SUNDAY DRIVE

Golden Gate Bridge

What you see: Most mornings in the past week were pristine on San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. Sunday, you can go for a walk or ride across the bridge before watching the Super Bowl. You may well remember what you see from the bridge and how it makes you feel much longer than you will remember who played in the game.

Location: The best way to make this trip work is to start at the San Francisco end of the Golden Gate Bridge, where there are better options for parking and bridge access.

When you get there: On the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate Bridge, parking is available on the east side of the old toll plaza at Vista Point (where people come and go), and on the west side of the toll plaza along Merchant Road in two lots (each a better choice than Vista Point for longer visits). From the southern lot at Merchant Road, you get direct access to the Coastal Trail. Start walking: Take the Coastal Trail to the bridge, continue under the roadway, and then turn right at the fork and loop back to the pedestrian walkway on the east side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Walk/hike: Most walk to the center of the bridge and then return, a 1.5-mile round trip. If you instead walk from end to end, it is a 2.4-mile round trip and takes about an hour. The walk can be extended on each end, far better on a bike than on foot. The pay-off views: As you walk across the bridge, Fort Point is directly below and you can see beyond Torpedo Wharf to the San Francisco waterfront and skyline. At the center of the bridge, you are 220 feet above the bay. It can be a surreal phenomenon to look down at the water, then tilt your view slowly across the water to Alcatraz, Angel Island and across to the East Bay hills. Then rotate to the left to take in Yellow Bluff, Richardson Bay and Tiburon. Look up: The towers of the Golden Gate Bridge rise 526 feet above you, 746 feet above the water.

Bike it: The path on the west side of the bridge is for biking. You face the mouth of the bay and the ocean, framed by San Francisco’s Mile Rock and Marin’s Point Bonito. On the Marin side, you can extend the trip where you turn right on Conzelman, which descends under the roadway and to Fort Baker. On the San Francisco side, you can ride out on the Coastal Trail or on Lincoln Boulevard into the Presidio. Cost: Parking, access free.

Contacts: Golden Gate National Recreation Area, (415) 5614700, www.nps.gov/goga.