Off to Point Reyes National Seashore, northeast of the Golden Gate Bridge. I’ll bet a map would work here. Our campground is where that grey dot is, a bit right of center on the map. Point Reyes is the light green area to the left.
Nice trip though the middle of the peninsula through some farm land and lots of green hills. Having recently been in the desert southwest, the greenery is welcome. I love the desert but I’m an Iowa girl, I love the green too.
We stopped for some coffee in Fairfax about 10 miles from here. We got our coffee and walked through bit of town. Passed a window of a knickknack store and saw love beads, a lava lamp and a peace symbol necklace. The movie theater is playing: The Divergent Series: The Allegiant, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Zootopia. What happened to the Reverent, Kung Fu Panda, you know, the popular ones, the action adventures? Back at the car we saw a woman hitchhiking. Hitchhiking? When was the last time you saw a hitchhiker, much less a woman hitchhiker? We’re thinking that the hippie subculture of the Haight Ashbury section of San Francisco migrated northward across the bay and settled in Fairfax. Laid back might be a good description of Fairfax. But a nice community atmosphere.
Not too long to Point Reyes and we headed out to the very tip where the lighthouse is. We drove through rolling green hills with loads of herds of cows dotting the pastures. Not what I expected to see in a National Seashore. But there have been ranches on this peninsula for hundreds of years and this area supplied San Francisco with most of its dairy products and hogs, all carried by ships.
Point Reyes is known for its treacherous currents and offshore rocks. Plus, it is one of the windiest and foggiest places on the Pacific Coast. Winter winds come through and dump volumes of water along the peninsula and sometimes winds can reach hurricane force, some have measured as much as 130 mph. Then there’s the fog: in summer the difference between the cold waters of the Pacific (52°) and the warmer land causes dense fog to form. Thus this area has seen more than 73 major wrecks, 37 of them total losses.
A lighthouse was well overdue and it was built in 1870.
Here is a picture of some of the building.
Not easy to build and not easy to staff. Though the light needed to be operated only during the night, the lighthouse needed to be kept in working condition and the foghorn needed a continual supply of coal to keep operating 24 hours a day. Tedious work alternated with mind-numbing routine. Tedious tasks such as washing, scraping and whitewashing the buildings, hauling 140 lbs of coal hourly to keep the foghorn blaring, cleaning the lenses, polishing brass, rebuilding steps, logging the activities and making repairs. Mind-numbing repetitious tasks watching the oil lamp, winding the clockwork every 2 hours, trimming the wick and always alone listening to the wind howl and rain pelting the lighthouse. Then, at the end of the shift, walking up the never ending staircase, sometimes in wind so strong that they had to creep on hands and knees to keep from blowing off the cliffs.
Some men lasted several years, some didn’t last a month. Some became drunks even drinking the cleaning fluid and one was hauled away to an asylum.
Here are some entries from the logs that the lighthouse keepers kept daily.
As you can see from our pictures, we had a beautiful day to explore the lighthouse and its environs. Our first view was of the Long Beach, stretching for miles beneath the cliffs.
Because of the terrain, we had to walk a ways to the lighthouse, through these trees, standing strong but bent by the prevailing winds.
And a hawk surveying the area from his perch on a light pole. He swooped down so fast and seemed to be aiming for our windshield but swerved upwards at the last minute.
Steps? Steps? You didn’t tell me that there were 300 steps. What do you mean - there’s no elevator?
Yep. 300 steps down and 300 steps back up and they even number them to give you encouragement as you climb. We hiked down to the lighthouse and looked around.
Here are some of the original foghorns.
We spent time overlooking the ocean, reading the logs and looking around the workhouse with its relics. Then, the trip up the steps. 300? But that doesn’t count the slanted cement with no steps.
But they’ve got benches interspersed along the steps, benches to rest on and niches to look out over the ocean to check for the migrating whales. Gary is in one of these in the picture above and I’m soon to join him. And, wonder of wonders, we were so lucky to see several spouts and several grey whales heading north to the Bering Sea.
At the top we saw the cistern that the keepers had built. Since there is no supply of water on the rocky cliff where they built the lighthouse, they cemented over lots of the rocks to make a smooth funnel for the water to sloosh down into their cistern.
Life was hard out on Point Reyes. Beautiful views, harsh life.
One last view of the shoreline before we headed out to Chimney Rock, the Lifesaving Station and the sea lion lookout to see the new pups.
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