First, overnight at the Cavallo Point lodge -- nestled in a fog-resistant nook under the northeast side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Formerly Fort Baker, these buildings housed the soldiers who operated the gun batteries that defended the San Francisco Bay from potential invaders from the late 19th century through to the Cold War.
Next, a drive through the Bunker Road tunnel under Highway 101 to Rodeo Beach in the Marin Headlands. Beyond windswept, the coastal scrubland is pocked with concrete gun emplacements, more old barracks and even a decommissioned Nike nuclear missile site.
Military occupation marked the land but also preserved it from development -- just hop back through the tunnel to Sausalito and Mill Valley to see what it could look like if it weren't now a national park. The picture below belies the force seven or eight winds that greeted us. Maybe that helps explain the lack of development, too.
And then into peacenik Marin.
Along Highway 1, past the Zen masters at Green Gulch, the boho dropouts of Bolinas and to the bucolic foodie destination town of Point Reyes Station for lunch at Osteria Stellina, a modest temple to eating local that happens also to be one of my favorite restaurants in the world. After lunch, a quiet stroll around Toby's, which sells peace sign cake pans and is the only feed store I know with Tibetan prayer flags strung over its piles of hay. And last before we head for home, to the farmers market, where military Marin is long forgotten -- where peace, love, song, justice and environmental stewardship are so thick in air that they collectively suffuse the honey, bread, arugula and rainbow chard.
