Point Bonita Lighthouse Trail Golden Gate National Recreation Area

While nearly everyone that visits San Francisco makes sure to visit the Golden Gate bridge, they often miss the other scenic areas of Golden Gate national Recreation Area that they certainly would want to see if they were a little better informaed and knew were just a few miles away. One of these is the Point Bonita lighthouse and hike.

While the main goal of doing the short hike to make your way to Point Bonita Lighthouse and the new Point Bonita lighthouse bridge, you should certainly slow down a bit and not make a beeline for the lighthouse. Taking your time will allow you to take advantage of the beautiful sights along the way. There are plenty of gorgeous views of the California coastline at the Marin Headlands, along with an abundance of wonderful plant life and trees which make for some incredible photographic opportunities:

point bonita lighthouse trail scenery

This includes some beautiful views of the Golden Gate Bridge that many visitors to San Francisco never see:

Point Bonita lighthouse trail start

point bonita lighthouse trail Golden gate bridge

The trail definitely is not flat with a hill that you descend (and thus must climb back up on the way out), bit it is paved and is wheelchair accessible:

point bonita lighthouse trail path

In addition to the beautiful views, there is also the opportunity to see wildlife such as harbor seals basking on the rocks just offshore below the cliffs:

point bonita lighthouse trail harbour seals

Toward the end of the trail you reach a tunnel that you must go through to reach Bonita lighthouse. When the lighthouse is open to the public (Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays from 12:30 PM to 3:30 PM), the tunnel is open. When the lighthouse is closed, there is a steel door that blocks you from entering which also means that you can’t see the lighthouse even from a distance:

point bonita lighthouse trail tunnel

Once you make it through the tunnel, you emerge to see this breathtaking sight:

point bonita lighthouse

If you have the opportunity to visit San Francisco, make sure that you give yourself at least a full day to explore some of the lesser known areas of Golden Gate National Recreation Area…

Persistence Cave: Secret Cave at Wind Cave National Park to Be Explored

Persistence Cave explored at Wind Cave National Park

The United States National Park Service (NPS) can keep a secret. In 2004, a worker at Wind Cave national park in South Dakota stumbled upon a new cave in the park. The park service named the cave Persistence Cave but decided to keep the cave a secret from the public to avoid amateur spelunkers from trying to explore, and possibly damage, the cave. The NPS now plans to initiate the excavation of the unexplored Persistence Cave beginning Monday. They hope the information gained will help shed light on the climate changes that have taken place in the region over the last 11,000 years.

In addition to the NPS team excavating the cave will be Jim Mead, a professor at the East Tennessee State University. They are hoping to secure both sediment samples and animal bones from the cave which would offer details regarding the animal species which inhabited the region over the centuries. The team has already done preliminary sample tests at the mouth of Persistence Cave which uncovered the bones of three animal species which had never been known to inhabit the Black Hills area. The three new species found were the pika, the pine marten, and the platygonus.

All the new bones found at the mouth of the cave, along with any new ones excavated during the exploration beginning Monday, will be catalogued and studied. The good news is the study of these 11,000-year-old bones won’t need to be done alone. The scientists plan to study any new finds in conjunction with bones found at the Hot Springs Mammoth Site which is a nearby prehistoric graveyard discovered in the 1970s. The fossils at the Hot Springs Mammoth Site date back 26,000 years allowing the researchers to do quality age comparisons between the two, and noting how the environment and climate have changed in the area since the last glacial period.

For those who want to see the cave, you’re out of luck, at least for now. The NPS is keeping the exact location of Persistence Cave a secret while the excavation and exploration of the cave take place. That begs the question, how did this cave remain unfound for so long when Wind Cave has been explored for more than 100 years? The current theory is that although Persistence Cave is likely linked to Wind Cave, the passage that once connected the two caves has been blocked making it inaccessible to humans from Wind Cave.

(Photo courtesy of daveynin)