Sweeney Ridge Trail

Sak - Eagle Scout, and me - tubby, decided a bay area hike was in order last weekend. We chose Sweeney Ridge Trail in Pacifica because we wanted to check out the historic Nike Missile Site (named after the Greek goddess of victory).

There's several trail heads, but we chose the one at Skyline College.  It's towards the back of parking lot C, which took us forever to figure out.  Free parking on weekends.

I thought this would be a simple 3 mile hike, and for the most part it was.  However the trail was super overgrown in some areas, and I felt like I needed a machete! Especially since THIS was everywhere:

Three leaves, reddish - poison oak?!

Me, unprepared non-scout, was wearing shorts. Luckily I did not get any rashes, though there was much wailing and scaring of other hikers whenever the leaves would get too close for comfort.

Aside from the possible poison oak, there was many other pretty flora around.

As well as plenty of lizards!

There were mountain lion warnings, but thankfully we didn't run into any.

By far the best part of the trail is the fact that you can see both the Pacific coastline and the Bay at the same time!

Pacific Coast side

Bay side

The views were spectacular!

Sutro tour in the fog

South SF hill sign

At the end of our trek, we reached the Nike Missile Site. It was built to protect the Bay during the cold war.

The place was tagged all over!

I think the graffiti kind of took away from the ominous cold-war atmosphere. :P

Keep it funky indeed

There was also a beehive inside one of the buildings! Eep!

Overall it was a pretty cool hike, though there was definitely some brush involved so long pants are a must!

Have you ever had a poison oak/ivy rash? Itchy itchy!