Tennessee Valley Trail - Virtual Hike #5

11:30-13:08.
Picked up this Virtual Hike TB yesterday after the Coastal Cleanup activities at the Uvas Reservoir CITO event. As I was heading up to Marin County anyway, I decided to grab this travel bug and see whether any of my nephews wanted to go on the hike with me. Instead, it turned out that they were all going to a picnic today; so I opted out of the picnic to take this nice little hike. I'm not used to hiking without a geocache as the destination (the Golden Gate National Recreation Area is administered by the National Park Service), and I often have trouble following directions (a great hindrance on those Letterboxes); so it wasn't surprising when I pulled off at the wrong trailhead. But, I quickly realized my mistake after taking a photo and headed onto the correct trailhead as described on the card. The parking lot was full, but I had arrived late enough to catch a car just as it was leaving the lot, and I quickly grabbed the space. There was some kind of equestrian or horse jumping class going on next to the parking lot, and I dallied long enough to take a photo, as somebody on a loudspeaker called out instructions to the riders as they cantered around the track.
At the trailhead, I read up on some of the history of the valley. The SS Tennessee was a steamship that ferried gold-seeking passengers from Panama to San Francisco from 1850 to 1853. On a foggy March morning in 1853, it misjudged the entrance to the bay and ran ashore on this beach which then became known as Tennessee Beach. All of the crew and passengers were rescued, but not until after they had to spend the night on this beach. A city of 20,000 people had been planned for this area in the 1960s, but it was stopped by public outcry and the land became part of the GGNRA in 1972.
Though the creek areas are lined with lots of nonnative eucalyptus trees, lots of diverse trees populate the valley. Even this late in the year, there were various flowers in bloom. I wonder what this place looks like in the Spring. The first part of the trail is paved, down to a bridge that leads across to a Spanish-tiled house that is marked as off limits for safety reasons (rather than being private property). I spotted a buck and some does nibbling in the area. The trail then splits off to a picnic area and a wide dirt trail continuing into the valley.
The trail was often busy. Groups of two dozen schoolkids or two dozen German-speaking twenty-somethings would suddenly appear around a corner with little warning. There are some occasional interesting rock formations along the trail. I didn't see any horses during my hike, though the trail is evidently open to them. The trail splits into the Upper Tennessee Valley Trail and the Lower Tennessee Valley Trail (hikers only). The upper trail is wider and affords much nicer views of the lagoon and beach before dropping down to meet just before the lagoon. I took the Upper Trail in and the Lower Trail on the way out. Both trails intersect with the Coastal Trail (only 482 miles to the Oregon border!). There were ducks in the lagoon, a small body of water just above the beach. The TB trail card indicates a loop trail around the lagoon, but I was only able to get part of the way around the lagoon before a fence made me turn around. Because I was so close to the beach, I followed the trail down to the beach and took some photos of the rock formations before heading back.
Thanks for getting me out onto a new trail!

Picked up from the CITO event before heading to Marin for babysitting.