This most-visited park protects land in San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo Counties, but most of the fun stuff for visitors is near the Golden Gate Bridge. The southern units include the unimaginatively named Ocean Beach, Fort Funston which is great for watching hang gliding, Rancho Corral de Tierra for horseback riding, and Sweeney Ridge which has views, hikes and wildlife. If you’re on your way north to Muir Woods and Point Reyes, then you can wind your way up the coast past Muir and Stinson Beaches, past Bolinas Lagoon and through the bucolic Olema Valley. If you have young kids, a stop at the Bay Area Discovery Museum is fun, especially if you’re going to Sausalito. The urban units include Alcatraz, Fort Mason, the Presidio, China Beach, and Lands End near the Legion of Honor art museum.

But if you’re focusing on San Francisco, then you may want to start with the bridge. On the north side, there are nice views from the Marin Headlands, not just Vista Point, but through the tunnel to the Marin Headlands along the loop road to the old forts. On the south side, there are good views from Lands End to the Presidio. If you’re taking photos, note that the north end of Baker Beach is clothing optional. Crissy Field, the naturally restored area once used by the Wright Brothers, is popular for kite surfing, which must be a fun way to see the bridge. Fort Point is under the south east side of the bridge, about as close as you can get without being on the bridge. At the last northbound exit, there’s a visitor center with a small parking lot and info about the bridge, and if you want to go on the bridge, one side is for pedestrians, the other for bicyclists and the middle for cars ;).

The Presidio was originally fortified by the Spanish in 1776, passed to Mexico, and then was taken by the US around 1846. It was an important military base for every US conflict for the next 140 years, and it includes a national cemetery, an officers club dating back to Spain, a former military hospital now used by Lucasfilm (see Yoda above), and a museum dedicated to Walt Disney, who stole some of his best ideas from Oakland’s Fairyland, along with a whole list of other interesting projects. The park leases many of its historic buildings as private residences. I don’t normally write long travel guides to parks, but I can’t help it as I used to live near the Sutro Baths ruin. OK, one last tip. Reserve tickets for Alcatraz months earlier than you think is necessary and try to do the night tour if possible. Unfortunately, the only way out there is by fossil fuel ferry.

Before the bridge was even conceived, the opening from the Pacific into the San Francisco Bay with passage up the Sacramento River was known as the golden gate, and people came from all over the world to get rich quick. In Chinese the area was called 金山 meaning ‘Gold Mountain’, and San Francisco is still called 舊金山 or ‘Old Gold Mountain’ today. (Many Chinese immigrant dreams were quashed by racist immigration policies, despite laboring on the railroads, levees and in a variety of businesses). Of course, nowadays, the path to riches is in the Bay Area’s high tech industries, where dreams are spun into gold. Which is why Yoda is a fine image for the Golden Gate NRA.