San Francisco is a destination for many travelers.  For people with an interest or fascination with lighthouses, the city is also special as there are a significant number of lighthouses in the San Francisco Bay area and the nearby California coast.   Some of these lights are more accessible than others...   all are worth visiting if you have the opportunity!

To get to Point Bonita from San Francisco, you first have to take US Hwy 101 north from the city and across the Golden Gate Bridge.  If it's your first visit to San Francisco, that is an experience all to itself.  North of the bridge, you leave Hwy 101 and the road goes left under 101 and then steep snakes its way up into the Marin Headlands providing spectacular views of the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge with the city sprawling behind it in the distance...  From there the road continues to climb, following the contours of the headlands until you finally reach the crest and can see the Pacific Ocean off in the distance with a finger of land jutting out into the northern side of the mouth of the Bay.  That is where Point Bonita is perched, on a rocky promontory where this slide show begins.  As you walk down to the lighthouse when it's open, you pass through a tunnel carved through the wall of the cliff where it's too steep for the trail.  On the other side of the short tunnel, the trail continues and first comes to an elevated walkway that affords the first close views of Point Bonita.  At the end of that walkway, you're atop a small pinnacle of rock from which the suspension bridge continues across to the pinnacle atop which the lighthouse itself stands.  It is a spectacular way to get to a lighthouse an unique in my experience in the more than 300 lighthouses that I've visited...