Park's gems are often just short walk away

Golden Gate Park works about the same as Yosemite National Park - 90 percent of the human activity happens in the 10 percent of parkland that is closest to the roadway. People want to visit nature; it is just that they want to make sure they can see their car from it, or without dismounting their bicycles.

"There is so much that this park has to offer that people don't know about, and if you don't know about it, you are missing a lot," says Meagan Levitan, a 45-year-old San Francisco Recreation and Park Commissioner who has been exploring the park for around, say, 45 years. Standing on the steps of McLaren Lodge, Levitan can see the place where she was born, UCSF. She grew up five blocks from the park and lives five blocks from the park now, in the same house. The park is where she learned to ride a bike, and the park is where her daughter, Jacqueline Carlson, 8, rides her bike.

"She plays in the fog at the children's playground just like I used to play in the fog at the children's playground," says Levitan, who is in her sixth year on the commission.

On a recent sunny day, Levitan put her commissioner's badge on the dashboard of her Audi and drove the park from Panhandle to Pacific and back. The goal was to identify a dozen under-noticed attractions, and the rules were to avoid anything that can be seen from either of the two east-west thoroughfares - John F. Kennedy Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive- or the three transverses. You have to get out and walk to these spots, but to prove how easily it can be done, Levitan did it in her real estate agent's suit and heels.

Here is what she recommends, starting from the east end of the park.

1. Horseshoe Courts: The bygone activity of pitching equine footwear cannot be seen from the road, but you can hear it if any of the 16 courts are alive with the clang of horseshoe hitting asphalt or the cling of horseshoe hitting stake.

"That sound is a summer sound," says Levitan as she follows it up the steps from Conservatory Drive East.

Refurbished last fall by the San Francisco Guardsmen, the court is walled in stone with high benches that look down on the pits. You have to bring your own shoes to play. If you don't have them, it is worth the climb just to see the frieze of a horse on the back wall, its midsection gutted by decay. "It's almost Greco-Roman looking," Levitan says.

2. Dahlia Dell: Across from the Horseshoe Courts is a dirt path that runs down through the Fuchsia Dell and alongside two grassy areas where people lie in the sun or play with their dogs.

The path gives onto the Dahlia Dell, a teardrop-shaped plot protected by an iron fence from the parking lot that surrounds it.

The tubers come from around the world in as many colors as countries. Replanted this year, they won't be in their glory until September or October. If you see them now and come back then, you will get the full miracle. At the end closest to the Conservatory of Flowers is a plaque that explains the work of the Dahlia Society of California. They are serious about their mission. A fight over the sign itself many years ago became unusually vitriolic and public, even by the standards of park politics.

3. Disc Golf Course: As a spectator sport, disc golf is way more entertaining than the kind played on an over-watered lawn with clubs in a bag. The disc golfers carry a bag too, containing weighted rubber circles of differing weights to carry different distances. The disc golfer measures out his shot and pulls the correct disc from its sheath. Instead of a hole, there is a wire basket.

The course, opened three years ago, is along JFK Drive, but that is just the first hole. The other 17 take you up into an otherwise ignored grove of eucalyptus on high ground alongside Fulton Street between 25th and 30th avenues. Disc golf is free, unlike that other golf, and you can walk along the course without playing, and though you don't want to get hit by a flying disc, at least you can see them coming.