Mom and I left Berkeley yesterday morning and drove about 30 minutes, over the San Rafael Bridge, past San Quentin Prison crouching spookily at the edge of the Bay, onto Sir Francis Drake, past Larkspur Landing, South on 101 towards Sausalito, and 4 miles out on Tiburon Boulevard to Tiburon‘s Main Street. Studded with a few chic shops, a few good restaurants with jaw-dropping bay views, and a ferry dock, Main Street also has a pricey parking lot (we paid $13 for our 5-hr outing – there may be free street parking farther away, but we were out of time) . We lined up with at the dock for the 10:00 ferry, joining a mix of tourists, local families with kids and bikes, young athlete-types loaded with recreational gear, picnickers with BBQ supplies, campers with bursting backpacks, and casual hikers in sturdy shoes and sun hats.
We paid $13.50 each at the gate for a round-trip ticket to Angel Island, and found places on the open, upper deck for the 10-minute ride. A morning chill was still in the air, and a cold breeze blew off the Bay, so we bundled up in extra layers we has brought in our knapsacks. I tried to steal Mom’s cute Sherpa cap, but she wouldn’t let go of it.
The island has quite a checkered history, originally inhabited by Coast Miwok Indians, but in the past few hundred years, by whites with various unfortunate agendas. It was a garrison for infantry serving in campaigns against American Indians in the West, then a a “quarantine” facility for immigrating Chinese (due to the shameful Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882), then a detention camp for soldiers returning from the Spanish-American war, then a processing facility for prisoners of war during WWII, then a Nike missile battery during the Cold War, and eventually, a California State Park, though the best bits are still off-limits US Coast Guard territory. Many ruins are scattered around the island, some sites very poignant, with poems of despair in Chinese etched on wooden walls, some sites in a process of restoration, and some just empty and mysterious shells, open to wander through.
Angel Island has 13 miles of trails and roadways open to hikers, and 9 paved miles are open to cyclists. There are a couple of good beaches, including Quarry Beach, near a large group picnic area on the East side of the island.
Hiking the approximately 5-mile perimeter road in a clockwise direction, we came upon some of the most amazing views you will ever see — the San Francisco cityscape and the Golden Gate Bridge, from the middle of the Bay. We sat on a sunny bench perched on a bluff, enjoying some fruit and chocolate. There were several sailboats afloat on the calm water, including an old wooden 3-master close by. It doesn’t get much better than this.