Fort Funston to the Zoo
April 15, 2009 San Francisco # 2 conclusion
Taking up where I left off some months back, here is the conclusion of my 2009 San Francisco hike. I seem to be having trouble getting the sizing on the captions right but I'll go ahead and publish anyway.
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| Fort Funston: Base station cupola. Behind me the San Mateo coastline. |
Fort Funston was as windswept as anything the previous day. The wind had shifted so that whereas it was blowing from the south west as I tried to walk south it was now blowing from the north west as I tried to walk north. We looked at various ruins from the Fort’s military days – ‘base stations’ for calculating the bearing and distance to that Japanese cruiser which never arrived. Farther up the trail lie the massive bunkers of Battery Davis which once housed two 16 inch guns. These were added to San Francisco's coastal defenses in the late 30s, just in time to become obsolete. There was another 16 inch battery on the Marin side of the Golden Gate. All overgrown today -- in its prime the battery would have been concealed with netting and cryptic paint.
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| Battery Davis, landward side |
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| Battery Davis, seaward side. Not much for the crew of that hypothetical Japanese cruiser to see till the 16 inch guns open fire. |
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| Main entrance to Battery Davis. |
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| Battery Davis: South Casement. |
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| Business end of North Casement. |
The trail heads north over wind swept dunes – some with foliage, some without. Close to the parking lot and Battery Davis, numerous people were out running their (mostly large) dogs. Farther north the traffic thinned out. At last the poles marking the trail came to a fresh cliff. Time to backtrack to Skyline Boulevard and finish the last leg to the Zoo. There I joined Rosanna and Damien to visit the animals.
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| Fort Funston: Dunes, Dogs and Distance. |
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| Sorry, trail ends here -- go back. |
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| This happens to be where the 400 pound gorilla wants to sit. Any problem? |
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| Extremely rare non-sleeping Koala. |
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| Zoo's latest resident and proud parent. |
