The Many Adventures of the Bay Area: Part II

Day 2: Point Reyes National Seashore

Point Reyes is the best kind of sanctuary for natural, cultural, and historical preservation! There are preserved farmlands first settled by some of the first European dairy farmers to California, an historical lighthouse that you walk over 300 steps down to a whale watching point, beach and marshland preserves, and an elephant seal sanctuary! Because it’s peak whale watching season and there are so many tourists, we had to take a shuttle bus. Worked out, because the bus driver gave us some lovely information about the island!

These are cranes in Oakland for the docks. We like to refer to them at AT-ATs because we're Star Wars nerds.

Going over the Richmond Bridge to the North Bay from Oakland. That's the mountains of the North Bay!

We found a street!

The island of Point Reyes! So cool!

Heading down to the visitors center to catch the shuttle to the lighthouse!

Widdle tweety bird ate lunch with us!

More cliffs and beaches!

Weird lookin' seaweed.

Oh no! A dead elephant seal!

Some weird stone coral stuff.

Feet in the water! Oh yea!

So pretty.

We got on the shuttle and headed to the lighthouse!

I forget the actual name of these deer/elk animals, but it's a sanctuary.

The waves looked so cool! Our driver told us these are called "sleeper waves"...or maybe "sweeper waves"....
Either way, it's a wave with a strong riptide that sneaks up on swimmers and they drown. No swimming today!

More cute little deer!

The waves were so cool!

We had to walk over 300 steps down to the lighthouse.

And then walk back up them.

Well worth it. We saw some grey whales!

DREAD

Cool rock erosion and nifty little plant.

ELEPHANT SEALS! The dark ones are the pups. The human-like figure is an actual human. They were doing some studies. Helps you with the size. Actually, there weren't many of the big males. These are mostly females and pups. This particular stretch of beach is one of the few places that are only for elephant seals!

Sun on the hills on the way home.

Yup, I live here now. Pretty awesome.