May 27 Point Reyes

 A leisurely morning enjoying the beautiful view from our room. The fog is light making the valley soft. For breakfast, we drive down the hill to the little grocery store connected to the restaurant where we ate last night.  we get a BLT for breakfast that we share.  The store "Spirates Matters" is next door.  It isn't open but has a fun garden.

We head back to Point Reyes National Seashore.  This time we're headed to the Tule Elk Reserve, tomales Point and Historic Pierce Point Ranch.  We first park at the path to McClures Beach.  The beach looked close but we soon realized that it was a long steep path down to the beach.  We didn't go far before tunring back.

The area s beautiful with soft rolling hills with occasional glimpses of water. The hills are generously spotted with the yellow lupin flowers bushes.  Black cows spot the hills as well.  We also a small herd of elk in the distance grazing on the hill. 

The path to Tomales point starts at the Pierce Point Ranch.  Tomales Point is miles down the path but one can turn back at any point.  The path is sandy, mostly flat and absoultly beautiful.  Wild flowers flank both sides of the path.  The pacific laps far below.  Small sandy beaches with high cliffs sererating them. Signs warn that the waters are extremely dangerous and unpredicable.  We follow the path for about a mile.  Since we want to have lunch with Alex and are due in Davis late afternoon, we decide to turn back.  The fact that the path was starting a long steep incline had nothing to do wit the decision.

 

The dairy farm buildings are still there.  The school house, the bunk house for the hired help, the 3-story milking barn! The family house.  Twin girls grew up on the ranch and were interviewed about growing up there.  One of them said it was the most beautiful place she had ever lived.  I’m sure! What a unique childhood. 

 

I guess I only took the one picture of the farm buildings….

We meet Alex at Giaco's for lunch.  It is close enought that Alex rode his bike to the restaurant from their place.  We sit outside on the deck overlooking a little stream.

A nice visit with both Janet and Alex.  It is easier to say goodbye with plans to meet on the East coast in August.  

From there we drove a few hours to Davis to visit our friends, Patty and John.  We met them last summer on our Roads Scholar hiking trip around Mont Blanc. We will all be going on the same Road Scholar trip to New Zealand in January.  It was really fun to see them and meet their dogs.  Patty volunteers with an organization for raising and training support dogs.  

They showed us around Davis and we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner.  

Throw a big load of laundry in the wash and call it a night.

May 26 Point Reyes National Seashore

To start with, Dan would have been 70 years old today.  May 26 and 27 are always days of rememberance for us. Dan's birthday on the 26th and his yahrzeit on the 27th. It was especially nice to be spending the day with Janet and Alex today, knowing that we all have Dan as a backdrop of the day. 

On to the beautiful activities of the day......

We met Janet and Alex at a small breakfast place called "Side Street" and it was a block off of the main highway through Point Reyes.  We had a delicious, huge breakfast.  I think pork belly played a role in all of our orders.  I had a Pork Belly sandwich with lettuce and tomato on a delicious bun.  

Fortified, we set off in 2 cars.  Nick driving our car and Alex driving his car with Janet and me as passengers.   Our first stop was an old ship wreck.   It apparently got blown onto high ground and has stayed there for years.  Really falling apart now.  

We drove past the first library in the town which was a small little shed.  The present one is an old house.  The only way we knew this is by going with a local (Janet) who worked in one of the county libraries for years.

Next stop was for the light house.  Janet's knee is really bothering her so she waited while the rest of us walked to the light house and down the stairs that the sign said was equivalent to a 30 story building.  It has the reputation of being the windiest lighthouse in the country.  They close access to it when the winds are 40MPH.  It was open today and really quite calm.  The views of the cliffs, oceans, rocks, flowers.  Alex spotted a sea lion in the water and with his help, I saw its head bob out of the water too.  The stairs down and back up were much easier than the hike up to Columbia point in Yosemite.  I guess that is my new scale of difficulty.  

The erosion of the rocks was interesting.  Some was large swirls, others smaller pitted erosion which I think was newer with smaller rocks washing out from larger boulders.  

It takes a unique person to be the caretaker at a lighthouse.  Much easier now that things are automated.  In the late 1800's a rescue group was formed to try to save people who had been shipwrecked.  Their motto was "You have to go out, but you may not come back."

We drove a short distance to the rock chimney.  We followed the path as far as it went to the elephant seal lookout.  There were probably a couple hundred of them along the beach.  The snorting and hawking was interesting.  We watched one big male ride the waves on to the beach and then the very awkward belly flops forward.  One, two, three four, plop take a rest.  Repeat until you get to the herd and plow your way in.  

I loved all of the wild flowers. Don't know the names of most of them and that's okay.  I just enjoy their beauty.  

Janet and Alex had been talking about how good the Bovine Bakery was in Point Reyes.  Time to check it out.  Yep!  Following Janet's recommendation, I had a cinnamon roll.  Point Reyes has become quite a touristy town with little shops, galleries.  We went into one shop of clothes, and variety of other things.  I pretty much really liked everything in the store.  Oh, $72 for a top.  Even with the store-wide 20% off, that didn't bring it down to my price range.  But, it was fun to look and I did end up getting a new water bottle.  Mine was leaking around the lid.  Of course I get a teal one.

Alex and Janet headed back to their place and Nick and I poked around a little bit.  I had been admiring Janet's purse.  In one of the shops, I found one that was similar.  Small, but still room for my eppie pins and enough different sections that it isn't one big hole to dig in.   It was expensive.  It also was 20% off but I kinda fell in love with it and the Mexican one I've been using as showing lots of wear. 

 Then we poked into a gallery of the photos of Marty Kaplan.  All black and white and amazing.  I started talking to the sales person.  He uses infrared light to get the contrast.  Leaves come out white in the infrared.  I bought several note cards.  Don't have any room on my walls for anything else.  

Back to rest and enjoy the view at our Airbnb.  After naps, we head back out to meet up with Alex for dinner at the Tap Room.  Small little place with a faithful following.  They had Rueben fries.  That's a new one for me and really delicious.  A pile of fries with all of the makings of a reuben slathered over them.  It really was delicious.  

On the drive back to our place we noticed that the tide was in.  What had been a lazy looking stream was now a big, wide expanse of water that nearly came up to the road.   Tides are an amazing phenomenon.  

May 23 Around Lake Tahoe

 It's so nice to get up and have breakfast with cousins!  We make sandwiches for lunch and we're off to circumnavigate Lake Tahoe.  Due to the traffic back-up we experienced yesterday, we decide to go around the lake starting with going through Incline Village.  Hopefully, that will help us avoid the bad construction traffic.  spoiler alert - it does.  We didn't have to deal with traffic stoppages at all.  

Our first stop is at Sugar Pine State Park where we eat our picnic lunch with a view of the lake.  There are several historic buildings where we peered through the windows to discover old boats.  Some quite simple and others quite elaborate.  One was a racing boat from the 1920's.  A small place that was for the caretaker and a large place that was a seasonal hotel in the 1920's.  Hmmmm. As I go back to put pictures with the text, I see that I was more interested in taking pictures of the lake than the buildings.

Valerie is into Geo Cashing so we went off in search of one.  I found it!  There were lots of little trinkets but I really didn't see anything that I wanted.  We left a little Chinese coin that Valerie had gotten in Chinatown.  There was another one in the Emerald Point area that we looked for but it would involve fording a little stream that was a little wider and faster and full of melted snow than we wanted to deal with.  

Really cool tree

The next stop was up high, looking down on the lake rather than the lake level of Sugar Pine.  Emerald Bay is at about the exact half way point around the lake from Incline Village.  There's snow up here!

It is obvious when we get to the Nevada state line.  CASINOS!  None of us are into gambling so no temptation there.  But, there is an ice cream shop and we give into that temptation.  The Baked Bear specializes in ice cream sandwiches.  You chose the kind of cookie or brownie that you want (you can have two different kinds) and the kind of ice cream in the middle.  MMMMMMM!

Almost back around the lake.  We stop at the grocery store and get things for dinner.  It's always challenging at a grocery store that one isn't familiar with.  Nick makes California Sherry chicken for us for dinner.  After dinner hot tub.  And sweet dreams.