We were staying in an AirBNB in Novato which is north of San Francisco and we didn’t want to travel into the city so opted to visit Point Reyes National Seashore (a large park preserve on the coast) which was about an hour away.

We set off quite early and our first stop of the day was the visitor center which has some really good exhibits about the eco-systems in the area and lots of information about what we could do in the park. We then headed to McClures Beach at the northern side of the park. There was a bit of a hike to reach the beach and it was very misty so there wasn’t much to see.

We then moved the car to Pierce Point Ranch which was literally two minutes up the road so that we could hike to Tomales Point – the northern point of the park. Again it was really misty but we saw lots of wildlife including a fox and some deer.

We then made our way to Point Reyes Lighthouse. The lighthouse is perched on a cliff and dates back to 1870. By this point the mist had cleared and we had beautiful sunny views over the coastline we had just walked through in the fog!

^{Heading to the Lighthouse and looking back towards where we had just visited.}

We walked to the viewpoint area where we could see the lighthouse and there was a person set up with binoculars who was whale watching. We looked out to sea and there was a whale in the bay so we watched it for ages as it kept diving down for food and then coming back up for air.

Our final stop of the day was the Chimney Rock Trail head. We hiked the coastline to the rocks and then also had views of the historic lifeboat station in Drakes Bay, which dates back to 1927 and is one of the best preserved lifeboat stations on the pacific coast.

^{The path to Chimney Rocks}

Stu and I also walked over to the Elephant Seal overlook – unfortunately we couldn’t see them as they were at the bottom of the cliffs but we could hear them.

It had been quite a long day so it was time to head home – although as we drove out of the park we had to stop to let quite a few deer cross the road!