Okay. So, I am going to keep trying to keep all my "what I did on my Summer vacation" posts going, but they are long and take a lot of time to do, and as you can see, I'm not getting very far with them. Soooo, I will still be inserting shorter more current posts in between these.
Now, back to my California vacation in July...
On our first full day in Point Reyes, we decided to do the one big hike I wanted to do. It was a hike to a waterfall on beach. It's called Limantour Falls and the full hike is about 12 miles long but there is a shortcut, which I will get into later.
We got there early to avoid lots of people and to make sure we could find parking. We were also trying to contact our friend Nick, because the night before he asked us if we could meet him in Point Reyes to hang out in the afternoon. Of course, there is almost no cell service, so we had no idea if he was getting our emails or tests. It also meant that we were going to have to hurry up our hike if we were going to meet him on time.
The hike was GORGEOUS. We walked along the coast at first, and had amazing views of the craggy cliffs below.
We also came across a couple of lakes/ponds that were beautiful as well.
At one point, we saw this homemade arrow made of rocks and pointing to this little path in the underbrush. I kept telling John it had to have been made by cannibals and not to go in there at the risk of becoming lunch.
John being John, took that as a challenge and went right in. He said it didn't really lead anywhere that he could see, and I told him that it for sure meant that there were cannibals or trolls in there trying to lure us in. My suggestions was that we pick up our pace.
The first part of the hike was about six miles long, which wasn't a big deal, for the most part. It was so pretty, that had I not been a decrepit old lady, I would have hiked it for days. I have this weird problem with my feet called metatarsalgia (which I guess just means unexplained pain in your feet). It doesn't always bother me, but when it does it feels like someone is stabbing knives in the balls of my feet just under my toes. It started when I was in my late 30's and it seems to be getting worse and worse. At first it only bothered me when I ran 10 miles or more, and then it started bothering me when I ran shorter and shorter distances and now it hurts me sometimes when I ride my bike and walk or hike. Hurray for getting old, ad also, it's always something with me, isn't it?
Anyway, damn if my metatarsalgia didn't start acting up on this hike. I barely made it to the beach where I could take my shoes off and walk in the sand and cold water, which seemed to really help.
We walked along this desolate beach until we finally came to the waterfall.
It was worth all the pain and all the miles of the hike.
We stopped by this adorable, but ridiculously pricey little market in Inverness the night before and picked up some sandwiches and salads for our beach picnic. However quaint it is to have a picnic on a beach, it ALWAYS means that everything is served with some crunchy sand.
While we were eating lunch, we were contemplating our route back. We needed to go faster if we were going to meet our friend Nick at the appointed time, and I needed to walk fewer miles to keep my feet from hurting so much that I wanted to just saw them off and walk on the stumps.
We saw a couple of guys come down the cliffs, and we figured that it must be the shortcut that they took. We had read all these warnings about how nobody should take the shortcut because the trails were dangerous and tricky and went straight up the cliffs. We asked the guys if they were really that treacherous and they said they thought it would be harder to go back up them than it was to go down. A little while later, a young woman who was hiking by herself came down the cliffs and we asked her about them. She looked us up and down to measure our strength and mobility, and then said, "I guess it depends on what you're used to hiking. I've done a lot worse..." John and I talked it out, and we decided that we both had probably done worse (especially in Spearfish Canyon in South Dakota). We decided to try it, and if it got too hairy, we could just go back down. Boy, were we glad we did. It didn't seem all that treacherous at all to us. We both grew up being monkeys and climbing trees and rocks, and even though we're old, we had definitely done worse. Also, at the top there was waterfall after waterfall. A double waterfall where one led into another.
As you can see from where John is, I wouldn't recommend taking the trail up if you had never had experience climbing up and down slippery shale and rocks.
This double waterfall was a side by side one.
We hiked back and cut off about two miles or so on our hike. My feet still bothered me, but when it got so bad I couldn't stand it, we would stop and John would rub my feet before we started back again. I promised John I wasn't just making this pain up so he would give me foot rubs.
We realized that homemade rock arrow wasn't for cannibals to lure us into their den at all, it was marking the shortcut to the cliffs. I still think cannibals was a WAY more logical explanation.
Lucky for us (but not for him), Nick got a flat tire on his way to Point Reyes, and we ended up all getting there within about five minutes of each other. We figured we'd take him to a couple of cool places, so he could get a feel for the area.
We started with the shipwreck in Inverness.
Pssst! The not so secret secret is that it isn't really a shipwreck at all, but some boat a guy was working on and didn't finish for some reason, and he just left it on the beach there.
It was more fun to pretend it was a real shipwreck, and soon The Goonies were going to show up and do the Truffle Shuffle for us.
Next we thought a trip to a swimming beach would be nice. Point Reyes is on Tamales Bay, and not directly on the ocean, so the water is warmer and not as rough and you can actually swim there. We chose Shell Beach.
It was so nice.
There were all these little inlets to even smaller beaches, and I claimed the one above as my own. If I had more time, I would have gone back to that beach every day.
John swam out to the buoys and said he could see tons of jelly fish, so I made sure to stay closer to shore.
After the beach, we headed up to the light house.
It was after five, so it was closed. On the walk to the light house, I was saying that I'd never seen a whale in the ocean before, and about five minutes later, Nick pointed out to the water and said, "Look!" There's one right there." and sure enough, you could see water coming out of the blow hole and it jumping up and slapping back down in the water. I don't think it's all that common to see a whale around there in the Summer, but we got really lucky.
When we came back to the light house, we headed over to Tap Room. Apparently, Wednesday night is sushi night, so we were getting lucky all over the place. At first, we were each just going to order one roll, but then we would have missed out on some other amazing rolls, and we had hiked SO. DAMN. MUCH. that we said, "Eff it!" and got the extra rolls too. We couldn't finish all of it, but it was great for breakfast the next morning too.
We said goodbye to Nick and went home and fell asleep about two seconds after we went to bed. These amazing days can be really tiring.
