Point Reyes National Seashore

MLK Weekend 2010

On Saturday, Emily tells me it's up to me to decide where to go. I had some ideas but they seemed far. So we start driving north and get off the 101 in San Rafael at Sir Francis Drake Blvd, going west. This takes you scenically through San Anselmo where we stopped for Boba Tea, then through Fairfax, Samuel P Taylor State Park, and finally into Point Reyes National Seashore. It's a fairly majestic place. Feels really out there. Lots of little Bed N' Breakfasts, a few small neighborhoods, lots of restaurants and tourist centered businesses. We kept driving out to the lighthouse. Since leaving our house, we drove through redwood forests, mountainous roads, marshlands, along deep inlets, and through rolling hill grasslands that resembled windswept coastal Ireland in the overcast and gusty weather with bright green grasses, rocky outcroppings, and rough forbidding oceans and sea cliffs. And there's the 10-mile long exposed beach to one side of the point and estuary-filled Drake's Bay to the other side. If it were ever clear enough there is a straight 32-mile line of sight to our apartment, it sticks out so far.

It was worth the trek. It was breezy and overcast, but the lighthouse really is cool. There's a good climb of stairs to get down to the rocky perch where the lighthouse sits, and there's a rich history to the place that's eerie and admirable at the same time. The house clocks 2,000 hours of fog a year (the most of anywhere on the west coast by official records) and hasn't had a year without gale force winds since recording started. The stories of the old lighthouse keepers in the 1800's are amazing. It took 140lbs of coal an hour to keep the steam engines going to power the fog horns, and one year there was a 9-day solid stretch of fog. That's about 15 tons of coal. I don't even know how they got that much coal way out there.

The weather went downhill just as we were walking out. Fog, wind, and rain all rolled in just before we got to our car. We headed back through the rolling hills of the numerous historic cattle ranches still in operation and signs pointing to turn-offs for oyster farms, Elk ranches/preserves, and trails of all kinds.

BBQ oysters are the culture out there and it was tempting to try some, but at 14 bucks for half a dozen in the restaurants we decided to wait for later. We explored a few of the very small towns around Tomales Bay and headed out another way towards Petaluma and Novato before going home.

Today, we ran a few errands, including stopping by Fort Point to see the waves of the Heavy Surf Warning hitting the coast. 8-10 foot waves (out at the beach they're ~20ft or so right now) wrapping under the Golden Gate Bridge while torrential downpours flooded the streets and some sidewalks. We sat the car in the splash zone for a couple of big ones (scaring the garbage out of Leif, who was happily sucking his sippy-cup when the first one nailed the car) having a great time. We stopped by a grocery store and bought a couple of non-fresh atlantic oysters and drove out to a VERY windy Muir Beach and ate them raw at a picnic table. They were OK, but had the aftertaste of a stale tide-pool (it was all for comparison's sake, a scientific experiment of quality, if you will). Further up to Stinson Beach, Bolinas Lagoon, and back to Inverness for another try at the marginal Busy Bee Bakery. Then before we left, we had to try locally fresh barbecued oysters at a restaurant, unable to contain the curiosity. THEY WERE AMAZING!! Perhaps it was the unique mango-bourbon flavored sauce they used, but those oysters were fantastic. We understood why those-who-know (check out the pictures) drive all the way out here to buy several dozens of these bad boys right from the farm with their friends and buddies with their grills and cocktail sauces. We have to come back and do the same.

All-in-all: Highly recommend Point Reyes National Seashore. Too much to explore in one weekend, and all of what we saw was great.

Important Note!!: If you or the little ones get car-sick, it would be wise to keep lots of fresh, cool, air going through the car as well as lots of snacks and drinks in the car. We also took a few breaks from driving the windy roads to get out and run around a bit. During one of these, Grace and I snuck under a barbed-wire fence, climbed a small hill, and chased a family of black-tailed deer.