Prologue: A 30,000 foot idea!

San Francisco bay is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful places in the world. I’m fortunate to have flown from SFO airport several times. On a clear day, the scenery that unfolds as the plane takes off and lands is breathtaking. If aerial views of the bay seen through dirty airplane window can be so beautiful, you can only imagine how much more exciting it’d be experiencing it at close quarters.

When I hiked the trails in Baylands Park, Palo Alto, I got to experience that view from ground level. Perhaps not as breathtaking as it is from 30,000 ft above, but the air was crisp, the breeze cool and the walk refreshing. This got me researching more about SF Bay Trail. 

We are lucky to have more than 330 miles of completed trails around San Francisco and San Pablo Bays. And when fully completed, this will be a contiguous 500 miles of walking & biking trails around both the bays. The more I researched bay trail, the more I was enamored by the idea of walking around the San Francisco Bay.

The timing couldn’t be more perfect. It was spring. The weather pleasant and nice. I had just quit my job with Informatica a 3rd time. The previous time I took to the roads and did a 48 state road trip with Apollo. The idea of walking around SF bay seemed the the perfect complement this time around. 

A full map of the intended walk is here. You can zoom in for details on each day (color coded). Since the bay trail is not fully done and contiguous, portions of the walk will have to be city streets. Walking across Oakland-SF Bay bridge is also not an option, I will probably have to rely on BART or ferry to cross over from Oakland to San Francisco and continue the walk from there. In the east bay, from Newark – Milpitas, the trail is not done; I’ll probably hitch a ride to Milpitas to complete the walk. 

I had originally planned this walk as an 8 x 8 x 8 adventure… 8 marathons in about 8 hours each in 8 consecutive days! By eliminating any segment that got repeated and optimizing the route and introducing two breaks, I managed to tweak the walk to about 150 miles in 7 days around the San Francisco bay.

The first phase will cover the entire south bay. I do intend to cover the bay north of San Francisco sometime in the future.