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San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Bay Area's best easy hike has shipwrecks, views and a secret beach
When the Chronicle's data team looked at 1.6 million reviews to find the Bay Area's best shorter, more accessible hikes — 5 miles or less, rated easy and moderate — Lands End Trail came out on top. It is not a controversial choice. Lands End Trail feels like the ending to a great story — a 3.5-mile loop through extreme northwest San Francisco but also an exclamation point of sights and sounds for all of the West Coast. The hike features unique views of the Golden Gate Bridge and perhaps the best sunset-watching in the city, emerging through a canopy of cypress trees to a series of elevated perches that scan the Pacific Ocean horizon. But there are surprises, too, including hidden shipwrecks, a ghostly natural soundtrack and a beach detour that feels like a secret hideout from the 1800s. With apologies to San Gregorio State Beach south of Half Moon Bay, Lands End Trail is the best place in the Bay Area to pretend like you're a pirate. Want to go on a guided history-filled hike of Lands End Trail with culture critic Peter Hartlaub and Total SF friends? Sign up here for the Total SF newsletter and look for details in next Thursday's edition. I arrive on a recent morning, feeling cursed. While most of my journey across the city was filled with sunshine, Lands End and the Golden Gate remain stubbornly socked in with fog. But the marine layer just adds to the melancholy and introspective atmosphere, while making the hike more of an audio experience. The route starts at a small stairway north of the massive parking lot, where you choose which direction to walk. Go counterclockwise, and you'll start on the more elevated and paved southern section that is less transportive and a better opening act. Head clockwise, and you'll see the most memorable sights first. I choose counterclockwise and immediately take the first of three wrong turns, but am met with a friendly jogger, who sets me right. 'Am I going to read about this?' he shouts, fading into the fog. This first part of the loop is more urban, passing by parking lots, the Legion of Honor Museum and several Lincoln Park golf holes, which I hear before I see — the 'thwock!' of a golf club followed by muttered profanity. A memorial for the U.S.S. San Francisco appears a quarter mile in, featuring part of the bridge from the Navy cruiser, which was the U.S. flagship in the Battle of Guadalcanal near the end of World War II. Then a wide wooden stairway curves up to the museum, where the statue 'El Cid Campeador' by sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington stands high on the hill, rearing up in the fog like a Washington Irving character. With Sea Cliff mansions in sight, take a hairpin turn and drop into comparative wilderness, with windswept trees, isolated paths and the Golden Gate Bridge, unveiled halfway through this hike like a magic trick. If fog has hidden the bridge and Marin Headlands from view, consider it an opportunity to focus on the hike's auditory charms. Foghorns in lower and higher registers seem to be in conversation with one another, and the crashing waves feel like they're syncing with your footsteps. Don't miss the best part of the hike, around the 2-mile mark, where a steep spur trail drops onto an isolated beach. This is where Lands End Trail pushes the harder side of 'moderate,' with some rocky climbs out. The bridge is on more postcards, but the descent into Mile Rock Beach is the trail's pinnacle, especially for locals who may not know it exists. Scattered logs and rocks are stacked in artistic towers on the quiet sand, framed by majestic offshore rock formations. The remains of Mile Rocks Lighthouse are visible about 200 yards in the distance. I climb back up and rejoin the trail, which follows the same path as a long-gone 1800s railway to the Cliff House and Sutro Heights. The occasional promontory with a bench offers a spot to rest and watch for shipwrecks at low tide. (The blocky engines of the Lyman Stewart and Frank Buck tankers are the most common sight.) Soon, I'm back in the 21st century near the trailhead — all the better if you timed your walk to one of the best places in the world to watch a sunset. The winding path drops into the ruins of Sutro Baths, Adolph Sutro's engineering marvel that was once a huge structure filled with indoor pools. Sutro Heights Park is up the hill for anyone who doesn't want the day of exploration to end. People used to come to Lands End at the finish of a very long journey across the U.S., taking a ferry from Oakland or Richmond to San Francisco, then that steam train for a slow rumble to the remarkable ocean views. How lucky that we get to experience this as part of a spontaneous morning.
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Diverse crowd gathers at Tupelo's Veterans Park to remember the fallen
TUPELO – With rain and thunderstorms predicted, folks still showed up on Memorial Day morning to show gratitude for those who gave their lives for their country. Veterans Park in east Tupelo, with its American flag-lined entrance, drew quite a crowd as the sun and clouds struck a balance for the half-hour program. About 150 to 200 people gathered in a peaceful spot overlooking the lake — veterans representing all service branches, families of veterans, others who just wanted to pay homage and show gratitude. As they milled about before the program began, there were hellos and handshakes, hugs and high-fives. Some used canes and walkers, a few were in strollers pushed by parents. One group arrived together on motorcycles. A bugler and a bagpiper were present, as were a mayor and a United States representative. All were welcomed. Guntown neighbors Nancy Sides and Joyce House sat on one of the park's metal benches. It was House's third time to attend the city of Tupelo's Memorial Day program. Her sister's husband served in the Marines. Sides had a great-uncle who died in the Battle of Guadalcanal in World War II, an uncle who sustained a head injury in Vietnam and a nephew who completed two tours of duty in Afghanistan. "I'm here to remember the ones who gave us the freedom to be here today," Sides said. Marianne Sleep and Debbi Beasley came to Veterans Park to honor their fathers, both of whom served their country and came home to their families. Sleep has attended the Memorial Day program for years to honor Robert Teyema, her father. Beasley attended for the first time on Monday. Her father, the late Ed Bishop, longtime program director at WTVA, served in Desert Storm in the National Guard. Bill and Camille Caples experienced Memorial Day in the park for the first time this year. "We were just talking about all the people we knew who were in the service, some who died," Camille Caples said. "This is a time to remember." Dressed in a patriotic red, white and blue, the former Tupelo High School guidance counselor glimpsed Mayor Todd Jordan and smiled. "I wore this same outfit when Todd Jordan was a student in high school," she said. Jordan welcomed the crowd and offered a reminder of why all were there. "We are here to remember those who never came home," he said, before introducing Vietnam veteran Willie Sampson, who proffered a prayer and led the Pledge of Allegiance; Hope Nanney and Camren Wages, who sang the National Anthem; and U.S Rep. Trent Kelly, the speaker for the program. Kelly served in the Mississippi Army National Guard as a combat engineer for 39 years. He retired in April 2025 as a major general. Kelly called attention to the words on a plaque near the lectern: "May your loved ones spend eternity with their comrades." He cited scripture in Isaiah and John that speak of one laying down his life for his friends. From his heart, Kelly shared his own memories of lost soldiers he knew personally. "They were not always lost in combat," he said. "But in training accidents or in other ways preparing for combat. And the scars of war don't go away. Soldiers have been lost after they come home." Kelly recognized Gold Star families, those who have lost an immediate family member in the service of his/her country. Martha Fleming proudly stood. On May 5, 1968, Richard Wackerfuss was killed in Vietnam. He was Martha Fleming's husband and the father of three young children — Pamela, Barbara and Richard Wallace. Fleming later remarried Eldridge Fleming of Tupelo and moved here in 1972. She continues to attend the Memorial Day ceremony most years. The city began hosting its annual Memorial Day program in 2007, said Leigh Ann Mattox, recreation director for Tupelo Parks & Recreation Department. Mattox coordinates the ceremony with help from the Veterans Council. "It was 2007 when we started having two ceremonies a year," Mattox said. "One on Memorial Day and the other on Veterans Day."
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Marines bring fallen comrades home from Guadalcanal 80 years later
KEVIN KNODELL / KKNODELL @STARADVERTISER Staff Sgt. Stephon Smith carries what are believed to be the remains of a fallen Marine killed in 1942 during the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands during a repatriation ceremony at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. 1 /3 KEVIN KNODELL / KKNODELL @STARADVERTISER Staff Sgt. Stephon Smith carries what are believed to be the remains of a fallen Marine killed in 1942 during the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands during a repatriation ceremony at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. KEVIN KNODELL / KKNODELL @STARADVERTISER Marines hold folded American flags during a Friday night repatriation ceremony at Marine Corps Base Hawaii for what are believed to be the remains of World War II service members killed during the 1942 Battle of Guadalcanal. 2 /3 KEVIN KNODELL / KKNODELL @STARADVERTISER Marines hold folded American flags during a Friday night repatriation ceremony at Marine Corps Base Hawaii for what are believed to be the remains of World War II service members killed during the 1942 Battle of Guadalcanal. KEVIN KNODELL / KKNODELL @STARADVERTISER Staff Sgt. Stephon Smith receives a Joint Service Achievement Medal on Friday night at Marine Corps Base Hawaii for his work clearing explosives to reach what are believed to be the remains of Marines killed in 1942 during the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. 3 /3 KEVIN KNODELL / KKNODELL @STARADVERTISER Staff Sgt. Stephon Smith receives a Joint Service Achievement Medal on Friday night at Marine Corps Base Hawaii for his work clearing explosives to reach what are believed to be the remains of Marines killed in 1942 during the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. KEVIN KNODELL / KKNODELL @STARADVERTISER Staff Sgt. Stephon Smith carries what are believed to be the remains of a fallen Marine killed in 1942 during the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands during a repatriation ceremony at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. KEVIN KNODELL / KKNODELL @STARADVERTISER Marines hold folded American flags during a Friday night repatriation ceremony at Marine Corps Base Hawaii for what are believed to be the remains of World War II service members killed during the 1942 Battle of Guadalcanal. KEVIN KNODELL / KKNODELL @STARADVERTISER Staff Sgt. Stephon Smith receives a Joint Service Achievement Medal on Friday night at Marine Corps Base Hawaii for his work clearing explosives to reach what are believed to be the remains of Marines killed in 1942 during the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Late in the dark hours of Friday night, a Marine Corps C-20G 'gray ghost ' jet landed on the tarmac at Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay. It was returning from the Solomon Islands with a special assignment—bringing back what are believed to be the remains of Marines killed fighting on Guadalcanal more than eight decades ago. The plane was greeted by more than 100 Marines and sailors at the base as it pulled near the air terminal. They saluted as service members wearing white gloves carried boxes of the remains, each topped with a folded American flag, from the tarmac to a van that would take them to the Defense POW /MIA Accounting Agency at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. The DPAA sends teams around the world to find the remains of missing serv ice members and bring them to Hawaii where experts at the world's largest forensic skeleton lab work to identify them using a mixture of science and historical detective work. On the island of Guadalcanal alone, the U.S. military lists about 374 service members still unaccounted for since the end of World War II. Marine Staff Sgt. Stephon Smith, an explosives expert, was part of the team and carried one of the boxes of remains as he exited the plane. An Okinawa-based Marine, he is trained in identifying and disposing of World War II-era U.S. and Japanese explosives—skills that proved critical in retrieving the remains he held from the former battlefield. Even 80 years after the war ended, as many as 20 people are killed or seriously injured in the Solomon Islands per year by unexploded ordnance left behind by Japanese and Allied forces that fought each other across Pacific archipelagos. Don 't miss out on what 's happening ! Stay in touch with breaking news, as it happens, conveniently in your email inbox. It 's FREE ! Email 28141 Sign Up By clicking to sign up, you agree to Star-Advertiser 's and Google 's and. This form is protected by reCAPTCHA. The DPAA team was searching for Marines believed to have died during the Battle of Edson's Ridge, where Marines repelled an attack by Imperial Japanese forces trying to retake the strategically important Henderson Airfield from the Americans. An estimated 111 Americans and as many as 800 Japanese troops are believed to have died in the fighting—sometimes also called the Battle of Bloody Ridge. The service members who came to greet the remains Friday night stood still and silent as the boxes containing them were brought one by one to a van. The chaotic nature of historic battles and the amount of time that has passed make it hard to know for sure who the bones recovered actually belong to—or if they're even human bones—but they are treated with reverence regardless until DPAA knows for sure. 'One thing that's really impressive about all the Marines (is that ) all the Marines know their history, ' said John M. Figuerres, the DPAA's acting deputy director for operations. 'They are schooled in their history, they're schooled in their battles … whether it's Guadalcanal, whether it's the Chosin River, whether it's Khe Sanh in Vietnam. … So for us to tell these Marines, there are Marines potentially—we have to ID them—that are coming back from Guadalcanal, they know the struggle that their brother Marines did.' As the ceremony concluded, Lt. Gen. James Glynn, commander of Marine Corps Forces Pacific, told the service members in attendance that while many regard the Marine Corps motto 'Semper Fidelis '—Latin for 'always faithful '—as a slogan, 'what you demonstrate tonight is that it's a way of life, it's a family, that there actually, truly is faith between Marines.' As the van drove away, Smith and Staff Sgt. Zachary Bailey, an Army medic and mountaineer, were awarded Joint Service Achievement Medals for their roles in retrieving the remains. Smith worked with the DPAA team but is not officially assigned to the agency ; he had been brought on to help as a member of an investigative team that was on Guadalcanal searching for potential remains. The team began its mission in February. 'The scientific research experts, the anthropologists, the amount of brains and research and work that goes into really finding out where these guys are, and then going in to actually get them, it's a lot of work, ' Smith told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. 'But it just tells me, and it sure made me feel great, because the country and this agency is committed to bring us home, even if it's many, many years after, you know, we have passed away.' Smith said that helping to retrieve the remains was an honor, noting that 'investigation teams aren't typically digging.' But when they found the site, they realized a nearby river was washing it away and potentially moving the remains. They decided to work fast, and Smith got to work identifying and clearing World War II-era munitions, identifying both American and Japanese explosives in the vicinity. Ultimately, Smith said, 'We were able to do digging and bring our guys back home.' The DPAA has been both a mission to bring fallen American troops home and also a diplomatic mission. It was through the program's operations that the United States reestablished relations with Vietnam, ultimately leading to normalization and paving the way for friendly relations and trade. The agency also has worked in North Korea and China retrieving and identifying war dead. A mission in China is planned for this summer to look for the remains of World War II American service members. As the assembled troops who came to welcome the remains to Kaneohe prepared to leave, Lt. Col. Jeremy Smith, the DPAA's deputy director for Indo-Pacific operations and senior Marine officer at the agency, told them that 'every one of you also participated in this mission because you are here tonight, on a Friday night when you could be anywhere else, telling the American people and telling the families that we will never stop searching for their missing service members.'
Boston Globe
09-02-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Today in History: February 9, the Beatles first performance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show'
Also, in Cambridge, Mass., the Second Provincial Congress of the Massachusetts colony, which served as the shadow government of the colony apart from the military oversight of General Thomas Gage, issued a declaration to the residents of the colony that sought to rally support for the Congress and its cause: 'Friends and Fellow Sufferers: When a people entitled to that freedom, which your ancestors have nobly preserved, as the richest inheritance of their children, are invaded by the hand of oppression, and trampled on by the merciless feet of tyranny, resistance is so far from being criminal, that it becomes the christian and social duty of each individual…. Fleets, troops, and every implement of war, are sent into the province, with apparent design to wrest from you that freedom which it is your duty, even at the risk of your lives, to hand inviolate to posterity.' The Congress also set up a Committee on Safety, which would serve, essentially, as the executive branch of the shadow government, enacting the Congress's resolutions. It would eventually oversee the various militias descending on Boston. In 1825, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes. In 1943, the World War II Battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an Allied victory over Japanese forces. In 1950, in a speech to the Women's Republican Club in Wheeling, W. Va., Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin charged that the State Department was riddled with Communists. In 1964, the Beatles made their first live American television appearance on 'The Ed Sullivan Show,' broadcast from New York on CBS. The quartet played five songs, including 'She Loves You,' and 'I Want to Hold Your Hand,' to a crowd of screaming teenagers in person and more than 70 million viewers across the country. In 1971, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake in California's San Fernando Valley claimed 65 lives. In 1984, Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, 69, died 15 months after succeeding Leonid Brezhnev; he was followed by Konstantin Chernenko, who would only be in power for 13 months before his own death in office. In 1986, Halley's Comet made its closest pass by Earth since 1910. (The comet's next appearance will be in 2061). In 2009, New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez admitted to taking performance-enhancing drugs, telling ESPN he had used banned substances while with the Texas Rangers for three years. In 2020, 'Parasite,' a film from South Korea, won the Academy Award for Best Picture, becoming the first non-English language film to do so. In 2021, the Senate moved ahead with a second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, rejecting arguments that the chamber could not proceed because Trump was no longer in office. Advertisement
