The Great Highway / Dispatch from the shrinking Front Line

It is BIG news around these parts. A portion of The Great Highway has been shut down. Not just a lane - all Southbound lanes have been blocked off to vehicular traffic (northbound lanes are open) due to storm and erosion damage. For those that are unfamiliar, The Great Highway runs the length of and parallels Ocean Beach, which is located on the far western edge of the San Francisco Peninsula. So with all the hub-bub going on I decided to take a walk down and take a gander for myself. What not a better mission to bring my trustful companion and fellow adventurer - my daughter. And as it turned out, we were blessed with a beautiful day!

As we made our way down (we walked and took the stroller) an immediate observation was the extraordinary amount of flotsum along the length of the beach. Logs, branches, trash, telephone pole parts, foam, sections of docks, old x-mas trees and lots of exposed random rocks. Not too much of a surprise since we have recently gone through some good stormy wet weather cycles. But still more than I have seen in a long time.

A second observation was the amount of sand eroded off the beach. Many of the dunes that have been built up over the years are taking a real hammering. Yesterday I ran into Carol Schultz, "Queen of the Beach" in Golden Gate Park. One of her comments to me was, "Jeez DAK, I have never seen so much sand missing off the beach". I concur.

Sure enough, there is some serious havoc that Mother Nature is unleashing at the southern end of The Great Highway. The Sloat Parking Lot's (1st Parking Lot) egress point is completely been compromised due to high surf. And the the 2nd Parking Lot is also in bad shape due to some serious hydrodynamic activity.

While I'd love the opportunity to delve into the very interesting battle that will soon unfold regarding how to resolve this problem and the various stakeholders involved, I need to cut this short and catch some shut-eye.

So tomorrow, THE WHAT, THE WHO, THE WHERE, and THE WHY of this battle between Mother Nature, a City, a National Park System, Environmentalists and the residents of the Outer Sunset.

I almost forgot my 3rd observation. No Sloat Parking Lot means less crowded surf. My daughter and I watched some seriously good surf come through with only a handful of guys on it. Typically there would be twice the amount of people out in the water.

Have you been down there yet? Tell us your observations and your ideas of how to handle The Great Highway erosion issue of 2010!

FOG of a World Class nature

DAMN!!! There it is again, lazily hanging and ever so slowly creeping into the contours of the City, almost tar like in it's consistency. The past several days, while the entire Bay Area "suffers" from a heat wave, us hearty residents of the Sunset District have been dealing with some truly World Class FOG.

This is not the wind whipped FOG that we typically get pushing through to the East Bay, this FOG bank has just hung over the City's low points and through the Gate. Talk about a change in climate - 60s, wet and dewy when I start my commute to the East Bay, arriving to clear sunny blue skies already tipping into the 70s. Fantastic example of the Bay Area's micro climates.

Carol Schulz, Queen of the Beach, recently stated, "Jeez Dickson, I'm usually a pretty positive person, but this Summer has been pretty bad with the FOG.". This is someone who has lived in the Sunset her whole life and knows it like the back of her hand! You know it is bad if Carol complains about it. Typically by this point in the year we have shaken off our FOGGY weather.

All I can do now is pray for a cold front to sweep through the Bay Area, dust the Sierras with a layer of the Winter Season's first snows and then it will be on... yes our (San Francisco's) Summer will then arrive being blown in via the East! Bye, bye FOG don't let the Gate hit you in the ass on your way out!!!