point reyes

i believe this to be my all time favorite place… on all the earth. people love the mountains… well, i am all about the beach and the ocean and everything else that goes with it!

zipping our way through the valley on highway 37. it was almost as though our trip was preordained… no fog… no traffic… and lovely people!

we not only explored the beaches, but the cheese too! our first stop was at marin french cheese. we dove right into sampling the offerings… and they were great! we hopped back in the car and made out way to point reyes station. once there we hit the cowgirl creamery. they are an organic, artisan cheese making operation in the heart of point reyes station. (well, truth be told the town is only a couple of blocks… so really it’s all heart!) they were in the middle of washing the rinds of their red hawk, a triple-cream cows milk cheese. above are the lovely ladies in action… washing the rind.

we left the creamery and headed downtown to fetch some lunch. (this really meant we walked around the block) out of pure fascination, and having never been into a real general store, we popped into the point reyes general store. there was everything a person, or horse, needed. continuing our tour, we headed down to toby’s but was pleasantly distract by the yarn bomb that i spotted on the railing.

enough oooo-ing and aawww-ing over the yarn bomb spotting, we finally headed over to toby’s and were greeting with the fantastic display of organic fruit.

after retrieving lunch, we finally made out way to the beach. it was a treat to act as a tour guide for my friend heather on the way out. once we began making our decent into the drakes bay area, i knew i was were i supposed to be.

this time of year is a busy one at point reyes… people flock to see the migrating gray whales and the nesting elephant seals. the national park service closes off the road at south beach and operates a shuttle between the light house (where, after descending steps equivalent of a 30 story building, you can have the best view on land of the migrating whales), chimney rock (where there is best area for viewing the elephant seals) and drakes bay (where there were 2 elephant seals on the beach, therefore we had to stay 300 yards away from them). we caught the sunset while on the shuttle back to the car and headed over to north beach and took in the beauty of where was in front of us.

all in all, it was a great day! oh, yeah… we ended it at the station house cafe, located in downtown point reyes station. we feasted on hot popovers and bbq-ed oysters. a great ending to a great day!