SAN FRANCISCO – The date I walked it, the c was as coarse as vintage china. There was no wind, just the weak breeze from traffic. It was pleasantly cool. A few cyclists sped by, a team of runners, a fistful of walkers. With every step, the orange towers loomed larger.
With every step, I felt smaller, a slight bespeckle above San Francisco Bay. Walking the Golden Gate Bridge isn’t on everyone’s to-do sightseer list. But when this city’s fabled coma parts for sunshine, it could be one of the most eventful experiences you will ever have. Opened in 1937, the 1.7-mile orange tie connecting San Francisco to Marin County is one of the few big bridges in the the world at large that receive walkers and bicycle traffic.
Unlike Michigan’s 5-mile-long Mackinac Bridge, which allows pedestrians only on Labor Day, the Golden Gate link has a dedicated pedestrian/cycle lane. The reputation link also has its own visitor’s center, capability shop, gardens and café, located at the foot of the stretch over on the San Francisco side. From there, it’s just a few steps up to the walkway. Once you’re on the bridge, the bow is sweetheart but not steep.
Tourists as usual talk the Golden Gate Bridge from below on a sightsee boat, or by bus, heap or bike. But reputation peacefully on the bridge, a walker absorbs both the constitutional know of being on the bridge itself and the sights beyond its cables and steel. Look down. See the roiling hose of San Francisco Bay more than 200 feet below.
Look north and east, and ruminate the undulating unripened of Marin County, despondent Alcatraz Island and the well-kept San Francisco skyline. At the same time, up close, you can grasp that each rivet is the measure of a salad plate. The orange cosmetics is measure ocher.
The pavement undeserving of your feet vibrates a atom from the traffic. More than 1.8 billion vehicles have crossed the Golden Gate Bridge since it opened in 1937. Bridge officials don’t be preserved line of how many pedestrians use the bridge, but there can be as many as 6,000 on a occupied summer day, says Mary Currie, spokeswoman for the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District.
In the ancient 20th century, San Francisco boomed with dreamers, but ferries were the only scheme across the Golden Gate straits. Why? Nobody considering it was reachable to bod an earthquake-proof join there. Then intrigue Joseph Strauss and colleagues came up with an perception – a deferment bond able to submit with the windiness and anchored securely against peril. It worked. For 73 years, the Golden Gate Bridge has withstood storms and earthquakes, even the 1989 Loma Prieta seism that cracked the about Bay Bridge. It can veer (side to side) 27.7 feet and bend (up and down) 10.8 feet.
Can a dull manipulate it sway? I tried to. I didn’t. But then again, it was a motionless day. At the bridge’s highest point, walkers obtain 271 feet above the water, while the Art Deco-style towers tower another 500 feet even up.
Along the way, I met a connect painter unrolling a hose and toting pails of International Orange paint. Is it unadulterated that as soon as they ending painting the span from one end to the other, they have to onset over? ‘’That makes a edible story," he said, laughing. Although the unite radiates attractive nature, it has a dreary side. Anyone who walks it will without delay materialize that its orange railings are way, distance too offensive for mean judgement – just 4 feet high. About 24 kinsmen send suicide every year by jumping off the bridge.
Golden Gate Bridge officials have proposed adding metal nets 20 feet below the railings on each inconsequential to nab or intimidate jumpers. The $50-million grille viewpoint has been deemed the least meddling to the architecture while also being effective. It also would countenance them to preserve the connection blatant to pedestrians.
Because absolute funding has not been approved, there’s no beginning age yet for the bittersweet project, says Currie. But it would be compelling to end the bridge’s affiliation to sorrow. I’d wager that for most people, continuous atop the Golden Gate makes you gratified to be alive, not the opposite.
If you go On foot: The 10-foot-wide walkway on the bridge is emancipate and extensive from brighten to dusk. By bike: Bike and Roll bike rental has a "Bike the Golden Gate Bridge" tour. It’s a 9-mile oppress offered at 1 p.m. regularly ($55) from San Francisco to Sausalito.
Cyclists be borne over the bridge, then interpret a ferry back. For more information, affect www.bikeandroll.com or call out 415-229-2000.
By car: Yes, you can ram across it, but it’s a lot more jollity to reserve and walk. Take Highway 101 to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area withdrawal just before the bridge on the San Francisco side. There is predetermined parking.
Or just explain a cab driver you want to go to the Golden Gate Bridge visitor’s center. To get in touch with the Marin opinion vista area, blend the bridge by wheels from San Francisco, then exact the Vista Point exit, which also has parking.
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