If I were to be bitten by a vampire (Eric from Trueblood would be nice), I would surely want to take up residence in the Victorian opulence of an Olmsted Cemetery.   For the Bay Area, this means Mountain View (http://www.mountainviewcemetery.org) in Oakland.   I might choose the understated grave site of girl-architect-super-hero Julia Morgan but I scratched the grass and mud off of several gravestones by the marker on the map and still couldn’t find it.   Bernard Maybeck is here too but I will need to attend one of the docent tours on Saturday to find them both.

Frederick Law Olmsted, the “father” of landscape architecture, translated English Romanticism to the wild landscape of America from coast to coast, from Central Park to Mountain View Cemetery to create beautiful parks for us to go running.  Lucky us.  If you are in a city with an Emerald Necklace (Boston, Chicago, my home town of Cleveland to name a few) this will always make a great place for a run.

A Halloween Pumpkin Patch will be set up for this weekend, so if you are looking for a gentle hill run  (I easily created a 6.5 mile run by exploring all corners, elevation 500 ft) with our own dark red Sweet Gum shade of leaf turning colors.  There is an amazing view at the top and a slow gentle grade coming down to ponder which lovely crypt you would like to call home.