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November 29, 2023. San Pablo Avenue runs from downtown Oakland up to Crockett, about 23 miles, and is one of the oldest and longest roads in the Bay Area, appearing on a map in 1830. It became part of the transcontinental Lincoln Highway and was the main north south thoroughfare until the Eastshore Freeway was […]

November 15, 2023. I got to SF around noon to walk the southern part of the Crosstown Trail. The trail opened in 2019 and “runs through hidden trails, public parks, shopping corridors, tiled stairways, and community gardens along the way” according to the website. It’s about 45% roads and sidewalks, 15% paved off-road paths, and

November 8, 2023. North Berkeley has tons of pathways and staircases that connect streets up and down the hills. Some blocks up here are fairly long so the paths provide short cuts between streets. I selected five pathways to walk and when Google maps connected them for me I ended up getting three or four

November 1, 2023. I was looking forward to seeing beavers in Fairfield where they’ve constructed dams along Laurel Creek which runs through town, but I did not. I know they’re active from dusk to dawn so I arrived around sunset. Unfortunately, I don’t actually know what a beaver’s dam looks like. I saw a few

October 25, 2023. This neighborhood doesn’t have as many Russian businesses as it used to, but it’s still going strong. My first stop was Globus Books. It’s small and there were several people there browsing. I saw a handful of books in English and enjoyed looking at a book of street photos taken in Russia

October 11, 2023. There’s something so satisfying about using a vending machine. You select your item after perusing all the offerings, put in your coins (well, now it’s usually a credit card), push that button and watch your purchase be pushed forward to drop into the tray, soon to be in your hands. I remember

September 27, 2023. Just west of Sacramento, there is a section of route 80 that is elevated; it’s a causeway for excess water to run underneath. Inside the expansion joints on the underside of the causeway live 250,000 bats! They fly out around sunset to eat bugs. I didn’t see 250,000 bats. The girl whose

September 20, 2023. The AQI in Berkeley was just under 150, about to verge into the red zone, due to wild fires. I decided to go north where it was still about 90, but better. I looked for places to go where I could stay in the car with the air recirculating (online sources disagree

Expedition 10: Dunsmuir House and nearby. Friends have asked how I find my expedition locations. Many ways; reading, radio, conversation, stuff I see from my car and browsing the map are the main ones. Often I pick one spot and then look on the map for stuff nearby, which I did for this one.  I

September 6. For this expedition, I visited the oldest _______ (fill in the blank). Some are just old; I couldn’t verify if they are actually the oldest. My first stop was 301 Broadway, the oldest building in Oakland, probably oldest in the East Bay, built in 1857! It was originally a wine shop, serving this