The day begins early on at Land's End in San Francisco. Quite clear, but a bit of a cold wind kept us in our warm jackets as we hiked down the path to the Sutro Baths.
The baths, built as a swimming complex in the late 19th century saw use through the early 20th century before closing and being badly damaged by fire in the 1960s. We decided to visit the ruins since we had heard a story of a river otter setting up shop in the baths. While I didn't get a picture of "Sutro Sam", we did catch a glimpse of him pulling grass from the side of the pools and diving down to pack the grass somewhere. He just kept going back and forth, working diligently at his task. We could even see a trail of bubbles (maybe those escaping his thick fur?) as he swam underwater. I'm glad we took the chance to see the cute little critter as I've heard he hasn't been spotted at the baths for quite some time and may have headed back north.
It took a while to drive north to Point Reyes from SF, but the day just kept getting better and better. When we finally got out there, we took the shuttle bus from the visitor center out to the lighthouse trail. We deviated a bit to check out this north facing lookout and to see the beautiful surf rolling up onto the ever expanding coastline.
And finally continuing onward to the Point Reyes Lighthouse. Not only did we get this great view of beautiful ocean, but we also got to see some migrating Gray whales who cruised near the lighthouse lookout. No breaches, but we saw a lot of spouts as a widely dispersed pod made their way passed the point. Truly spectacular.
After witnessing the lighthouse and whales, we sat down for a packed lunch before continuing onto check out the Chimney Rock lookout at the other end of the Point Reyes Peninsula. The shuttle bus takes you to another trailhead where you can then hike out to see Chimney Rock. On the trail heading out to the lookout, we got to see this amazing view of Drake's Bay.
The Chimney Rock lookout gave a great view down to the aforementioned rocky outcropping. Though in my humble opinion it holds truer to the rock part of the name than the chimney, this end of the peninsula has really become known for...
...being a breeding ground for Northern Elephant Seals. Can you see the group of them lounging in the shade on the little sandy beach?
Maybe you can see this group a bit better as they spread themselves out to take advantage of the warmth of the sun. They look pretty small from up above, but they generally grow up to 3-4 meters in length and weigh in excess of 600kgs! For those non-metric readers, that equates to about 10+ ft in length and well over 1000 lbs in weight.
Really lovely weekend in January and just so beautiful an area we live in up here in the Bay Area. Hope you all enjoyed the pics!
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