Today we went for a walk along the Berkeley bay shore, thinking to avoid traffic by setting off while that big football game everyone is talking about was playing. But we weren’t paying close attention and left about half an hour before the game began, so we still encountered traffic, on the freeways from home over to the edge of the bay in Berkeley.
Along the bay shore in Berkeley, between the Bay Bridge to the south and the curve to the west of the mainland to the north, at Richmond, there are four peninsulas that jut into the Bay. I think they are all landfills; certainly the two we’ve hiked at are. The biggest one includes a large squarish landfill called Cesar E. Chavez Park, very popular with kite-flyers on breezy days; the Berkeley Marina; and a popular seafood restaurant, Skates on the Bay, which has spectacular views of the city across the bay, and decent food for a tourist spot.
Next north of that is where we went today, a peninsula with a racetrack, Golden Gate Fields, at its root; a small beach with actual sand; and an isthmus to a roundish area at the end called Albany Bulb. The next peninsula north of that is Point Isabel, which we’ve been to many times because that’s where our nearest Costco is. In between the two peninsulas is the Albany Mudflats State Marine Park, the inlet of the Bay in between the two peninsulas. When we’d been there before it must have been high tide, because the area looked just like another inlet of the bay, water-filled. But today, at low tide, we saw the actual mudflats, with all sorts of birds walking over the mud or swimming in the wet stream down the middle.
A good photo, looking much like how we saw the mudflats today (taken from BayNature.org) is shown above; click for full-sized. We parked along the road, at about left center of the photo, then walked the trial seen in upper right, and then farther out to the “bulb” at the end. A nice, pleasant walk, about 50 minutes. And flat. About 70 degrees. We saw various curious street art installations, some with lawn chairs that suggested homeless encampments, along the way, especially at the end of the “bulb.”
Update Monday: Two things. First, we didn’t walk the circular path in the large green area in the photo, because it was chained off, for the sake a wildlife preserve for burrowing owls. I didn’t know there were such things as burrowing owls, but apparently they live in that grassy area. We walked along the left side of that main area, until where you see the trail dip to the right, where we could cut over the shore where you see two trees.
Second, we had never noticed the mudflats before, despite having been to this area two or three times before, because on those earlier trips we walked along the center road, and then along the left edge of the isthmus, so that we only saw the bay to the left (south). For that matter, we usually parked further out, missing any view of the mudflats in the hunt for a parking space.
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From this peninsula one easily sees Costco and a big US Post Office distribution center on the next peninsula north. After our walk we drove there. I hadn’t been to Costco in months and months, perhaps not in two years since the lockdown began. We went there today because Y had things he needed to buy, my car was nearly out of gas and Costco has good gas prices, and most importantly I’d gotten by annual Costco rebate, via an email with a barcode, which I had to go to Costco in person to get cashed.
The gas station lines were too long, so we skipped that. The store was busy as ever, despite the game. I really don’t like Costco — too big, too crowded, too many long lines, and too much merchandise you can only buy in large quantities. But Y has shopped there his entire adult life–I think because, when he raised a family, it made sense for him to shop at a place with large quantities of household supplies for reasonable prices. But with just two of us now, we often end up with an overstuffed pantry full of things it takes us a while to use up.
Anyway, I got my rebate, some $200+ in cash, and Y bought his stuff, and we escaped home. The traffic was moderately lighter. The game was underway.
