For us old hippies (the baby boom generation) the time has come to fight the good fight and exercise. Rather than going precipitously downhill, our favorite way to get fit is by going uphill instead! Except at Samuel P. Taylor State Park, we ride on a perfectly flat bike path along an exquisite canyon through the redwoods.
We start at the Tocaloma Bridge off Sir Francis Drake Blvd. two miles east of Olema. We ride on the old railroad grade that ran along Papermill Creek from Larkspur to Point Reyes Station. (That’s station; as in railroad station) The trail goes through redwoods, grasslands and mixed forest along the beautiful creek, lined with lush vegetation reflecting in the water. The ride to the end of the trail and back is about nine miles of wonderfully graded path.
Now in the early summer, we see forget-me-nots, luminous green sword ferns, golden poppies, buttercups and occasional columbines. The buckeye trees are still in bloom and their delicate scent perfumes the air. From a bridge we see a wild duck followed by four ducklings. We watch the family swim downstream exuberantly riding the small rapids. South of the campground, the path is unpaved. Our route dead-ends near the Shafter Bridge where Lagunitas and San Geronimo Creeks both join, almost at Lagunitas. The park is planning a bridge over the river to connect the path to Sir Francis Drake Blvd., thus making a cross-Marin bike ride safer than going on the crowded, narrow highway. During very rainy winters, Papermill Creek rages and overflows its banks.
Coho salmon and steelhead spawn in the park streams. The annual salmon run dropped down to a handful of fish but with the help of conservationists who restored streambeds and repaired fishing ladders, the numbers of spawning fish are increasing each year. At night, we have heard salmon digging gravel nests or redds, for the eggs, their sounds as loud as a churning washing machine.
Samuel P. Taylor State Park became a park in 1946. It was named after a former gold prospector. After making money in the gold rush, Taylor bought a hundred acres of timberland along Papermill Creek and in 1856, built a water-powered mill to produce newsprint. Like an early recycler, he made paper from rags and scrap paper he collected in San Francisco and coastal towns. In 1870, Taylor built a resort hotel and camp ground next to his paper mill and established one of California’s first vacation retreats to offer outdoor camping. People still camp along the river in the campground.
Riding back to Tocaloma in the twilight we look around for mountain lion who reputedly live in this area. A few years ago Richard almost had a close encounter with a lion. He took his elderly mother for a wheelchair ride in the park. They heard splashing in the stream but could not see anything because of the thick growth. They forgot about the sound and stopped for a while to enjoy the forest. Richard looked away from his mother for a couple of minutes. When he turned to speak to her, he saw huge, wet, paw prints on the path a couple of feet behind her wheelchair! In his opinion, they could only have been made by a mountain lion. Richard thought, “I can’t feed my mother to the lions! My sister will kill me!” Without further ado, they left and went home safely.
The trail is open all year, every day, and is free if you access it from the road rather than inside the park. The access points are at Tocaloma Bridge on west end and from the old overpass railroad bridge near the Park entrance. The tail accommodates hikers, bikers and cowpokes.
© Kathleen Goodwin and Richard Blair