25 May Trails of San Francisco Part 3

Part 3: Berkeley, Grizzly Hill and the Big C

This weekend I ventured across the bay to Berkeley on a beautiful sunny Friday. It was a very nice 20®C and I had entered Berkeley armed with ‘Maps.me’ and two other study abroad students, Dudi and Ross, we planned to stroll through the picturesque campus of Berkeley college and continue hiking into the hills behind the campus. On first impressions Berkeley looks like a college pulled directly from the 1800’s with its old colonial style buildings and stunning gardens in perfect composition with its surroundings this was a remarkable campus to get lost in.

The further into the hills behind the college you climb the greater the view will you’ll be rewarded with exponentially. With a tip off from our uber driver that observatory science museum would be a great place to visit our plan was to bee line through the hills via The Big C. En route to The Big C we stumbled across a giant swing with a gorgeous vista view of the entire bay looking onto San Francisco, I think the photo justifies how much we enjoyed fitting 3 grown men onto a couples swing. Maps.me has never failed me before but this time it betrayed my exploration. The museum only being 1 mile away via a direct route, conviently had the Berkeley Lab right in the middle of this shortcut. Needless to say, none of us had a federal government security clearance to stroll through this road, dammit. 20 minutes later and 3 Turkeys almost getting run down by cars we had zipped across the Strawberry Valley to the museum with excitement and anticipation. Only to learn that the museum was designed for children and that planetarium was only open on weekends. Still not deterred, Grizzly Hill point of intrest was stillclose by and this was our final attempt of trying tro do something meaningful for the day. The trail to Grizzly Hill is itself a moderately hard hike but certainly worth the quad burn. After 25 minutes of hiking through Redwoods and rolling hills you are treated to an even greater view than the past 5 or 6 vistas along the way. On a sunny clear day it was incredible to watch eagles using updraughts to rocket into the sky without any effort only to see them dive at incredible speeds at their pray, all of this while enjoying a remarkable view of the bay area.

This was a fairly long day trip starting at around 930am at Powell station and returning to the Sunset area at about 6pm. Go load up your Clipper Card and get out there!