Point Reyes, Finally!

It's been awhile since we've been out in the van, and an overnight to Point Reyes was the perfect way to get back to it! We've been trying to get out here to explore for years, and things keep coming up when we plan to go, but this time, we made it. 

We found a gorgeous spot along Tomales Bay to spend the night and then we were right there for a day of exploring. This view when we woke up was pretty awesome.

We were pretty tired by the time we got to our spot for the night, but I did spend a few minutes checking out what UV fluorescence we had going on and found these little flowers. I love how the UV colors are like guides directly to the glowing pollen. Helpful if you're a pollinator!

I took a picture in the morning to see what they looked like normally. Not quite as magical, and now when I see flowers, I'm trying to imagine how they'd light up under the uv light.

Once we got into the park, we drove to the farthest point near Chimney Rock to see the elephant seals that are there for pupping season. We found a colony that included this large bull (the one with the pink neck scars). He ended up getting in the water and swimming around, while most of them were just sun bathing while we were there.

The beach along that bay is gorgeous!

We walked down to the old Life-saving Service Station where they launched rescue boats to go out to the shipwrecks along the coast before the Coast Guard became a thing, and found a mama elephant seal who came up on the beach to say hi when we were talking to her.

Next stop was at the other side of that point, where we found a more rugged coastline.

The water was so turquoise! 

And we found a bunch of sea lions,

and harbor seals here. It's fun to get to see three marine mammals in one area. Some hikers we saw mentioned seeing a whale in the bay where we were watching elephant seals, but we never saw it.

We walked farther out the point and got a great view of the miles of sandy beach along this part of the park.

And then, hiked down to the light house.

I can't imagine living in such a remote place when communication and travel were both more difficult.

But the light is beautifully restored and you can't beat the views.

When the winds get over 40 mph, they have to close down the light house access which happens fairly often, so we lucked out with the weather.

It was perfect weather!

And then, we got to climb 313 steps back up to the visitor's center.

We made lunch there (grilled cheese and tomato soup) and then drove back out to the inland part of the park to do a little hiking.

Along the drive back, we found one of the resident tule elk herds. (Not a great picture, but the best I could manage with my phone through my bird scope.)

We stopped at the Bear Valley Visitor's Center and saw this incredible display of nudibranch art. The woman who created all of these decided to take a marine biology class after she retired and ended up going down a whole rabbit trail of handicraft science art. Some are knitted, some felted, others sewn--they are beautiful and amazingly accurate. We've found a few of these in the tidepools, but there are still a lot more to see someday.

Then we went for a 3 mile hike along Bear Valley trail

to the Divide Meadow. We didn't have time to hike all the way to the beach (or any desire to do an 8+ mile hike at that point in the day), 

but it was a pretty trail along a creek and the meadow was very peaceful.

We stopped for a while. I found a baby garter snake under a log (to add to our animals sighted list.)

On the way back, we saw the one and only banana slug for the day. We had been wondering if they had them there.

It's still a little early in the wildflower season, but we found a trillium,

and a bunch of the Douglas Irises along the meadow.

And the final mammal spotting were more black-tailed deer. We'd seen quite a few all day, and the ranger we talked with at this visitor's center said they're like fleas--they are everywhere. They weren't very scared of us at all.

This park is beautiful and I'd love to come back for some bird watching next time. We found a few today, but over half of all bird species in the US have been seen here at some point, largely because it's along the Pacific Flyway migration path. There's a good chance of seeing new birds in the spring and fall with how many stop by, including some who get a little off path. That will be for next year!

How Far Will You Go?

Just how far is too far to go for food? Some people might think that driving for 3.5 hours to go to a farmer's market is a little crazy,

but if it means I can visit this apple stand, it's worth it!

Because they are the only place in California that I've found that grows the Gold Rush apples I love. We got them from our orchard in NC last year, but I was ready for more.

And while I was there, I made a little trip of it. I'd been wanting to do a solo trip in the van, so this was the perfect excuse. I booked a site at Pismo Beach, got there just at sunset after hanging out in downtown SLO for a few hours, and enjoyed a nice evening of reading in bed.

And the next morning, I took a hike out to the beach,

and bird watched for a couple of hours.

I watched a few elegant terns, seagulls, and cute little sanderlings for awhile.

And practiced my nature journaling. Birds are still hard for me, but every now and then, I'll get a quick sketch that feels like it captures the shape pretty well. I liked how a couple of my snowy egret sketches turned out.

And on the hike back, I found what appears to be the first monarch to show up for the winter gathering. There's a grove near the campground that gets quite a few, but it was a little too early for them, so I was lucky to find one at all.

I'd say my first solo trip was a huge success!

 

College Kid Adventure Trip

Bug and I got away for a few days of hiking and exploring together. I have decided that this is a tradition I want to continue with my college kids when they get home after their first year. I hope there will be more trips in the future, but it's really fun to have a few days to spend with just them and making some memories. And especially with Bug since he'll be leaving us for 2 years in just a few weeks to serve a mission for church.

We had a great trip planned to the eastern Sierras with some cool hikes, hot springs, a historical site--it was going to be awesome. And then fire season started and there is currently a fire just pouring smoke into that part of the state, so we had to make a last second switch and headed toward Lassen National Park instead. First day was spent in the Lassen National Forest outside of the park. We did a beautiful hike along the Lower Deer Creek to kick things off.

Found several banana slugs,

and a few newts! I love these guys--they were so cute when we accidentally startled them (but luckily saw them before we stepped on them!)

We soaked our feet in the creek for a few minutes--which felt especially good for Bug since he got stung by a yellow jacket on the hike out. I noticed a piece of honeycomb on the trail and had just said, "Hey, there must have been a beehive around here," when I caught the rest of the nest out of the corner of my eye. Definitely saw movement so I started running. Bug tried to follow, but wasn't quite fast enough, probably because when I walked by, I agitated them. It made it a little less fun hiking back because I knew we had to pass the same spot, but we both made it by unscathed. We waited a couple minutes between us so they had time to settle down again. And you better believe I ran when I found the place.

Yellow jackets aside, it was a really pretty forest. Made for a nice first hike.

And then we drove on just a little farther to a spot just outside of the national park to park for the night. It's kind of awesome that we have so many national forests and BLM land that offer free camping. And it only makes me a little nervous to pull into the forest at night to camp completely isolated from any other people, haha. I am much happier in the morning when we wake up and it's light. Probably would enjoy it more if we got in before dark at night, but it seems like we're always pushing daylight. We got a late start as we tried to take care of things at home before we left, so it was the same story this trip.

But it was a great spot and we had it all to ourselves--really convenient to the southwest entrance and after making breakfast the next morning, we drove the 15 minutes into Lassen NP.

Lassen was gorgeous. I've only seen it when it was mostly closed due to snow and we could barely see the ground, or explore the park, so this was so fun. We stopped at a lot of the highlights along the road through the park, like Emerald Lake.

And then we went to the main attraction: Bumpass Hell. And it really was like being in a different world once we hit the hydrothermal area.

The steam coming off of these acidic boiling hot pools is unreal. And some of them are boiling violently (probably combined with a lot of gas coming out, too--it looks crazy!)

Even just the gray creeks are so eerie.

It was a beautiful day and made for a really fun hike.

It's like another world.

And then our next hike looked much more normal 

and led us to a couple of beautiful lakes. First was Terrace Lake, 

where we spent awhile watching the tadpoles, including this guy who already had legs.

And then we went a little farther to see Shadow Lake.

Back on the highway, we passed this gorgeous meadow, and realized after we stopped here for a photo, there was a much better spot on the other end of it. 

We came back to grab a photo while the lighting was so good, which was a little bit of a feat since the turn radius on the big van isn't as tight as I'm used to with the minivan, but we made it safely back and then did another turn to get us back to where we were supposed to be.

And that was the hike to Kings Creek Falls. That area was hit by the Dixie fire in 2021 and looks pretty devastated.

The 30-foot falls are pretty,

but look nothing like most of the pictures which show lush forest all around the falls. It's almost completely dead in that area now.

There's a one-way short cut going back up along the creek which was pretty,

and really steep.

And then you make it back up to where the fire didn't take everything out.

We had a couple more hikes/areas that we wanted to do, but ended up with just enough daylight to see the Devasted area where they have sign boards explaining all about the last eruptions which happened in 1915 and took out this area.

Mt Lassen is there in the background, kind of crazy how the big rocks in this area were spewed from that volcano which seems kind of far away here.

It was cool to see the remains of the event.

And then we headed out of the park to find somewhere to camp for the night and to figure out what we were going to do the next day. Even though it ended up being a last minute planned trip, we quickly ended up with too many options to fit into the days that we had. Pretty much always a problem for us--neither Bug or I like missing out on anything we hear about that sounds cool, and most things sound cool, haha.