Circle the Bay: Day 14: Point Richmond to Richmond Marina Bay

Day 14: Point Richmond to Richmond Marina Bay (Richmond to Richmond)

Circle The Bay Part 3

May 24th 2018

11.9 miles in 1 hrs 41 mins

(Total: 257.9 miles in 47 hrs 1 mins)

I find myself repeatedly returning to the Richmond BART station, taking my time to explore the fascinating complexity of Richmond. It is as industrial as San Francisco, without the same population. The bayside hills backed by flat land just across the bay from San Francisco was a perfect setting for a very industrial harbor hooked up to a transcontinental railroad. Bridges and freeways have migrated this advantage elsewhere, but biking thru Richmond I can see what a powerhouse of a city it was.

Railway turned into Greenway in Richmond

Quaint Point Richmond

I started the day in the small downtown of Point Richmond, then tried to bike out to the end of Point San Pablo, beyond where I-580 crosses the bay on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge , but this is a planned part of the trail that is not open at all, because of the Chevron refinery. So I turned around and headed south to the Richmond Ferry Point.

Train tunnels to the Richmond Ferry

View from Richmond Ferry Point

After the Ferry Point, the Bay Trail goes by the Brickyard Cove Marina, the former Richmond Brickworks that built the city, now converted into an Agrestic on the water (a Weeds reference about all the little houses that look all the same). I find myself attracted to the idea of living in a little suburban development like the one I grew up in, but instead of being on the edge of a wetland a thousand miles upstream from New Orleans, this would be on solid ground hanging on the edge of the bay, separated from the rest of the people in the Bay Area by water and hills and rails and freeways.

Brickyard Cove Marina

Pelican sculpture at Brickyard Cove Marina

I must admit I sometimes lose inspiration in writing about this trek, but I realize that is me, not the section of the trail I'm traversing. There are stories here to be uncovered as fascinating as the shinier ones with better publicity in other corners of the bay. And then right here I need another sentence to finish this blog entry, but it isn't coming. Oh well. Back to biking.