Summer Stride 2020: Connect with your parks
Illustration by Alison Farrell
Are you ready for an adventure? It’s summer in the city and that means it’s time for Summer Stride, a partnership of the San Francisco Public Library, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, Presidio Trust and National Park Service that helps you have reading adventures in the national parks in San Francisco.
Enjoy the magic of the outdoors online and on the trails in our Portal to the Parks, a jam-packed choose-your-own-adventure kind of experience that starts… well, right now!
StoryWalks
Beginning in mid-June, you'll be able to hike and read on a trail at the same time. Click here for a map and more information on this year’s StoryWalks. Follow the trail in three locations in your local national parks and read along with Alison Farrell’s The Hike and Lizi Boyd’s I Wrote You a Note.
Nature Boost Fridays
Every Friday at 11 a.m., you can meet national park rangers and experts, learn more about local plants and animals, and “nature bathe” with immersive park photos and videos. Nature Boost Fridays start Friday, June 5. Stream new videos every Friday, live on SFPL's YouTube channel. Be sure to follow our social channels below to get the latest and to find past Nature Boost Friday videos
- Previous Nature Boost Friday videos:
- June 5: Alison Farrell reads The Hike.
- June 12: Yakuta Poonawalla leads a Virtual Visit to Lands End
- San Francisco Public Library: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook
- Golden Gate National Park Service: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
- Parks Conservancy: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
- Presidio Trust: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Stay safe in the parks
Get the most up-to-date information on open parks and parking lot closures, as well as the most current guidelines for safe park use on our COVID-19 resource page.
Virtual trailheads & park adventures @ home
Pull up to the Virtual Trailhead at SFPL and connect with nature while expanding your knowledge of local flora, fauna and history.
Download a free activity kit with five kid-friendly projects, including:
- A “Baby Coho Salmon Swim” maze,
- Instructions on how to draw a bobcat,
- And “The Adventures of Sutro Sam,” a fill-in-the-blanks story.
Use your imagination, and things you can find around the house, to make binoculars, butterflies, NPS Junior Ranger badges and more. Click here for the instructions to these park crafts and others.
Go on a Presidio Scavenger Hunt and bring the Ecology Trail to life in your house. Have a Backyard BioBlitz in your neighborhood.
Celebrate the amazing animals in the Presidio by printing and customizing your very own animal mask.
Virtual fun for all
See what’s happening around the Golden Gate National Recreation Area with live webcams in San Francisco, Marin County and the South Bay.
Explore the Virtual Golden Gate and enjoy the sights and sounds of the GGNRA.
Click here to download the interactive NPS Golden Gate app.
Visit the Presidio at Home and dive into the Parks Conservancy’s Portal to the Parks.
Take a Google Street View virtual tour of the Golden Gate National Parks.
