Next stop Point Reyes. This was to be our first sight of the Pacific. Or so we thought. As the sat nav took us closer and closer to our destination, we were playing “who’s first to spot the sea” until we realized we were almost at the campsite and the sea was still 5 miles away!
Jasmine enjoying BBQ-puffed marshmallows direct from the stick
Somehow Jen and I had both gotten confused over how close (or not) the site was to the sea. Turns out it wasn’t at all. You really needed a car, or a 5 mile hike to get there, so we were kinda stuffed. Instead we settled for a day of chilling and laundry, finished off with a campfire and marshmallows. I’ll give you one guess which bit was Jasmine’s favourite. As it was a Saturday night the campsite had a guest storyteller in, so the girls had bedtime stories of Purple Monkeys told around a roaring fire. Not bad for a “quiet day”.
The 300 steps down to Point Reyes lighthouse
The next day on the way out we hit-up Point Reyes lighthouse; contender for the award for America’s Stubbiest Lighthouse. To get there it was an interesting drive across 15 miles of landscape which could’ve easily been in Scotland. It was also our first taste of The Fog, a thick, well-defined blanket of grey that sits, unmoving at a certain height over the landscape. The lighthouse itself is cunningly placed _below_ the fog line, so you approached it from the top of a hill shrouded in thick fog, and descended 300 steps to the lighthouse in the clear.
The barnacled back of a gray whale
While we were there we were lucky enough to spot a gray whale from our vantage point on the cliffs. They’re quite frequent visitors during spring, but this one just seemed to be stopping by for a snack. It definitely made the journey to the diminutive lighthouse worthwhile.
Edited: August 5th, 2010