Point Reyes: Arch Rock Revisited

Above Arch Rock

My friend Erik and I wanted to go hiking at Point Reyes National Seashore sometime this week. He suggested Tuesday, but the forecast for Olema suggested that was the day of the week with the most rain. I chose Thursday, when there was just a chance of showers. And I decided we would just start out on Bear Valley Trail, and take some route that would take us across Woodward Valley Trail, which I enjoyed a lot on my own last year. The tides were all wrong for any visits to the shore this week.

We ended up hiking in the rain all day, and never made it onto Woodward Valley Trail

I picked up Erik at 7:45 and we headed down a route I drove just from visual memory: I-80 to Vallejo, CA 37 to US 101 North, exit at what turned out to be San Marin Drive (which I just recognized from a building on the hillside), west to a school, then right on Novato Boulevard, north to Point Reyes-Petaluma Road, west to a stop sign at a bridge, right to CA 1 at the north end of Point Reyes Station, then south to the turn off for Point Reyes, and finally the turn off for the visitor center and the Bear Valley Trailhead. It took about 2 hours and 20 minutes, given that we were coming from the northeastern suburbs of Sacramento, and had to drive through downtown in rush hour.

We decided to hike Bear Valley Trail to Old Pine Trail, veer off there to go to Sky Trail, then take a short jaunt over to Woodward Valley Trail, take it down to Coast Trail, and then head back to Arch Rock and the end of Bear Valley Trail to take that trail all the way back to the car.

The first two legs worked out. We headed along the easy and wide Bear Valley Trail (it's a road), with a steady rain on us. A creek flows alongside most of the trail. Frequently fallen trees span the creek, and have ferns and moss growing on them. All around the trees lacking their leaves were fully covered by other green plant life. Plenty of milkmaids (small, white wildflowers) grew off the side of the trail.


Along Bear Valley Trail

In what seemed like very little time, we reached Divide Meadow, where there are pit toilets, and the junction with Old Pine Trail. On that narrow trail, we started climbing through the forest. There was at least one clearing along the trail, and a couple of points where we were on the edge of a hillside, and could look down on banks of fog. I stopped to take a photograph of some witch's butter, with my camera protected by a plastic freezer bag. We were keeping our cameras underneath our jackets while we hiked.


Witch's Butter

Shortly after that photo stop, the rain let up. It was still drizzling a bit, and the saturated trees were dripping, but it was drier overall. After reaching the top of our climb, we made a short descent to Sky Trail.


Erik Arriving at Sky Trail

There were plenty of signs there, with arrows, trail names, and exact distances. I thought I knew where I was going well enough--just a short jog towards the coast to Woodward Valley Trail, so I didn't check the signs. Erik did, and was confused, because the sign indicated that Woodward Valley Trail was the opposite direction. But he trusted me, and followed along.


Along Sky Trail

I could tell we were going too far, and getting too close to the coast, and not heading over in the direction that I remembered Woodward Valley Trail as being. Erik then mentioned the sign, and I checked my map, and indeed we were going the wrong direction. But we kept going, since we had gone so far already, and just headed down to Coast Trail from there. There were great views, that just don't translate into photographs, of the shore and Point Reyes in the distance, coming down the last portion of Sky Trail.

Just before reaching Coast Trail, we took stock of the situation. We could head north on the Coast Trail to Woodward Valley Trail, and head back on it. This would make it a very long hike, with quite a bit more climbing. Or we could just head south to Arch Rock and head back to the car on the easy Bear Valley Trail. The voice of reason told me that we should go the easier way and take our time taking pictures, rather than try to make up for my blunder.


Ice Plant Above Arch Rock

And that's what we did. Along the way, we saw a variety of wildflowers--ice plant, monkey flower, Douglas iris, and others. Down at Arch Rock, we took the unofficial trail down to the creek--an unofficial trail that has crumbled quite a bit since we last hiked it. Unlike last time, the creek was too swollen from rain for us to make a comfortable crossing.


Arch Rock


Erik Thinking About Crossing

Instead, we headed back farther south along the coast trail, crossing the creek the easy way, on a bridge, and then worked our way over to the cliff across the creek from Arch Rock on the south. There we had nice views of the arch that gives the outcropping its name. It looks like people climb down from there, with the only difficulty being the chance of the cliff crumbling beneath you. We decided there wasn't enough reward for the risk--we had already been down there last year, and the tide was too high to explore the beach at all. Honestly, it was the rational decision--it's not because we're wusses.

From there we headed back on easy and wide Bear Valley Trail. As we got close to Divide Meadow, the rain picked up again. After that, we encountered an interesting bird. I get highly frustrated trying to photograph birds, as they don't let me get anywhere close. To compound the difficulties, it was dark, and I didn't have a good telephoto lens. But the bird let us get surprisingly close. In fact, I'm sure we could have gotten closer. But when we got to a certain point, we were concerned that the bird must be injured, or else it would have taken off. We chose not to stress it further, and left it alone.


Poor Birdy

From there it was an uneventful trip back to the car, a quick stop at the Cheese Factory on the way back, and a mercifully easy trip back to Sacramento, considering how close to rush hour it was.

Sacramento Area Pizzerias

Shakey's Pizza


Sacramento's best known pizzeria has got to be Shakey's. Sherwood "Shakey" Johnson started the chain, which at one time had more than 700 restaurants, at 57th and J Street in East Sacramento in 1954. The location stayed open until a fire on January 8, 1996. That was more than 8 months before I moved to the area, but the guide book I bought was written earlier. When I finally got a car in 1999, I set off to eat at the original Shakey's Pizza, only to find it boarded up.

Sherwood Johnson sold his interest in Shakey's in the late 1960s, and there is no local connection with the franchise now, so the original Shakey's never reopened. The owner of the restaurant that took over the location wanted to keep the old Shakey's Pizza sign up, but there is an ordinance against having two signs. The Sacramento Bee reported that the sign would be preserved in an unspecified museum. The nearest Shakey's to Sacramento now is in Oroville.

Luigi's Pizzeria and Fun Garden


Luigi's first opened on Stockton Boulevard, the old Highway 99 route, in 1953. Two Italian brothers bought it in the 1960s, and have continued to run the place. When I first visited, I arrived before the place was supposed to open, but one of those brothers waved me in, and told me in an Italian accent that they were open just as soon as the ovens were hot. According to The Sacramento Bee, he doesn't mind being called Luigi, even though his name is Celso. My meatball sandwich was wonderful.



When I went there on a Friday evening, the place was packed with locals, who seemed to all know each other, and who had probably been eating pizza there their whole lives. Recently Luigi's Slice opened in Midtown. The atmosphere there is much trendier than at the original location, but the pizza is made the same way.



Zelda's Original Gourmet Pizza


Since 1978, this Midtown restaurant has been the premiere place to get Chicago style pizza in Sacramento. Because it's Chicago style, it takes 1/2 hour to cook, so they advise calling in your order ahead of time. The restaurant is dimly lit with dark wooden booths in a narrow dining area on one side, and a bar on the other side. It's quite the cozy environment.



Wenelli's


From the outside, it looks like a new suburban strip mall, but the old wood paneling inside first indicated to me that the place had some history. Articles posted inside explain--the pizzeria opened as the first Round Table Pizza in the Sacramento area in the late 1960s. Two women who had worked there for $2.65 an hour, before becoming managers of other Round Table locations, pooled their life savings and reopened it as Wenelli's in 1993. Business was slow at first, and one article mentions that they were in tears at the end of the first week, but they've been in business 15 years now.



Romas Pizzeria


I knew this was a substantial omission from my original posting of this blog entry, as I had seen Romas named the best pizzeria in Sacramento in some local poll once, but I had never gotten around to eating there. It's a long ways from anywhere I have lived, and it doesn't look promising from the outside, in a small, nondescript shopping center on Franklin Blvd.

The vintage sign (plastic) is obscured from the road by trees, or I might have been more curious. What finally led me to visit the place was that I saw it was the top pizzeria choice in Sacramento on Yelp. I headed there the same afternoon.

Like Wenelli's, the outside of the shopping center has been updated, but not in a way that is at all interesting. Inside, however, it is mostly vintage: old light fixtures, wood-panel wainscoting, booths with mismatching vinyl from being partially recovered (unfortunately the lumpy padding was not redone), an old electric sign for the restaurant with a scene of a creek in which the water appears to move. But dominating the dining room for a restaurant named after the city of Rome is a large 1960s wallpaper image, framed, of . . . Venice. Well, they're not too far away from each other.

I was there at 4:00 p.m. on a Saturday, but the place was doing good business. There were three guys with two pitchers of beer and a combo 'za discussing the day's softball games. Two families came in and had their usual orders confirmed by the waiter without the involvement of a menu at any point.

I had the salami pizza, and it was terrific. The crust was crisp on the bottom, the sauce was fantastic, and the amount of salami on the pizza was quite generous. I burnt my tongue because I couldn't wait to scarf it down.

Giovanni's


I was living in Davis when I read in The Sacramento Bee about the authentic New York style pizza at Giovanni's in South Sacramento. Since that is my favorite style of pizza, I headed out to find the restaurant that very night. I had to stand in a long line just to put in my order, but the pizza was everything I hoped it would be. You don't need any toppings if you have a well-done New York style pizza like they serve at Giovanni's--with great crust, sauce, and cheese. But their home-made sausage is excellent as well. They've opened up a second location on Folsom Boulevard, which is just as cavernous as the first, and I see in the Yellow Pages that there is a Giovanni's listed on Fair Oaks Boulevard too, but I have never been there.

Slices


Another Midtown pizzeria, advertised by a neon slice of pizza in the window. As the name suggests, they sell pizza by the slice here. Other than the huge, doughy outer crust, it's good pizza, and if you ask for it, they are quite generous with the fresh garlic.

Woodstock's


For my 6 years of life in Davis, this was my pizza joint. It has a great college-hangout atmosphere--something that is generally lacking in Davis, despite the fact that it is a university town. You can get pizza by the slice for lunch or after 9 p.m. I also visited frequently on Wednesday nights for their beer specials.