Following the reunion excesses of yesterday evening, at least one member of our party wasn’t feeling quite a hundred percent when morning came knocking. Unfortunately, Bets’s cleaner was also due to come knocking at about 8:30 AM so slacking was not an option. Getting out of bed and donning some clothes was necessary. Aren’t vacuum cleaners loud after a night on the sauce?

Other than moving around the house to make way for cleaning efforts, Keith drove me into Tomales, mainly to pick up the mail but also to see just how small it really is.

Keith and Marlene have a new car, a Buick Lucerne. It may not be battery powered and, being a chunky V8, it may not seem to care greatly about burning a reasonable amount of fossil fuel, but, like the Camry hybrid, it does has a disturbing amount of technology. Naturally there is a satellite navigation system. Most people couldn’t find their own backside without one, these days. Not only does it have heated seats (which I personally don’t particularly like them ‘cos they make you feel as if you’ve wet yourself) but this car’s seats are also air-conditioned. Once again, I’d like to live in a country that feels that car seats need to be cooled. It comes with General Motor’s Onstar roadside assistance system which seems to give one-touch warm body assistance whenever required; a sort of personalised, private AA or RAC. If you are unlucky enough to be involved in an accident, Onstar knows and, knowing your GPS coordinates, dispatches the emergency services. This seems like grand use of technology.

The car has a trick I’ve never seen anywhere else: while the car is locked, you can start it remotely. Now there’s useful. Apparently the car will sit there burbling happily to itself, as V8s tend to do, and, depending upon temperature, will fire up the air-conditioning or heating, together with seat temperature adjustment to make things comfortable for you. Once having started it, however, you cannot remotely stop it. It is necessary to open the car, get in and use the key that you didn’t use to start it to turn it off. Weird! Why can’t I turn it off remotely, too?

We didn’t remotely fire up the new Buick but left it to rest after its arduous cross-country journey. Instead we took the hybrid Camry for a relaxing trip down Tomales Bay to let Keith and Marlene visit Point Reyes Station. We had a reviving lunch in an open-air cafe after which, the member of our party that did not feel on top form early in the morning, felt much better.

I must say, Keith and Marlene’s car is very impressively clean for one that has just been driven from Virginia to California. I wonder if the car cleans itself, too. We have self-cleaning ovens; self-cleaning cars would be a real bonus.

Today we were making final preparations for having some visitors. Keith and Marlene Stillman had embarked on another of their road trips touring parts of the United States by car. This time their route had taken them from their home in Virginia, across the more southerly states, through a few desserts and now they were just a relatively short distance from us at Yosemite Valley. They planned to join us in Tomales later in the afternoon and Bets had graciously said they could stay here with us.

What a wonderful plan: we’ll fly 5000 miles to California, you drive 3500 miles to California, and we can meet up for a party. Excellent! Life was made for such things.

Carol set about doing some laundry to change the bed linen so that Keith and Marlene could stay in the downstairs bedroom. We would move up the creaking spiral staircase into the roof space where there are four single beds resembling ship’s berths. They are full size beds but Keith’s a big guy and we fit better. Then it was off to good ol’ Whole Foods to invest part of our lifetime savings in some good-looking chunks of beef to feed the weary travellers.

1:30 PM. After our sunny lunch on the deck we had a phone call from our fellow party animals. They had left Yosemite and were expecting to arrive in our neck of the woods by about 4:00 PM. Great, we’ll have things ready.

3:15 PM. We had a second phone call saying that their car was having trouble. Unfortunately their route was taking them across the southern parts of the Napa Valley wine area and their car kept insisting on pulling off the road into wineries to sample the wares. “We may have some wine with us.” Perfectly understandable and good news.

4:30 PM. A strange but very clean and swish looking car pulled into our driveway. Keith and Marlene had found us. Let hugs and the reunion commence.

4:35 PM. First bottle of refreshment opened. Travellers’ stories commence.

8:00 PM. Weber fired up to the accompaniment of fourth bottle of refreshment.

9:00 PM. Steaks seared and consumed to accompaniment of fifth bottle of refreshment.

10:00 PM. Slightly slurred stories to the accompaniment of a half bottle of port.

12:00 PM. Festivities draw to a close and party animals retire.

After a 6:00 AM alarm and a very good omelette breakfast freshly prepared by the staff at Howard Johnson’s, we hit the road to cover the 100 miles or so to the Lake Tahoe area. We’d seen a weather forecast on the TV in the breakfast area and, wouldn’t you know it, after weeks of wall-to-wall sunshine, the forecaster was now getting excited about the prospect of some rain in the mountains. Blast! (I want to live in a country that finds rain a rare and exciting prospect.) The rain was not expected until later in the day so we hit Interstate 80 anyway. Besides, we’d come half way and what else were we going to do?

Interstate 80 beyond Roseville was much quieter and our drive up into the Sierras was relaxed and quite picturesque. First stop was in Truckee to the north of Lake Tahoe. Here I had once stayed for a weekend’s entertainment in what I was told had been the old whore house in gold rush days. It was still only 9:00 AM so we popped in to a colourful local coffee shop to top up our caffeine levels. We also popped in to the local gas station to top up our technologically rich Camry’s fuel levels. The blasted automated machine insisted on my entering a zip code again but, this time, the cashier seemed to have enough smarts to circumvent this minor problem and we got filled up.

Next stops on the way down to the west side of Lake Tahoe itself were the twin skiing areas of Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows. The road up to Squaw Valley was quite alpine in nature and we were hoping to take a chair lift up to a highpoint for some expansive views. Unfortunately we seemed to have timed our visit between the summer visitors and the winter skiers so no chair lifts were operating.  The road up to Alpine Meadows did not look at all alpine. I’d suggest, therefore, that these two ski resorts be renamed Alpine Valley and Squaw Meadows. Whatever the name, Alpine Thingy was equally closed. Fortunately a very obliging American Kestrel was sitting on a rock and, moreover, remained sitting on a rock while our technologically rich hybrid Camry drifted silently up to it on battery power for a photo shoot. Stalking wildlife; what an excellent use of battery-powered cars.

At last we joined Lake Tahoe itself at Tahoe City. We found a parking spot to go “ooh, ah” at the lake and lo, a block of six restrooms beside a small local museum. Just what we were beginning to need. Frustratingly, we discovered that it was not only the ski resorts which were shut but also, it seemed, the restrooms. There was, however, a very helpful sign on the museum door declaring, “sorry, no public restrooms inside”. Splendid!

The clouds were gathering and thickening as we made our way down the west side of Lake Tahoe pausing occasionally for a gander at the view which was mostly boat docks and boats. Our main goal was the much advertised Emerald Bay towards the south end of the lake. Its name, of course, derives from the apparent colour of the water in the bay. Beside the bay is the highly acclaimed house called Vikingsholm, the erstwhile summer retreat of some embarrassingly rich lady previously unknown to me.

It was lunchtime and we had begun fantasizing about a little Mexican Taqueria, preferably overlooking the lake but we were willing to take anything. After about 20 miles and a couple of resort areas large enough to feature on a map, not only had we not seen an appealing Mexican taqueria, but we hadn’t seen a restaurant of any kind. We couldn’t believe it – tourist heaven with both summer and winter trade and not a restaurant in sight. Bloody brilliant!

Eventually and still without having found anything beginning with “rest”, neither a restaurant nor a restroom, we arrived at a $6 parking area for Vikingsholm under looming grey skies. OK, we don’t mind coughing up for this one, let’s go take a look at Emerald Bay. Today the bay was far from emerald. Under the glowering skies, Emerald Bay had become Slate Gray Bay. It is undoubtedly a very impressive vista but the lighting on this day was certainly not going to do photographs justice at all.

There were supposedly restrooms here but, like Vikingsholm itself, they were down a one mile precipitous track on the shoreline of Emerald Bay. I suppose given the other seasonal closures it was unsurprising to discover that Vikingsholm was due to close tomorrow as well. Nonetheless, we had arrived while it was open and, in the absence of any commercially available sustenance, armed with the remnants of our V. Sattui Winery picnic of yesterday, we set of down the track to see the residence itself and to find the longed-for restrooms.

Finally relieved, we continued the last few yards to discover several picnic tables by the shore with views to the island in the centre of the bay; very appealing even if the light remained pants. No sooner had we settled down under a couple of trees for our picnic, than we were joined by an ever-increasing swarm of wasps intent on stealing our remaining prosciutto and cheese. When the count got to about 15, we moved away to a tree stump far from any other tree cover but, alas, the wasps soon found us there also and made eating not only miserable but down right dangerous, too. A mouthful of wasp-covered prosciutto was too much to contemplate. (I can’t help but wonder why there were no wasps at Napa yesterday? I wonder if it’s anything to do with insecticide in the vineyards? Worth a thought.)

Vikingsholm itself was smaller than I had expected. I was thinking of something much grander. Still, it was only a summer retreat, I suppose. The most disappointing aspect was that the entrance was now covered in scaffolding. Bother! Now why, pray tell, if the place was closing to the public tomorrow, would they ruin everyone’s pictures with scaffolding? Couldn’t they have waited until after tomorrow?

So, no quaint restaurants with lake views, pointless pictures of the bay because of the pants light, pointless pictures of Vikingsholm because of scaffolding and picnics ruined by wasps. On top of all this, the promised rain was now arriving so we trudged back up the one mile precipitous ascent beginning to wonder if it had been worth the effort and the use of a couple of tankfulls of the  world’s increasingly rare fossil fuel.

Shortly after beginning our homeward journey, we came across a public, free parking area overlooking Slate Grey Bay equipped with public restrooms at the parking area and not one mile away downhill. Such is life.

Given the correct weather, I am quite convinced that Emerald Bay is a beautiful sight and well worth the trip. My advice is this:

• don’t bother if it’s cloudy, it needs the sun;
• drive from the south to the north ‘cos then you are on the correct side of the road for the parking areas and you come across the free overlooks first;
• eat before or after the trip beside the lake because there appears to be no food along it.

A four hour drive got us back to sunny Petaluma and very good Mexican taqueria, albeit without any lake views.

Technorati Tags: Lake Tahoe,Alpine Meadows,Squaw Valley,Emerald Bay,Vikingsholm,Truckee

We have been planning a night away from home to take a trip to see some of the sights at Lake Tahoe. Tahoe lies about 200 mile east of us on the border between California and Nevada. John MacLatchie and his family live about half way at Granite Bay near Folsom lake so, today, we had arranged to call in on John, scrounge dinner and stay overnight in a nearby Howard Johnson’s hotel before continuing on tomorrow. Betty the cat would have to do without our company for a night.

Naturally, Tomales awoke under its now familiar blanket of fog and it was taking a while to clear so we thought we’d make a day of our journey by driving into the sun zone to visit the Napa Valley en route. Things have changed somewhat over the 10 years since I was here. One of the changes that seems almost universal is that the wineries now charge, typically $5 or $10 depending upon range of wines, for their tastings. That can make a day long wine-tasting trip to Napa relatively expensive, for the non-driver, at least. Still, Napa is a picturesque valley and is well worth a visit.

One of the things that has not changed is that the enterprising V. Sattui Winery, in addition to winery tours and tastings, still provides a tree-covered picnic area and a well provisioned deli on site. Our plan was to have a relaxing picnic lunch at Sattui and then drive on to Granite Bay to check in to our hotel and catch up with the MacLatchies.

Softly-spoken Sue offered us a very cross-country route over the hills and down into the Napa Valley a little way north of the Sattui Winery at St Helena. The road down into the valley was an amazingly rural series of twists and turns and the car began filling with the alluring vinous scent of wine-making. ‘T is the season and harvesting and crushing is under way. The place smells absolutely wonderful.

We arrived at Sattui at about midday before the main Sunday rush arrived. Having been surrounded by the smells of wine-making for the last half hour or so, our digestive juices were now running riot and could not wait to hit the deli. Amongst other things, there is a vast array of packaged cold meats and a large cheese counter. We found a good looking cheese loaf and selected some prosciutto, a small piece of Comté, and a slightly blue cheese intriguingly named Humboldt Fog. Naturally, we also selected one of the more reasonably-priced bottles of Sattui wine ($18!) to wash down our vitals. We waded through some very muddy grass (they apparently over-sprinkle it every day) to a spare bit of shady table and sat down to a particularly enjoyable picnic lunch.

The car park was now filling rapidly and we sat and watched a stretched limo pull in and manoeuvre its way into a parking slot assisted by some Sattui staff. Stretched limos have for many years been a popular way to tour Napa to avoid the imbibing/driving conflict. While I was washing the mud of my Crocs and Carol was trying to snap an example or two of the surrounding red-winged blackbirds, the limo driver joined us at our table and sat down to his picnic lunch. We spent a little too long chatting with him about driving in general and driving stretched limos in particular before hitting the road to Granite Bay, according to Sue, 30 minutes too late to arrive by John’s suggested time of 3:00 PM. Oops!

Rejecting the slower, more picturesque routes offered by Sue, we took the most direct route to Interstate 80 and headed east into the central valley. I used to be quite used to this drive but the traffic on I80 has increased dramatically since I last did it; we were nose to tail in all lanes. Every few miles the temperature indicated by the car’s on board thermometer bounced up a notch or two and eventually, as we approached Sacramento, we topped out at 100°F. Carol made an expensive international call on her UK mobile to the MacLatchies and warned them we’d be about 30 minutes late and eventually softly-spoken Sue guided us to the Howard Johnson’s to check in. The room was fine and, after a quick reprogramming, softly-spoken Sue had soon guided us another eight miles or so to John’s house where we could begin our reunion. John and Ann both now work for the state of California. Sometimes, when the state of California can agree its budget, they even get paid on time.

In the central valley heat growing one’s own citrus fruits is not a problem and John had decided to try something new by making us a chicken tagine flavoured with some of his own lemons. It seems the tagine itself was a gift to John; it isn’t just me who enjoys receiving culinary presents, then? We pronounced the experiment very successful before retiring to the hotel early enough to allow both workers to prepare for their disturbingly early Monday morning.

At last, a television that we could drive and it was showing back-to-back episodes of House. Yeah!

Technorati Tags: Sattui,Napa Valley

Point Reyes Station seems to have become one of our favourite haunts. It’s a very rural and very small town, one main street of about two blocks, with a pleasantly relaxed atmosphere and it seems to be able to meet most daily needs. It has a reasonably comprehensive local supermarket and an intriguing sort of general store and feed barn, called Toby’s, whose supplies include an array of organic fruits and vegetables. Toby’s also has an attached coffee bar complete with entertaining stylish barista. There is an expensive local creamery, the Cowgirl Creamery, which not only makes its own array of tasty cheeses but sells a selection of European cheeses, too. The local hardware store seems to satisfy most running repair requirements and sells small Weber charcoal grills, both the rectangular portable and smokey Joe designs [decisions, decisions]. Finally, its position at the bottom of Tomales Bay seems to be out of the fog zone and basked in frequent sunshine. What more could a man want?

On Saturday Point Reyes Station holds its Farmer’s Market so, once again, we popped down the side of Tomales Bay using battery power where possible to go and have a nose around. The stalls were set up outside Toby’s and, as the punters wandered around making purchases, they were being entertained by a jazz combo. We came away with some splendid young leeks to accompany some pork with a tomatillo salsa. The tomatillos had come from Toby’s a couple of days ago and I just couldn’t resist the chance to experiment with them.

After returning to store our purchases, we couldn’t resist making the trip down to the Golden Gate Bridge to see the advertised arrival of The Maltese Falcon at 2:00 PM. Having seen her moored in Drake’s Bay yesterday, we really wanted to see her under sail in all her glory. I suspected that the crowds would be horrible but this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance so we set off to the Marin headlands to arrive just after 1:30 PM.

We’d driven in blazing sunshine and as we exited the tunnel just north of the Golden Gate Bridge itself, there it was: fog. Unbelievable! San Francisco’s coast on the south side of the bridge was swathed in the stuff. Fortunately most of the bridge and the approaches were clear but conditions weren’t the greatest.

I was, of course, quite right; the crowds were considerable and parking on the twisting road up to the Golden Gate National Recreational Area overlooking the approach to the bridge was at a premium. All the most advantageous spots had long been taken but we managed to find a space in one area and joined everyone else with their cameras at the ready.

After a bit of a wait at about 2:15 PM we saw the fire boat with hoses jetting arcs of water appear round the headland. The fire boat was shortly followed by The Maltese Falcon herself in the company of San Francisco’s flotilla of smaller craft many of which had gone out to accompany her in. With no rigging in the conventional sense, she presents very clean lines. Almost too clean, really; I can’t help but think there is a little character missing because of it. She made a very impressive sight under full sail nonetheless.

Naturally, after The Maltese Falcon had gone under the Golden Gate Bridge and entered the bay. almost all the spectators wanted to leave at once so a long line of vehicles formed snaking its way back down to the freeway. After half an hour or so we were back on US 101 and heading north, our curiosity sated. It wasn’t too painful and it was certainly an opportunity we didn’t want to miss.

The Falcon has landed.

I’m a big Humphrey Bogart fan. Casablanca is the best movie ever made and The Big Sleep is a classic, certainly when it comes to plot confusion. The Maltese Falcon is always worth watching though it is the elusive falcon itself that seems to be the star, to me. [Spoiler] The genuine Maltese falcon, a legendary jewel-encrusted gold statuette, never actually puts in an appearance in the movie and the protagonists spend all their time chasing a lead fake.

Naturally, when we read that the Maltese Falcon was going to be in the area I just had to go and see it. This Maltese Falcon is a high tech. 289-foot three-masted super yacht and was now anchored in Drake’s Bay where we had been on Monday after visiting the Point Reyes lighthouse. It is reported to be waiting for the right time to enter San Francisco Bay for a charity event. The right time is low tide because the masts come within 20 feet of the Golden Gate Bridge and it is expected to sail in at 2:00 PM tomorrow (Saturday).

Regrettably Drake’s Bay faces south so the sun was always going to be on the wrong side of this spectacular vessel but it was still a chance not to be missed, being a mere 20 miles or so distant. Naturally, as we neared the coastal areas we also neared the irritating coastal fog bank but, as we descended the road towards Drake’s Beach itself, we could see the ship moored serenely and fog-free in the bay.

As we watched, slowly but surely the yacht was pivoting about its anchor so we eventually had a chance to see it beam on and head on. A few other people had gathered to see it at anchor but, for many, this is quite a remote spot so the car park wasn’t at all crowded. I imagine it will be a very different story tomorrow and that all the vantage points surrounding the Golden Gate Bridge will be filled to overflowing to see the legendary craft enter the bay.

The yacht was offered for sale at €115 million but is now off the market. You’ll have to be content with a week’s rental at €350K, plus expenses, of course.

Don’t bother trying to work out the anagram; it may look like one but it isn’t intended to be one. (“O look Luke!”, maybe?)

The day at Tomales started very pleasantly with some high partial cloud cover. Plan A was to visit the Tule Elk reserve at Tomales Point, the northernmost tip of the Point Reyes National Seashore. The amazing thing about the weather here is just how localized it is. We drove the 10 miles or so south down the east side of Tomales Bay to good ol’ Point Reyes Station in order to cross over to the Point Reyes National Seashore. At Point Reyes Station the sky was clearer. By the time we had driven eight miles or so back up the western side of Tomales Bay towards Tomales Point we were now about six miles from home as the crow flies and under the good ol’ coastal fog.

There are about 300 Tule Elk established here and we did see some of them, though the fog was making things a little too “soft focus”. We also tried a mile or so of a walk from the end of the road towards Tomales Point itself. We could hear the ocean crashing on the seashore below but couldn’t actually see it through the fog. Having decided that we were just doing it because it was there, we returned to the car hoping that we could visit these impressive animals again in clearer conditions.

Plan B: since we have to drive back down towards Point Reyes Station on the way home, call back in to the Bear Valley visitor centre and check out Kule Loklo. I’d seen the name Kule Loklo on our previous walking visit to Bear Valley but didn’t know what Kule Loklo was. I learned from a guide book that it’s the name of a reconstruction of a village of the Miwok people. These are the people with whom Sir Francis Drake is thought to have traded when he was at what is now Drake’s Bay making repairs.

Volunteers have spent thousands of hours building the Kule Loklo village reconstruction. The Miwok apparently lived in shelters made either of tule grass or of redwood bark, the redwood bark shelters being more resilient and longer lived. Five or more people would have lived in these very small shelters. Included in the reconstruction is a sweat house used by the Miwok men for health and spiritual purposes. This construction was the province of men only though family groups would also indulge in saunas together elsewhere.

The Miwoks’ staple was acorns which were gathered and ground into a flour. Enough acorns were gathered during the season and stored in granaries, safe from wildlife to see them through the winter.

Acorns still seem very popular in these parts. While we were nosing around Kule Loklo, Carol spotted yet another species of woodpecker, the Acorn Woodpecker. It has two curious habits for a woodpecker. Firstly, it lives in family groups. Secondly, it spends much of its time storing acorns, just like the Miwok people. In the woodpeckers’ case, the acorns are stored in individual holes in tree trunks. It seems to be very detailed work since, as the acorns dry out and shrink a little, the woodpeckers move them to more precisely sized holes.

This is one of those houses that has a front which is seemingly never used. There are steps up to a veranda covering a front door but nobody ever comes in that way because the drive goes straight past it to the deck and door at the rear of the house. To be completely accurate, it looks as though some house martins, noticing that they would be utterly undisturbed by human activity, have successfully used the veranda as a nesting site; two mud nests still adhere to the inside of it.

When our expected wine delivery turned up yesterday it did so at the back door. The delivery man very kindly carried the case of wine up and placed it upon the table on the deck. The table must be suffering from a severe attack of age because the main support had broken under the weight of the wine. This went unnoticed until I carried the wine through into the house.

After a mild expletive, Mr. Fixit thought he’d have a go at finding some wood glue and repairing it. What a helpful chap. Any excuse to rummage around in a hardware store in a foreign country; I find them fascinating because all the products are so different. It was a shopping day anyway so we diverted for a rummage through a suitable hardware store on the way to our favoured food shop.

One of our favourite pastimes in Spain is lunch on a shady veranda. (The Spaniards have a good name for the veranda but I can only say it – I can’t spell it.)  The unused veranda here had been calling to us so we had swept it and rearranged some furniture it to bring it into operation. It’s crying out for a rocking chair, a corn-cob pipe and a Jack Daniels. We made do with some utterly dreadful American beer (I’ll buy the good stuff next time), pitta bread, crudités and humus with a few tasty olives for good measure. Sitting back and watching the world go by really was quite relaxing.

Mr Fixit had a go at the inebriated table. We’ll leave it overnight and see if it is still holding together in the morning.

Our usually calm and gentle awakening and arising process suffered a set back this morning. While I was, as they say, “at my toilet”, something put the fear of God into a covey of California quail that was foraging beside the house. The quail took to the air with much squawking but one of their number didn’t quite make it over the house. Instead, there was a tremendous crash as it flew straight into the wooden siding. It sounded more like the bough of a tree hitting us to me but Carol had seen something of what happened and explained.

Carol’s the brave one – I am squeamish about dead or, even worse, injured animals. She went and investigated and discovered the hapless bird on the ground still breathing. It could have been stunned so we left it a while to see if it recovered. Its breathing soon ceased. The surviving quail seemed to realize that one of their number had gone missing and, having escaped whatever original danger spooked them, returned to investigate. A couple went over to the body of their late companion and then wandered off. Intriguing behaviour. We’ve seen a covey a number of times so I suspect that these quail are resident.

It was going to be a slow news day since we were destined to get a little stir-crazy sitting in waiting for the delivery of a case of wine. The wine was originally scheduled to arrive “sometime before 6:00 PM”. Fortunately, Carol managed to contact someone who, in turn, managed to adjust the schedule to between 2:00 and 2:30. So, let’s continue the bird theme.

Whilst sitting on the deck soaking up the sunshine, Carol spotted a woodpecker in one of the nearby trees. We’d previously been treated to a visit by a species localized to the west coast of California, Nuttall’s Woodpecker. After a little investigation on the “All About Birds” web site, our new visitor, we think, proved to be the more common and wider-spread Downy Woodpecker. Downy Woodpeckers apparently readily join other birds and this one was certainly amongst some Chestnut-backed Chickadees.

There are a few flowers around the house, including a head or two of agapanthus (which should, I’d have thought, be agapanthi in the plural) that still seem to have some nectar and have been visited on one or two occasions by what I think is a female Ana’s Hummingbird. We’ve seen the same type of hummingbird flitting around the flowers at the Corte Madera shopping mall and at Steve and Kathy Delman’s house. Today, it flew through by us on the deck but failed to stop at the remaining flowers. They are both very quick and tiny so darn difficult to snap. I know, I was trying at the Corte Madera mall to the initial consternation of the mall security guards who seem concerned that photographers are industrial spies.

I was considerably more successful grabbing some shots of the much larger and slower Brown Pelican which treated me to a fishing trip to Drake’s Bay, yesterday. It made a couple of visits while we were there and was occasionally lunged at fish in the rollers before they broke into surf on the beach. The lunging was quite fast and, as I have previously noted, these birds are nowhere near as ungainly as they might appear. Now I’m intrigued as to what fish it was finding.

Down in  Point Reyes Station we spotted a group of Red-winged Blackbirds. These might be one of the most abundant birds in North America but to those of us unfamiliar with this continent’s bird life, they make quite an interesting sight, nonetheless.

In addition to the widely spread and abundant Turkey Vultures, which seem to have a disturbing habit of keeping their eyes on both us, lest we suddenly turn into food, and our lunch, lest we drop it, there are herds of Wild Turkeys roaming the countryside. (Turkey Vultures hunt by scent and this shot seems to show well the large nostrils.) Today we saw a group of a dozen or so wandering through a field in Nicasio as we drove to the Delman’s house for a very enjoyable dinner.

The prevailing weather systems around here seemed to know that this was the official end of summer and the first day of fall/autumn. The weather forecasters talked about one or two small areas of prevailing fog but the coast in our vicinity should be clear. Blue skies and no fog; it sounded like a great day to go and see Point Reyes Lighthouse.

We packed a lunch and set off. There is but one way over to The Point Reyes National Seashore and that is through Point Reyes Station so, for the first half of our journey we were covering familiar territory down the east side of Tomales Bay. The second half of the route initially took us up the west side of Tomales Bay through a place called Inverness. I hadn’t realized it before but, Tomales Bay being as long and narrow as it is, does resemble something of a sea loch, which perhaps explained the Inverness name. Inverness isn’t so much a town, as a collection of waterfront properties with boat docks. One of them, resplendent in wooden detailing complete with small onion domes on the roof, rejoiced in the name of “Tominsky’s Dacha”, or some such. This would be Inverness, Russia, then?

Our road, the Sir Francis Drake Highway, then turned away from the bay and climbed up and over the Inverness Ridge. As it headed out towards the shore and south towards Point Reyes itself, we began passing a series of ranches, the first of which was labelled “Historic M Ranch”. We gradually worked our way back down the historic ranch alphabet, skipping a few historic letters which were on side roads, and finally passed “Historic A Ranch” before arriving at the Point Reyes Lighthouse visitor centre.

Grey whales migrate up and down this coast so, inevitably, they were the subject of much of the display in the visitor centre. Whale sightings seemed to peek in January and March so we were very unlikely to see anything that exciting. There were some California sea lions basking and barking on some of the rocks below the point, though.

A series of steps leads down to the lighthouse itself, which would best be described as utilitarian, not being the most attractive lighthouse in the world. It serves a purpose, though, and has done since 1870. The climb back up the steps, said to be equivalent to climbing a 30-storey building, would have been easier without camera rucksacks but that’s the price we pay for tourism.

The eastern side of Point Reyes is sheltered. This is Drake’s Beach where the great man supposedly made repairs to his ship, the Golden Hind. We couldn’t be in this neck of the woods without checking out such an historic sight so we called in on our way back up the alphabet of ranches. There are some white cliffs at Drake’s Beach which should, perhaps, have made the crew feel a little more at home. The white cliffs of Point Reyes are not as imposing as those at Dover and Dover doesn’t come complete with Miwok natives with whom Drake supposedly traded but, hey, any port in a storm.