After two beautiful days of camping in Sacramento, we drove down I-80 to San Francisco. We arrived in china town to get some delicious dim sum. We had some of the best dim sum we’ve ever eaten, but the menu was in Chinese and a little hard to decipher.
After filling ourselves, we hit the road once again to Point Reyes National Seashore on the suggestion of one of our friends from the campground. We decided to take the coastal scenic route of California 1. The road was extremely windy and Stephanie got pretty bad motion sickness and I didn’t feel too great myself. Probably too much dim sum.
Stephanie’s first time at the Pacific Ocean – it was cold.
After a few hours of driving with lots of stops, we finally made it to Point Reyes. We had originally planned to camp, but it was 5 PM already and we both desperately needed showers. We found a cheapish room in Inverness, California called Tomales Bay Resort. This area was quite beautiful and reminded me of the small coastal towns of the Northeast. The hotel room was by far the nicest room we have stayed in yet! They had a mini fridge, a microwave, and full cable so Stephanie could get her HGTV fix.
Tomales Bay
The only camping they had in Point Reyes was walk-in campsites. You had to backpack in, but each site had a grill and picnic table. But, like every campground so far, you had to make reservations so we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get a campground. But I got to the visitor center 15 minutes before they opened and waited impatiently for them to open. There was one group in front of me so I was pretty sure we would get a camp site. When it was my turn, the park ranger told me they had a site available at Sky Camp. So I drove back to the hotel and we packed up and headed into town to do laundry that we desperately needed to do. While we were doing our laundry, we packed up our backpacks for Stephanie’s first backpacking trip. I was pretty excited for her, she was worried about mountain lions.
Once the laundry was finished, we drove over to Point Reyes and drove down to the beach for a few hours since our camp was a 3 miles hike each way to the beach. This was Stephanie’s first time on a Pacific Ocean beach!
We saw a deer!
After a nice beach picnic and a few hours in the sun, we headed to the trail head for our campground. Since it was only a 1.3 mile hike to the camp site, I figured it would be a good first backpacking trip for Stephanie. But everyone failed to tell us that it was 1.3 miles straight uphill. At one point Stephanie freaked out and grabbed me and I was like “oh great now I have to fight a mountain lion” but it turned out to be another deer that stood less than five feet away from us, just staring, until it got bored and walked away. We saw several other deer the next morning.
We finally made it to our site number, but someone else was already there. Oh great! But he quickly told he was he was packing up and getting ready to leave. Once he left, we set up camp and made ourselves some tuna mac.
We played a few games of gin rummy while the sun set and then retired to the tent. As we were finishing up our final game of gin rummy, we heard some sniffing around the tent. Stephanie freaked out and hid under the sleeping bag, and I got out to check what it was. I looked all around the tent, but did not see anything. We concluded it must have been a skunk or a raccoon. All the notices said there were “aggressive raccoon” in the area. After a long, cold night of little sleep, we woke up and hit the trail back to the car. This time it was 1.3 miles DOWNHILL.
Stephanie was not pleased with her lack of sleep.
We got to the car around 10 AM and headed out to Van Damme State Park. Once we got onto CA-128 to head out to the coast, we started passing loads of wineries. Seeing as Stephanie and I both LOVE wine and got engaged at a vineyard, we decided to stop at one of them. Stephanie spotted one that had a tasting room called Brutocao and we stopped in. We tasted a few wines and then bought a bottle.
Vineyard Selfie
The drive was about 3 hours total and we arrived in the best campsite yet. We did not know this at the time, but Van Damme is renowned for diving for red abalone. We had a nice campsite with trees that backed up against a little stream. After we set up camp and reorganized our car that was a disaster after our backpacking trip, we drove to the local general store for firewood and foil. We got back to camp and played some more gin rummy while we cooked gnocchi and corn.
Breakfast with Garrett
In the morning, we went and asked the ranger if there were any campsites available for Thursday night, but she told us all 75 sites were booked. Oh well. Before leaving we went to see the Pygmy Forest. This is a unique ecosystem found sparsely throughout the world. Due to highly acidic, sandy soils the trees here were only a few feet tall but 80-150 years old. It was a very cool, spooky looking forest.
We packed up the car once again and headed to Redwoods National Park. We left around 11 AM and the drive was supposed to take 3 hours and 45 minutes, but poor Stephanie got motion sickness again. We made a few stops so she could rest up.
When we hit the intersection of CA-1 and Route 101, we made a small detour so we could drive through a redwood named the Chandelier Tree. It was 315 feet tall and estimated to be 2100 years old!
By the time we got to Eureka, CA, which is about 45 minutes from Redwood National Park, we were exhausted and it was 5:30 PM. We found a Super 8 in Eureka for $75 and stayed there for the night. We both got showered up and found a nice restaurant called the Seaside Grill to eat dinner. We both got a salad bar, entree, baked potato, a dessert, and a bottle of wine for under $90.
After dinner, we were stuffed and went to relax and sleep for the night. In the morning, we packed up and headed for Redwood National Park. Next post, the travails of finding a camp site near Redwoods and the ancient redwoods! ~garrett
Garrett & Stephanie 