San Francisco’s Presidio — a Bay Area expedition unknown

The rear window of our Inn at the Presidio room looks out on a path leading up through eucalyptus and pines, their tops blurred by morning mist.

Out front, the view stretches over the stoic brick buildings of the Main Post and beyond to a gray slab of bay. No city in sight. No freeway. No billboards shouting about a new unnecessary app.

In fact, if you parachuted into the Main Post of San Francisco’s Presidio, blindfolded, then started exploring — after you removed your blindfold — you would never know that you were a cannonball’s shot from the urban jungle, the tourist hordes, the speedway to the Golden Gate Bridge and the kitschy crush of Lombard Street.

A visit to the Presidio is an entirely different San Francisco experience.

And there’s an amazing amount to experience. Not only are there more than two centuries of military and Bay Area history, but — in an area larger than Golden Gate Park and encompassing Crissy Field, Fort Point and Baker Beach — there are 24 miles of hiking trails, swanky restaurants, the somber National Cemetery, a World War II memorial, Yoda, an 18-hole golf course where Bob Hope, Babe Ruth and Charles Schulz once played (not all at once), a 12-lane bowling alley and a 90-foot spire (an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture that’s made out of felled trees). Plus: an archeological dig in the summer months, the Walt Disney Family Museum, the city’s only overnight campground and the creepy, weird Pet Cemetery that took us about an hour to find but was totally worth the time. And we discovered a trampoline gym and a really nice guy at the bike-rental shop in the process.

All this and more in a National Historic Landmark that seems like a remote other world. Who knew you could feel so thoroughly at ease on a military post?

Oh sure, the spouse and I have driven around the Presidio in the past, always a little sad about the forlorn empty barracks and buildings, abandoned when the Army left in 1994. But these days, the land is managed by the Presidio Trust in partnership with the National Park Service, and there’s been a transformation during the past few years.

Residences are occupied by families, buildings are filled with nonprofit groups such as the German International School of Silicon Valley, the Masonic Center for Youth and Families, the Society of California Pioneers Museum and Library. People hike and bike and run and explore.

The biggest surprise for us is the ability to stay overnight. The Inn at the Presidio — once the bachelor officers’ quarters — has been remade into an elegant B&B with spacious rooms, fresh decor, gas fireplaces and wooden rockers on the front porch overlooking the Main Post.

Tactical touring

Arriving on a chilly Friday night, we warm our hands by the outdoor fire pit, then head inside and nibble on cheese while talented teens from the Golden Gate Philharmonic, a nonprofit youth orchestra (www.ggph.org), grace us with chamber music in the inn’s great room.

With our map of the Presidio stretched out on a table, we settle on our tactical touring approach and mobilize. We stroll the streets of the Main Post — the thought occurs that we should be marching in formation, but that thought quickly goes AWOL. Though it’s dark, we feel really safe, like being in a really nice, planned community. And because it’s an historic site, it’s neat as a pin. No one can paint a house purple or put a car up on blocks in a driveway.

The Chapel of Our Lady is next to the inn. We peek, but there’s a wedding rehearsal underway, so we quietly duck out. And next to that is the Officers’ Club — a good place to start when visiting the post. This is where San Francisco began. The Presidio was founded in 1776, serving as a military fort first under the flag of Spain, then Mexico and the United States. The surviving adobe walls of the Officers’ Club are some of the oldest structures in San Francisco. The main Spanish-style hall with wood-beam ceilings and wrought-iron chandeliers offers public events such as jazz or author/artist talks. There’s an adjacent history museum and an archaeology lab. And Arguello restaurant — gourmet Mexican food by award-winning chef Traci Des Jardins — is also part of the club complex. Her other Presidio restaurant, The Commissary, is just steps away.

We stop in at the Presidio Bowling Center — classic old lanes, packed with pizza parties — then opt for a meal at the Presidio Social Club, old barracks converted into a great restaurant with a modern/old-style spin. We order deviled eggs and the liver-and-onions special.

Saturday morning is drizzly and misty, so we don rain jackets — always bring a jacket here. We finally find the Yoda statue, at Building B on the southeast corner of the Letterman Digital Arts Center. The tiny Jedi master is poised in a permanent state of oneness with the Force. We pass through the National Cemetery, the orderly rows of white headstones marking the final resting place for 30,000 veterans and their families.

Soldier on

We make our way down to Fort Point, the brick fortress built during the Civil War to guard the mouth of the bay. It predates the Golden Gate Bridge by far, but part of the draw now is to climb up the spiral concrete steps to the top, where you crane your neck at the overwhelming underbelly of the bridge. There’s a constant roar of wind, waves and traffic overhead on the bridge — which sounds like being in a bowling alley in a thunderstorm. Paint drips in the distinctive hue of International Orange dot the upper level.

Then it’s on to the Pet Cemetery, a haunting — and possibly haunted — final home for dozens of loyal animals once owned by families stationed at the Presidio. Markers date back to the 1950s, but legends say it was originally a burial ground for 19th-century cavalry horses. We’d heard this was hard to find, and that’s no lie. It’s a little patch of overgrown ground just off Cowles Street, behind the trampoline and rock-climbing gyms at Crissy Field. We can’t find it from the map, so we go in a bike shop and sheepishly ask. The really nice clerk, who has clearly been asked this question before, leads us outside, gives us good directions, and we finally spot it. Crooked wooden planks mark graves of “Bun,” “Ratilla” and “A G.I. pet. He did his time.”

R.I.P., sweet G.I. pet … R.I.P.

It’s getting late in the day, and there’s so much more to the Presidio we still haven’t seen, so we’ll have to parachute back in. Good thing it’s in our Bay Area backyard.

Contact Angela Hill at ahill@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow her at Twitter.com/GiveEmHill.