Point Reyes
(Sunday, May 25, 2003 in the north SF Bay Area, CA)

We headed up the foggy path towards the lighthouse. It looked really surreal seeing so many people walking into seemingly-nothing. We soon came to the visitor center, where there was a whale skull. From here, it was a few-hundred step descent to the lighthouse itself. It was so foggy that we couldn't even see the ocean, not too far below us. There were a handful of folks milling around, but not too many. There was an old foghorn in an old utility building next to the new lighthouse. We went into the base of the old lighthouse, but unfortunately the lens room wasn't open (we later found it opens at 2:30 (some days)). After I got bored with snapping wannabe-artsy pics (probably long after Sarah got bored with me doing that :), we headed back up the foggy stairs to the car.

After visiting the lighthouse, we headed to the other end of the point to hike out to Chimney Rock. The trail was quite foggy and we could barely see an old rescue boat launch on the beach below. There were many flowers around, Ithuriel's spear, paintbrush, and blue-eyed grass, along with the occasional Douglas Iris, poppies, lupine, and sticky monkeyflower. Strangely, there was a USCGS benchmark near the end of the trail - we couldn't quite figure out why except that perhaps this is the highest point on the south tip of Point Reyes. It wasn't at all obvious which of the many rocks was Chimney Rock, but it was pleasant anyways. On the hike back to the car, I started to get snowblind from all of the glare coming off of the fog, despite my very-dark sunglasses. I'd never experienced this before, and I definitely didn't like it - I was slowly losing the ability to see in my non-peripheral vision! After returning to the car, my sight quickly returned to normal - perhaps polarized lenses would have helped?

We were thinking of hiking around Drake's Bay, but were a bit tired, and the large volume of people parked in the parking lot at Drake's Beach finalized things. After a brief visit to the visitor's center so I could purchase a good area map, we hit the road.

This was the first time I'd been to Point Reyes in I don't know how long, at least 20 years. It would have been prettier (but a lot more crowded) on a sunnier day, but it was cool to see the lighthouse in the conditions for which it was built in the first place.

Hike Stats:

Distance:	~3mi
Total Time:	1hr 42min
Elevation gain:	A couple hundred feet
Difficulty:	5 - basically flat except for a few hundred stairs down to the lighthouse and back.
Scenery:	7
Trail condition/markings/etc:	8
Wildflowers:	7
Overall rating:	7