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3 March 2023
There is a lot of nature tucked into a city like San Francisco if you know where to look. Sometimes, you just have to take a couple of steps off the sidewalk to find it. And a couple of steps off four-lane Laguna Honda Blvd. you'll find the dirt paths that make up Victory Trail.
The only problem with the Laguna Honda Community Trail System, of which Victory Trail is one of eight trails, is that its narrow paths are shared between hikers and bikers. So it can be hazardous to hikers.
But it's been raining and bikers don't much like muddy tracks so we put on our Merrells, grabbed the Olympus E-PL1 with its 14-42mm II R kit lens and ducked out of the soft rain under the protection of the canopy above Victory Trail.
We didn't run into a single biker (nor did they run into us) as we took our time traversing the trail, stopping to shoot anything that interested us.
Since we discovered it a while ago, we've wanted to document this little side trip off the sidewalk. It's an unexpected but refreshing respite from our usual concrete and asphalt circuit that even adds a few steps to our urban jaunt. A real treat.
We weren't sure it would be much to photograph, especially given the harsh contrast we noted on sunny days, but the diffused light of this rainy day was perfect. We took a lot more photos than we can put up here but these will give you the idea.
And that's the beauty of turning an abandoned urban space into something like the Laguna Honda Community Trail System. It's a great idea.
Victorious, you might say.