Parks Galore—Marin’s Premise

October 23, 2009

Filed under: Marin Living — Dave DuPont @ 10:16 am

Largely because of the influence of John Muir, an early conservationist who was the first president of the Sierra Club, Marin County is blessed with an abundance of Parks and Open Spaces. Nearly all of these are appropriate for kids’ activities galore.

 County Parks

 The John F. McInnis Park on Smith Ranch Road in San Rafael offers places to play softball, soccer, golf, or tennis. McInnis is also the site of the largest skateboarding park in Marin County. Skateboarders must wear helmets and pads.

 According to a video on YouTube, McInnis is 25,000 sq. ft. of carveable concrete that welcomes skaters of all abilities, that is old schoolers and young rats, with a 2 to 5 ft. washboard, a 3 to 5 ft. cloverbowl, keyhole bowl, and the incredible 7 to 11 ft. pool.

 Three miles west of Novato is the Stafford Lake County Park, a 139-acre park that offers lake fishing, a nature trail, and picnic areas with barbecue facilities. Kids can use a popular play structure, a softball field, volleyball, disc golf and horseshoe courts.

 McNear’s Beach and Park, located on San Pablo Bay in San Rafael, is a great place for family barbecues that also features Bay and Pool swimming and nice lawns. $8 to park and $4 for the pool. Note: The fishing pier at McNear’s Beach County Park is closed for repairs until further notice.

 Located on Paradise Drive along the east shore of the Tiburon Peninsula, Paradise Beach Park is a 19-acre park with family and group picnic sites, lawn areas, a horseshoe court, sandy beach and a fishing pier. Also located on Paradise Drive is a 24-acre wooded upland preserve south of Paradise Beach Park. The Park has a loop trail that provides a variety of native plants and animals and excellent bay views.

 Marin County Parks Department maintains paved pathways throughout the County for use by bicyclists and pedestrians. Among the most popular are the Mill Valley-Sausalito Path, the Novato-Stafford Lake Path, and the Corte Madera Creek Path.

 State and Federal Parks

 There are Junior Ranger Programs at both the John Muir State Park and the National Golden Gate National Park. The Muir Park has a great kids’ program called Questing, which provides Word search for clues to discover the hidden secrets during your visit.

 County Open Spaces

 There are 34 named Open Spaces throughout Marin County and each of them has its own special features. For example, the Bolinas Lagoon, a protected estuary, just north of the town of Stinson Beach, is a haven for birds, seals and other wildlife. Gary Giacomini is a wild and rugged windswept ridge with a high-altitude feel, accentuated by the presence of a forest of dwarf Sargent Cypress trees.

 Ring Mountain, a wind-swept ridge high atop the Tiburon Peninsula is one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on this planet. The unique geology and microclimate of this location provide a home for a number of rare plants. Santa Margarita Island and Santa Venetia Marsh are popular for walkers and joggers seeking a clear, level path. Birders also enjoy this area because of waterfowl that cruise the channels at high tide and shorebirds and rails at low tide.


Relocation to Marin– Welcome Home!

Filed under: Marin Living — Dave DuPont @ 10:09 am

If you are contemplating relocating to Marin County, you are in for truly enjoyable times ahead. One of the most beautiful and unique areas in America, Marin County not only promises gorgeous scenery, but also excellent schools, fine restaurants, endless open spaces and parks, great shopping, and that only grazes the surface.

 Some of the most sought-after places to live are in Marin County’s southernmost reaches – most of them in direct sight of the spectacular Golden Gate Bridge. A first time visitor to the area was so overwhelmed with the fantastic scenery that his eyes were feasting upon as he drove up US101 that he literally “had to pull off the road.” And he was a jaded advertising man from New York!

 Sausalito, with its houseboats and long waterfront, has incredible views of San Francisco. Tiburon, which is just west of Sausalito, not only has phenomenal views of the City; it also has wide-open spaces. The piéce de rèsistance is the island City of Belvedere, one of the wealthiest municipalities in the United States, which sits between Tiburon to the west and Sausalito to the east.

 Located in Mill Valley, Tamalpais High School – also open to attendance from Sausalito – was awarded the California Distinguished School Award in 1999, 2005, and 2009 and has ranked in the top 5% of American schools since 2005. Mill Valley is perhaps the most popular municipality for families with children in Marin County.

 The process of relocating to Marin County is made much simpler by easily accessed online information that is available about virtually every aspect of each town that one could wish to know. To illustrate, copy and enter the following URL into your browser window: http://www.city-data.com/city/Mill-Valley-California.html. To learn about Tiburon, Belvedere or Sausalito, simply substitute these places for the Mill Valley part of the URL.

 Additional detailed information about schools in each area, commuting, dog walking, recreational activities of all kinds, places of worship, farmers markets, nightclubs and much more is available from many online articles available at (Tim: fill in here).

Another aspect of Marin that is outstanding is its topographic diversity, beginning with tidal flats along the coastline and rising up the rugged 2,600 foot Mt. Tamalpais. Lush and towering Redwood groves and the open trails of the Tennessee Valley Trailhead, which is part of the Marin Headlands and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area National Park Service, are perfect locations for hikes and horseback riding.

Swimming, boating, fishing are all possible in the San Pablo and San Francisco Bays as well as the Pacific Ocean.

Marin County is also interesting from a historic point of view. Inhabited by the Miwok Indians at the time of the Gold Rush in the early 1850s, the area became most fully populated after the 1906 Earthquake and fires that followed in San Francisco, driving many people of different nationalities across the Bay to Marin County. Owned by Mexico before the US Mexican War, the area was broken into enormous ranchos that were given to Mexicans and Americans who spoke Spanish.

In 1579, famed Sir Francis Drake sailed into a small harbor in western Marin County to repair his ship, The Golden Hind, after a year of marauding along the Mexican coast. While he claimed the surrounding territory for Queen Elizabeth I and England, those claims were never recognized.


Schools in Sausalito

Filed under: Marin Schools — Dave DuPont @ 10:08 am

Sausalito School District, which is located at 630 Nevada St., 415-331-3507, operates three schools that are shared by students from the City of Sausalito and the unincorporated community of Marin City.

 These include the Bayside Elementary School, which serves K through grade 6 and is located at 630 Nevada Street, Telephone: 415-332-1024; the Martin Luther King Jr. Academy, at 610 Drake Ave., Telephone 415-332-3573, which serves 7th and 8th graders; and Willow Creek Academy, a K through 8 Charter School at 630 Nevada St., Telephone 415-331-7530.

 Willow Creek Academy recently received an award of $25,000 from State Farm Insurance to locate the original Willow Creek and initiate a creek restoration program. Located in the Willow Creek Watershed, Willow Creek Academy is engaged in this project to locate the creek somewhere above the Rodeo Creek freeway exit.

 Willow Creek Academy was initiated to ensure that Sausalito Marin City students would be able to attend a K through 8 school with the municipal boundaries, instead of having to travel elsewhere to attend school. It is felt that building a strong public school identity is important to the culture of the community. During the first three years, the Academy increased its enrollment from 37 to 104 students. In 2009, a second kindergarten class was added.

 The Oak Hill School, located at 441 Drake Ave., Tel: 415-331-7601, is geared to children with autism and other developmental differences, which is accomplished by modeling “innovative educational practices, harnessing the power of relationships to inspire social, emotional and intellectual growth.”

 Located in Marin City, California, Oak Hill School provides an academic and therapeutic program for children from kindergarten through adolescence, K-12. In fact, the school serves children from school-age through 22 years, with a variety of diagnoses including “non-verbal learning disability, autism spectrum disorder, as well as sensory integration, regulatory and multi-system developmental disorders.”  The staff at Oak Hill School includes “special education teachers, speech and language pathologists, occupational therapists, creative arts therapists and psychotherapists.”

 While the range of disabilities among children served by Oak Hill School is ‘broad, classroom groupings cluster together children with similar academic levels and learning styles. Oak Hill’s program includes classrooms of children with strong verbal skills and academic potential as well as groups of children with emerging language abilities.  Children who have struggled in traditional classroom environments have an opportunity at Oak Hill to develop academic and social skills, improve self-esteem and become leaders among their peers.”

“Oak Hill’s mission is twofold:  First, to create a “best practice” learning environment for Bay Area children with developmental differences and their families; and second, to offer a model program for dissemination and training to other educators nationwide.”

 Finally, the Marin School, located at 100 Ebbtide Ave., Suite 500, 415-339-9336, is a private college preparatory high school serving 9th to 12th grade students.

 “All classes at The Marin School are taught college seminar-style with a 7:1 student: teacher ratio. Everyone is engaged because there’s no back row at The Marin School. In addition to our interactive curriculum, The Marin School offers students travel experiences off the beaten path from Ghana, West Africa, to the slopes of Peru’s Machu Picchu to the streets of Paris. The Marin School was recently featured on KRON 4′s Best of the Bay Series as Best High School in Marin County.”


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