A Day at the Ocean at Point Reyes

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

We all left about 9:30 a.m. for Point Reyes.  It was another beautiful drive.  The road was narrow and curvy.

Our first glimpse of the ocean

Our first stop was at the Bird Observatory and we hiked one of the trails here.  There was also a small museum.

Hummingbird nests

 Conrad inspecting the trees

 A butterfly

 Interesting trees

 Lots of wildflowers

 Jackie and Brent on the trail

We saw this deer as we were leaving

We drove over to the Bear Valley Visitor where they had a picnic area.  There were lots of big, interesting trees here and a museum inside the visitor center.

 Our picnic place

 Conrad studying more trees

 Conrad LOVES the trees!

 Jackie and Brent fit in this one!

Brent and Jackie by the big tree!

We made a quick trip through the museum at the Visitor Center before leaving.

Visitor Center

Our next stop was at the lighthouse.  It is on the southern point of Point Reyes Beach, also known as Great Beach.  It is an 11-mile expanse of pristine, undeveloped shoreline where the surf can also be heavy.  When we got out of the car in the parking lot, we had to get our coats.  It was SO windy and SO cold.  We had a big climb up the hill to get where we needed to be.  Oh, what a view on the way up!

 Up we go!

 Conrad found another tree!

A whole row of trees - notice how they

lean from the wind!

 Beautiful view

 Something is able to grow up here

Conrad by the gray whale skull

 The lighthouse was closed on Tuesdays, but

that was OK.  It was a long climb, down and up!

 Point Reyes Lighthouse - it would have been

a long way down and back up!

 Point Reyes Lighthouse

 More wildflowers

 Brent and Jackie

 Conrad and Linda

 Linda - it was cold and SO windy!

I love this picture!

We all could have stayed here a long time but it was time to move on.  We drove to the Elephant Seal Overlook Trail.  The elephant seals were all beached and taking a nap.

 The seals are on the beach about the middle

of the water towards the top.

 Luckily, I have a good zoom lens on the camera.

Elephant seals

It was about time to head back to Walnut Creek.  It was a great day and we saw so many great things.  We stopped in Larkspur to eat dinner at Marin Brewing Company.  Finally got to Brent's about 8:45 pm.  We only walked 8,700 steps today and 46 flights of stairs.  It must have been that big hill at the lighthouse!