Monday, March 14, 2005

Pt Reyes in 9,000 words

The weekend, once again, was to be envied.  Tara got in on Friday night and the four of us had many loungetastic experiences together.  Yesterday was North Beach, about which I’ve said enough already so suffice it to say, it was a gorgeous day and we walked the length of Columbus in both directions (consecutive, not concurrent), with stops at cool eastern antique and africo-oceanic arts shops, Mario’s for sandwiches and suds, Stella for a yumtastic treat or two, and countless windows and weirdos to keep us entertained along the way.  But we’ve talked about all that before, so I won’t bore you. 

And I also have already posted photos from Pt Reyes - from Chimney Rock, at least.  But some of the ones I took during our outing on saturday came out particularly well, I thought.  We also saw several whales spuming about a quarter-mile out to sea, and lots of deer of course; we were buzzed by some huge turkey vultures - they are more beautiful than I’d given them credit for - and saw kites and hawks, and a huge blue heron just taking off from a roadside marsh.  Wildflowers were also abundant and glowed with preternatural brightness in the gloom of the overcast day.

Naturally I didn’t get any decent photos of any of those nice animals or flowers, but there’s plenty of time for that.  Instead, permit me to disgorge upon you, in lieu of taking the time and trouble to type an essay worth reading, a few photos of stuff out at the tip of Pt. Reyes:

Edge of the Continent photos:

Not a great day for getting a tan, but a very beautiful day at the beach nonetheless.

Stairs leading down to the lighthouse.  They say it’s the equivalent of 30 stories.

The lighthouse facing off against the inexorable horizon. 

Desuitude photos:

From Sir Francis Drake Highway, the main drag up the west Marin coast, coming into Inverness - the last town before the park.

A shed at the lighthouse station.

Just off the trail back to the shuttlebusses I saw this post driven into the sandy ground, surrounded by, apparently, jack squat.  The post itself seems to come to about my hip - maybe a yard, not five feet.

This used to be a lifeboat station out at Chimney Rock; now it’s preserved as a historical whatsis.  Elephant seals and harbor seals abound - the beaches are literally littered with them.  The male Elephants can weigh 3,000 lbs (7 billion cubic centimeters) and they only do three things - sleep, fight and procreate.  They aren’t eating this season.  A 45-foot (6.3 hectare) grey whale pulled into this inlet two weeks ago and fed for 5 hours in 20 foot (5.43 dozen angstrom) deep water, calmly watching the gapers on the observation platform.  Anyway I thought the lifeboat station was pretty cool too.

All this and nature too:

This is a close view of some of the abundant orange moss.  I did not mess around with the color here, this stuff is so bright it looks like the rocks are melting into magma.  But this stuff is cool and soft, and it doesn’t have that sulphurous reek.  It smelled great out there under the low clouds. 

One other cool thing about the low clouds is how they raise the humidity and really pull out the color and detail in the rock formations.  This is an interface between beautifully patterened sandstone and Pt Reyes conglomerate, which is actually a sort of rock but sounds like the bad guy’s business in a tv drama that involves gunplay and fisticuffs near the end.  The point being, I like the rocks.

I’ll get these on the photoblog when I have a chance.  This is going to have to be it for now.