Ecological Musings: The Presidio, San Francisco, CA -- May 30th, 2025

Background:

I’m currently taking a California Ecology class. One of the class assignments is to keep a field journal of each of our weekly trips. Today’s journal is about hiking and eating our way through The Presidio in San Francisco!

Baseline Data

Name: The Presidio

Address: Presidio Blvd, San Francisco, CA, 94129

Coordinates: 37.7958° N, -122.4514° W

Date: Friday, May 30, 2025
Time: 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM

🌤️ Weather Overview

  • Temperature:

    • High: 75°F (23.9°C)

    • Low: 55°F (12.8°C)

  • Cloud Cover: Partly Cloudy

  • Wind:

    • Direction: Northwest (NW)

    • Speed: Light to moderate

  • Humidity: Approximately 60%

  • Precipitation: None

The one time I forgot to bring my lunch for a hike, I got lucky that this ended up being the one in-class hike where we stopped by food trucks for lunch.

When I found out that we were doing an urban hike in the Presidio, I didn’t quite know what to expect. The one thing I definitely didn’t expect was to be munching on wild raspberries all throughout the trail. And you already know ya girl loves her wild foraged berries. I was like a fiend inhaling so many freaking berries across the trail. We even came across Salmonberries which I honestly hadn’t really realized were a real berry outside of the Stardew Valley game. Unfortunately, they were not ripe enough to eat. Outside of the berries, I kind of zoned out at the beginning of this hike because I found it a little boring. Like Edgewood, it’s one of those hikes that I would describe as your “typical Northern California hike”: chockful of trees, random greenery, and nothing to really look at in particular. I did, however, enjoy the viewpoint at the top.

Once we cleared the first hike, we stopped by some food trucks at the bottom. Thank god for the food trucks because this was the one hike where I completely forgot to bring lunch. I inhaled some pupusas and tamales, explored the local Presidio gift store in search of postcards for my best friends back in New York, and eventually made my way down to the section of the park that was closer to the beach. Here’s where things started to get really interesting and really lovely. We stopped by the Presidio Field Station which was absolutely incredible. They were serving free fresh brewed yarrow tea from the local yarrow that was growing nearby, we got to smell all sorts of different plants and look at all kinds of cool specimens that were preserved in the field station. We then got coffee at a nearby local coffee pop up right next to the Field Station. I absolutely loved this part of the hike. I love that the city has put money into creating an interactive field station so that people can learn more about the local nature. I would like to see more of this in more cities across the country.

We then went to the beach by the Golden Gate Bridge. That was lovely because I absolutely love a good beach. Although this one (as is the case for most NorCal beaches) was incredibly windy, it was also quite pleasant. Overall, I enjoyed the latter half of this particular hike and would likely come back for that.

huda .