A walk in the park

Tuesday after work, Sarah & I took the scenic, non-car route to one of our favored dinner places, Park Chow in the Inner Sunset. It was a lovely, lovely evening, with temps in the high 60s before the sun set – perfect weather for enjoying a long walk through the park!

House on Oak St.

Street Stencil

As we walked through the pandhandle (a 1/2-mile long “extension” of eastern Golden Gate Park that runs between the busy thoroughfares of Oak and Fell Streets), I saw a neat street stencil of a young boy wearing a turban. I’m not sure why, but I enjoy these little pieces of illegal street art (certainly much more than the un-artistic graffiti that plagues much of our fair city!). I have a modest gallery of some of the stencils and other street art I’ve seen in my personal photo gallery.

Conservatory of Flowers

We soon crossed Stanyan St., and entered Golden Gate Park proper, walking down JFK. One somewhat annoying thing about walking down JFK during commute hours is that many people use the park as a commute route, and there are too many cars and traffic. Personally I wish we’d follow NYC’s example, where they closed nearly all of Central Park to traffic at all times. We just get the east end closed on Sundays & Holidays, with a litte portion closed on Saturdays during the summer’ish months. Afterall, it’s a “park,” not a “drive!” Ah well, that debate is and will be on-going….

Drummers at the Conservatory of Flowers

We walked past the De Young Museum and turned to walk around Stowe Lake before heading to dinner.

Few birds were a’wing along JFK, but here we started to see and hear many more.  Chestnut-backed Chickadees sang from the trees, Common Ravens knocked and croaked, and the gull flock cried loudly, no doubt begging bread from one of the people who feeds them here.

I wanted to see the Chinese Pavillion, so we crossed the footbridge to Strawberry Hill, spending a moment enjoying the little man-made waterfall.  Cherry Trees were in full bloom, their pink popcorn flowers always a joy to behold.

 

Chinese Pavillion

Amid the many Western Gulls in the lake, I saw one Glaucous-winged Gull, and there were a good number of American Coots and Mallards, but nothing much of note.  Although there was recently a reported Glaucous Gull, which would be a lifer for me, I didn’t want to torment Sarah by scanning the hundreds of gulls here, and I didn’t have binoculars with me anyhow.

 

 

More cherry blossoms dotted the south side of the lake, and there was much evidence of the recent windy storms that blew through, with several large fallen trees.

 

An American Wigeon foraged with the Mallards here, and the setting sun cast a nice glow on everything.  Sarah recognized a passing couple as former high school teachers of hers, so we stopped and talked to them for a little while before continuing on our way.  I’d hoped to cut through the Arboretum en route to 9th Ave., but the back entrance was closed, so we took a more direct route.  Dinner at Park Chow was, as always, very good, and since it was the better part of 4.5 miles round-trip, we indulged in a tasty dessert of ginger cake with pumpkin ice cream.