Destination: Shoreline Lake, Mountain View
Walk Around Shoreline To The Boathouse, Visit Rengstorff House, And Fly A Kite
This is part of a series of family-oriented day trip outings around the San Francisco Bay Area I look forward to enjoying with my kids once social distancing and shelter in place isn’t the norm any longer.
Strolling Shoreline Lake by Cody Tolmasoff
Social Isolation — Day 33
There is a lot of talk about what the end of shelter in place will look like. The Governor set out a thoughtful outline of what it will take to regain some freedom of movement. A bit piece of the puzzle is faster and broader testing coupled with contact tracing. Currently, contact tracing is done manually on a small scale. This is where big data and big brother may come into play.
It may be advantageous to allow some app on our phone to track our location to reconcile our location with potentially infected people. It’s a sobering thought freedom and sanity might come with such tracking. On the flip side, I’ve been reading that the notion of an open office might be a thing of the past, which sounds like a really good idea to me.
Destination: Shoreline Lake
Walk the shore of Shoreline to the Boathouse
Visit Rengstorff House
Fly a kite
Walk the shore of Shoreline to the Boathouse
Shoreline Lake American Bistro by Cody Tolmasoff
Miles of bike and walking trails, select geocache's, a ship-themed playground, and a lake with sailing, rowing, kayaking, pedal boats, and stand up paddleboards, this is a convenient spot to get your feet wet (or not). Plus a delightful little cafe to warm up at.
Visit Rengstorff House
By EugeneZelenko — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6887528
Henry Rengstorff arrived in San Francisco in 1850, slightly too late for the Gold Rush, he got a job on a steamer traveling between Alviso and San Francisco. He then went on to become a farm laborer in the Santa Clara valley, eventually purchasing land in Milpitas, San Mateo, and Los Altos. In 1864 he bought 164 acres including the area the house is currently on. A major Mountain View street is named after him. His efforts were instrumental in early development of Mountain View which shaped the town into what it is today.
Rengstorff House has moved a couple of times over the years, falling into disrepair in the 1960s. The city of Mountain View purchased it in 1979, moved it to its current location, and restored it to what you see today. It is worth a visit and tour if you are in the area.
Fly a kite
Photo by LUFANG CAO on Unsplash
A big wide open space to get your kite up in the air — what could be better?
Cody Tolmasoff is an author and publisher for Adventuring.in. He is a recovering programmer and a San Francisco native, raising two daughters, and regularly finding new adventures around the SF Bay Area. This article is an excerpt from an upcoming book, 52 San Francisco Bay Area Weekend Adventures, Day Trips With Your Kids!
Find him on Twitter @codyo, and read his most recent title Adventures in Getting Out on Amazon, filled with advice on successfully getting your family out for day trip adventures.
Originally published on Medium on 15 April 2020