August 9-On Top of the World

I’m always excited about a hike with broad-sweeping bird’s eye views but being able to climb up a ridge on the Stonewall Panoramic Trail in the Berkeley Foothills and enjoy breathtaking vistas of the San Francisco Bay with two of my three children made me feel truly on top of the world.

After parking at the entrance to the Clearmont Canyon Regional Preserve, Ethan, Eleanor, and I began heading up the trail’s steep switchbacks on soft, dry dirt and sun-bleached grass carpeted with dried ribbon like strips of eucalyptus bark, seed pods, and slender fallen leaves.

Walking between groves of blue-gum eucalyptus trees, I breathed in their bright crisp aromatic scent, admired the towering trunks with shredded bark peeled off to reveal smooth reddish-brown and tan wood, and peered beyond their sparse high canopy leaves with fine drooping branchlets to see a breathtaking view of the bay beyond.

Stretched out before us through the foliage were the city streets of Berkeley and Oakland below, the blue bay waters beyond, the sweeping steel towers and cables of the Oakland Bay Bridge stretching to the west, and the San Francisco Skyline peering out through the fog in the distance. Wow!

After returning from our hike and zipping around town in Ethan’s Toyota gr86, we were ready to treat ourselves to a mouth-watering meal at Daeho Kalbijjim, a Korean restaurant in San Francisco’s Japantown that specializes in a hearty braised beef short rib stew served in a hot pot and covered with cheese that has been blowtorched to a fine golden brown.

We started off our meal with kimchi, pickled radish, and green onion banchan followed by rice cakes in a flavorful sauce that somehow tasted like the world’s best mac and cheese, pork and kimchi dumplings that melted in our mouths, and rice noodles so fine we could see through them. When our stew arrived, the tender juicy chunks of prime grade beef drenched in a savory sauce and topped with the stretchy, gooey melted cheese created a symphony of flavors in our mouths. What a great day on the road!