Sunday, September 19, 2010

Another 13 Miles...


Today's Route

Today's route was supposed to be 12 miles, but my iPhone's GPS app had us at 13.18. I'll take what I can get. :)

The day started out dryer than yesterday, which was nice. It was overcast, but not foggy. We had a beautiful sunrise, and could actually see the Golden Gate Bridge from the Warming Hut.


Sunrise at 7:00am


The Golden Gate Bridge makes an appearance!

On the whole, today's walk was nice and moderate - compared to all of the hills and stairs that we tackled yesterday...

...until we reached the Mosaic Stairs!

One of my favorite things about these training walks that I've been doing is discovering new parts of San Francisco that I've never known about. I've lived here for 15 years now, and I can't believe that I've never seen these gorgeous stairs!

Here's some great information about the tiled steps Project which says that there were 163 mosaic panels created by over 300 neighbors. I think it may be one of the most beautiful man-made sites in the whole city.

I wish I had more time to really look at and study each of the panels, but alas, there was climbing of the stairs to be done. These are some steep stairs!


The Mosaic Stairs


Close-up of some of the mosaic risers


Looking down from the top

But wait, there's more!

We made it to the top, caught our breath, then saw that there were another short flight of stairs, followed by yet another large flight of more stairs!


But wait, there's MORE!

The stairs led us to the top of Grand View Park - which has this name for a reason. What a view! Again, it was overcast, but not foggy today, so we had a great view of the entire City!


View from the top - You can barely make out the Golden Gate Bridge, on the other side of the large green hill. That's where we started this morning, which at this point was about 7 miles ago.


Another view of Golden Gate Park and the Pacific Ocean

The weather started to lightly drizzle during the last 5 miles of our walk. Not too bad, just a little wet, and luckily, it only got chilly during the last mile or so.

When we got back to the Warming Hut at Noon, you could barely see the Golden Gate Bridge - such a contrast to this morning.


The Golden Gate Bridge at Noon today.


Today's Stats
The speed indicated here includes the breaks that we take throughout the walk - today, we had two 15-minute breaks, and one that was probably about 30 minutes.

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