Point Reyes Lighthouse

Saturday I made my way, once again, to the coast. Point Reyes National Seashore is about 1.5 hours from my house. I LOVE that place! It's stunning, no matter the weather (which is usually foggy and drizzly there). It's a very large State park with miles and miles and miles of seashore and places for exploration.

Saturday, the Lighthouse called my name (did you know Lighthouses can do that? Me neither.)

It said "CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIISTYYYYYYYYYY"
(Can you hear it? That loud, deep, foghorn bellow...)

And I answered: "I'm coming!"

I'm so glad I did!

The Point Reyes Lighthouse is the only historic lighthouse that still houses an in-tact, working class one Fresnel lighthouse lens. Class one means it's the biggest type made. So for lighthouse buffs, that place is a dream-come true. I'm not a lighthouse enthusiast and I still thought it was pretty cool.

Well. Although the historic lighthouse and lens still work, they aren't used anymore. They're run every once in a while to keep the machinery in working order, but you see, the Lighthouse has become... like unto the Leaning Tower of Pisa.


AKA: It's tilted. So running the lens on a regular basis will eventually destroy the gears and machinery.

There is a plan to completely restore the lighthouse and put it back into use, but you know, "In the current economic climate..."

AKA: California's broke.

So.

I walked down to the Lighthouse and learned and took pictures and then walked back up, which took much longer than walking down did, because the walk is the equivalent of climbing a 30-story building!

And I wasn't ready to go home after that, so I walked some more, and hiked and went to the beach and drove and drove. And took photo after photo of that stunning place.

You really should visit Point Reyes. Go for a weekend. Stay in one of the lovely B&Bs.

Photos:

My Favorite three shots from the day:

Fun Saturday Seals

Last Saturday I was supposed to go for a bike ride with my sister. But then she bailed on me with no fore-warning, which was seriously annoying (especially because I'd passed on several weekend trips so I could go biking with her). So I ended up going out to Point Reyes and hiking. I went a few months back and did a hike to Sculpture beach (there's an old blog with photos somewhere). This time I wanted to spend some serious time on the beach so I chose a hike called the Limantour Spit. It basically paralleled sand dunes on one side and the ocean on the other. Perfect! It was couple of miles each way. Once I got past the populated beach area and headed away from the people, I saw more and more wildlife. Flocks of Pelicans, cranes, crabs and occasionaly a Seal would poke it's head out of the water and stare at me. I reached what I thought was the end of the beach (it pretty much turned right, sharply and then looked like it ended into a rock wall) I sat myself down and ate my lovely Whole Foods Turkey Sandwich, apple and home-made chocolate chip cookies. Yum! A seagull tried it's best to look cute enough to feed throughout my lunch, but we all know that Seagulls are rats with wings! No food for him! (okay, okay, I did give him some of my turkey sandwich!)



California is a study in Microclimates. It's astonishing really, how quickly climates change around here. My trip to work is either a 24-minute train ride or a 30 minute drive in traffic (12 minutes if there is no traffic!). During that 24 minute train ride, the weather can be sometimes like this: 80 degrees at 8am in Walnut Creek. 5 miles down the road, 86 degrees in Lafayette. Four miles later you drive through the Caldecott tunnel (a tunnel through the hill that separates Oakland from the inner east bay), On the other side of the tunnel, it is a chilly, overcast, 65 degrees. Not kidding!



So after my lunch on the point of the spit, I laid back to take a nap and enjoy the sunshine, which came and went about every five minutes. It would alternate between sun, cold and fog drizzle in a time-lapsed loop. Pretty incredible.



When I got up from my little nap, I looked at the water only to see a seal sticking its head out of the water directly in front of me, staring at me. So I stared back. And then I grabbed my camera. He started heading down to the right and I followed, only a few feet later a really cool sight came into view: Over a hundred seals napping on the beach in a giant flock. They weren't the gross, huge harbor seals on pier 39, theses were darling little seals, light brown and white and black. As I walked towards them, they streamed into the water en masse. I took a ton of photos. The closer I got, the more rushed into the water and just waited there, heades bobbing in and out of the small bay, looking at me and waiting for me to leave.



After I took the photos I wanted, I headed back out to my car and then home. The fog was just starting to roll in and take over the beach and the sun was hidden for the day.



If only every day was a beach day!

Point Reyes

Now that the politcs are out of the way for a while (unless you live in LA), I thought it high time to get outside and back to nature. I was dying to go to the beach, luckily, my ward had a hike planned for yesterday. It was fantastic!

First of all, I have to say that I’m not a fan of Northern California beaches. I don’t like seaweed, I don’t like cold, I don’t like rocky beaches. That said, I WILL TAKE ANY BEACH (oceanic, no lake beaches!), ANY DAY over no beach at all. Have I mentioned this before? Lol.

We started out around 8am from Walnut Creek and reached Pt Reyes by 9:15. We made really good time. If anyone is familiar with the whole highway 24/580/101/1 interchange system, you’ll know that if we had left a couple hours later, the trip would have taken around twice as long. Yes, on a Saturday. Bumper to bumper traffic. It’s heinous... The point is, we made good time. Great time, actually.

We took the Laguna trail from the Youth Hostel (yes, we actually have at least one Youth Hostel in America!) down to Coast Camp and hit “Sculpture” beach. It was fantastic! The rocks are like living sculptures carved out by eons of wind, sand and water. The rocks themselves range from creamy whites to grays.

Tons of sea-life, mussels, anemones, sand dollars & starfish. Beautiful!

We hoofed it about a mile down the beach to where the rocks cut off the beach, hopped down and kept going, exploring caves and poking anemones as we went. (Watch out, they'll squirt ya!)

We finally reached an arch that we had to maneuver through as the waves receded to make it around the point.






I didn’t do so well, I’m not gonna lie. I'm not the most graceful/balanced person in the world. Not even close. I slipped right in, drenching myself through all of my layers and dunking my lovely new(ish) digital SLR. Great.
The biggest concern at this point was not the camera (it’s under warranty still) but the cold. We were a good three miles of sand and hills away from the car, we weren’t done with the hike, it was drizzling rain (from the fog) up to that point, but had just started to actually rain. Thank goodness for the priesthood. Between them and my backpack, we had everything we needed (to make sure Kamikazee Christy survived, lol). I had the first aid kid (for my bleeding cuts and scrapes) and they had towels and a spare fleece. Couldn’t do anything about my soaking shorts but ring them out. Did a quick change and then joined the group in the mouth of a cave for lunch watching the waves and the rain. We explored a bit more and then headed back. Luckily I had some dry socks, shoes and pants in the car (a must when going to the beach in NorCal), so I changed and got all warm and toasty for the ride home… No cold, no pneumonia, just a really fun day!