One
perk of living in the Bay Area is the diversity of places we can visit for day
trips. Half an hour to urban San Francisco
and coastal Half Moon Bay, a little more than an hour to wine country Napa and
Sonoma Valley, within two hours to oceanside Monterey and Carmel and just under
1 ½ hours to a nature lover’s paradise, Point Reyes.
Although temporarily closed at this time, we did manage over the years, a couple of visits to the lighthouse, the most recent with my dad, who braved the extreme winds just to get to the top of the staircase to descend those flights of steps down to the lighthouse. Breathtaking in both a figurative and literal sense but so worth the trek.
Tule Elk Preserve
Admittedly annual returns to my favorite Tule Elk Preserve normally limits our ability to explore new places with just a day trip. Before you say once you see one elk, you’ve seen them all, let me tell you that you would be missing out. I still get as excited getting the first glimpse of them on my 20th visit as my first. Each experience has been different with my most memorable, the migration of about 50 elks from one hillside to the other right across the roadway, reminiscent of bison crossing at Yellowstone but without the traffic backup. Another time we came across a pair of winter antlers that the bull elk had naturally shed in preparation to grow their new and larger spring antlers. Although tempting to showcase that at our own home since no animals were hurt in the process, removing antlers is prohibited so we took the look but do not touch approach. Over the years, I found that herd sightings from the road were likelier on sunnier days than overcast ones, when you are lucky to even catch a glimpse of two. Therefore, bring binoculars so you can spot them even if they are in the far distance.
Cows
With social distancing a huge way of life last year, Point Reyes during a weekday was a great option where we saw more cows and elks than people all day. Growing up back East across the bridge from NY similar to Oakland to San Francisco, skylines and brick buildings were my landscape. Needless to say, it was a bit of a “culture shock” when I came out to Quincy, CA in the middle of the Plumas National Forest for our National Honor Society student exchange trip my senior year of high school. An entire camera roll (remember those?) was just pictures of cows on the mountain and roadside as we drove by. Although there are cows grazing on the hillsides in the Bay Area, I no longer take pictures of them, with the exception of the ones at Point Reyes. What makes them paparazzi worthy to me? It is the sheer quantity of them on the way to the Tule Elk Preserve.
Just like elks, with animals you never know what to expect and til this day I still talk about that one time when I had an extreme case of bovilexia moo’ing at the cows out my car window only to have them stampeding over to the fence, even climbing over each other to investigate.
But with not much normal in the past year plus, our most recent visits were not either, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Limantour Beach/Coast Trail
The beach and ocean are my happy place and Point Reyes has its share of them. Although it has been years since I have been, Limantour Beach is my favorite at Point Reyes. Maybe it is because last time we were treated to a show by a pod of dolphins frolicking in the ocean or the beautiful 2 miles each way Coast Trail from where we parked by the Hostel. Straight out of our shelter in place last year, where outdoor activities were our sanity saver, we returned to walk that Coast Trail
down to Limantour Beach for a much-needed picnic on the beach.
This year, we discovered a different entrance with a drive to access, complete with a parking lot and bathrooms. Although more crowded than the other section of the beach, no more having to walk those 2 miles each way via the Coast Trail, unless we want to.
Wildflowers
Recently, we visited earlier in the season allowing us to enjoy fields of wildflowers that we normally would be too late to see. With significantly less rainfall this past winter due to climate change, superblooms are not in the cards this year. However, the wildflowers that blanket the mountains yellow along the coast and in areas of Point Reyes, isn’t anything to sneeze at (pun intended), unless your allergies are acting up early.
Cypress Tree Tunnel
A silver lining to being stuck at home last year was discovering new places through friends’ and fellow bloggers’ Instagram posts. The Cypress Tree Tunnel showed up in not one, not two, but three different posts. How did we not know this existed in those 20 visits? Giant Monterey Cypress trees planted in the 1930s that have created a tree tunnel for visitors to walk under ending in a deco building housing the Point Reyes National Seashore North District Operations Center was such a great find.
Even
though the pandemic had limited our access to travel afar, it was also an
opportunity to spend more time in a place that is normally a day trip and before
or after others have arrived or departed, as we had done in Monterey Bay - Around
the Bay and Away: Monterey Bay Getaway. With
how vast Point Reyes is, day trips only allowed us to scratch the surface. Taking us this long to discover the Cypress
Tree Tunnel is a reminder that staying a night or two in the future would allow
you to really explore this nature’s paradise teeming with so much diversity in
itself. Now that is a point in the right
direction.
Tule
Elk Reserve
Pierce
Point Road
Inverness,
CA 94937
Tule Elk - Point
Reyes National Seashore (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
Limantour
Beach
Limantour
Beach (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
Cypress
Tree Tunnel
Sir
Francis Drake Blvd
Inverness,
CA 94937
Point
Reyes Lighthouse – temporarily closed until further notice
