel to things. Speaking of surfing, as I watched the waves rolling in off Sutro I was thinking "Only an insane person would go in that water."
~R~
My fog lesson went like this. One sunny afternoon, I roamed out onto one of those narrow rocky Marin fingers, many hundreds of feet in the air, the trail barely wide as my shoulders. Where the finger dropped off into the sea, I sat down to read in the sun, surrounded by sublime view on all sides, fell asleep, then woke up chilly and damp. Fog had rolled in, and I could not see a foot into space, yet knew what the drop looked like, inches away, in front of me and on either side. There was nothing to do but crawl on my hands and knees, maybe half a mile, back to the trail, and I have respected the fog since.
**Waving**Great pics dear.
I'll vote for some of this place.
If I ever get to lay eyes on it.
In the real world.
**Waving**Great pics dear.
I'll vote for some of this place.
If I ever get to lay eyes on it.
In the real world.
Oh yes, you've put on weight.
"Press sink please FRed(tm)."
R U?
RATD!! 47 TIMES!!!
U ALMOST MOST RATD BLOGGER EVER!
CHEX OUT MY WEBSITE @ HTTP://WWW.GOOGLE.COM!!!
I MAX IT 4 U!!!
That is, thanks to everyone here with one exception; Arthur Louis came by my blog and left nearly a dozen comments on various posts, comments identical to the one he left here. I deleted the others but left this one up as an example of how he has used my real name (NOT my screen name) without my permission. In other words, he's following in the footsteps of Bonnied Russell by outing me, with all the possible real-world consequences that could potentially occur by him doing so. While Bonnie is long since gone, Arthur is still with us and fooling people into thinking he's some kind of benign old gaffer; I'm going to make it a point to prove otherwise, and his comment here and many others still on his own blog are Exhibit A.
Sorry to read things have been weird...
glad you made it home safe and I hope work has picked up for you!
It's not just the fact that there were always strange grinning men on my beach too; if that other beach were covered in rotting fish carcasses, garbage, piles of busted concrete, beer empties and other detritus - and if the water were greasy and stagnant - I'd be tempted to call Cleveland North San Francisco.
I'm glad you're keeping one of AL's comments ~ testament to how some people on OS define "civility."
DID YOU ERASE MY COMMENT, NANA?!
Thoroughly enjoyed
~R~
Ooops, wrong persona. Hi DiBi! If you ARE DiBi and not, in fact, one of my alleged alter egos. :\
I'm glad you liked 'em MCS!
(I is you and you is me)
Did not see ya in the pics on either post.
Here's another poem about the sea. Wish I wrote it.
When I see the sea once more
will the sea have seen or not seen me ?
Why do the waves ask me
the same questions I ask them ?
And why do they strike the rock
with so much wasted passion ?
Don't they get tired of repeating
their declaration to the sand ?
Pablo Neruda
Lovely pics
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You haven't been active here much lately, & I wonder why that is.
For me, it comes down to a general sort of entropy. OS entropy.
There was a lot of uncertainty, & while it's great there's now someone over-seeing the site who at least has the manners to respond to the contributors, it seems the agenda is to feed the red & black parent site with free content. Maybe it always was. That was never why I came here though.
I came to meet people & engage, share, let it out. Find out wtf might be going on in the minds of others all over the world, about the way things are. It's been good, like that.
Either it's me, or it's something in the wind, or ... like I said, entropy, but I feel done here.
There's lots of people to say goodbye to, & I will, over time ... in my own way, in my own time. Certainly I'll check in, & hopefully make a useful comment here or there, & I've got a list of email addresses to help stay in touch, so it's good, & it's been fun, informative, passionate at times & terribly sad, too. I'll take the road my first friend here, Ablonde took, & just leave the account open. I guess that's the best way. Who needs a flounce, right ?
I just wanted to say thanks, nan, for the crazy nights, & hanging in through misunderstandings, coming through with the beautiful pictorials ( like this one ), & being a good friend.
I love the way you write.