Day Two: Point Reyes State Park to Gualala

In the morning we left SF to continue our trek up north. Once crossing over the Golden Gate we took the time to take some pictures looking back at the bridge and the city.

 On the lookout is an old military station built in the 1800s to protect the port from the Russians or whoever else may want to take it. It became obsolete and now is just an interesting relic of our military past. There is a similar development up on Diamondhead in Hawaii which is now closed for the same reason.

 

Side trip aside we started working our way to Point Reyes National Seashore. Unfortunately, most of this leg of the trip was completely blanketed in fog. We were unable to appreciate the mountains or the cute little towns in this stretch of California.

Rainbow bridge when leaving San Fran

Point Reyes National Seashore is an fascinating example of the geology of California. The park is a peninsula just north of San Fransisco. The peninsula does not belong there. It has been moved along the San Andres fault at least 300 miles to where it currently lies. Of course, millions of years from now, it’ll be in another place. It will probably be smashed up against and under the northern part of California after the Juan de Fuca Plate picks upt up and submerges it against the Pacific Plate.

The park also has a number of still functioning dariy farms on it. Many of these ranches date back to the 1850s. Historically, they have fed San Fransisco’s addiction to milk, cheese and other dairy products. Unfortunately, since it is now a state park, many of these ranches are being forced to close down. When drive through the park you see a lot of abandoned facilities.

North Beach:

Point Reyes is also unique in that the western side of it is very flat and smooth, with beaches that go on for miles. Much of the coastline up here is very rugged from recent geologic activity. The beaches have beautiful dunes that are covered in plants that thrive in this cool, wet, environment. Here is the western beach from above:

Banana slug?

Mist on plants. Much of the moisture in this area comes from fog, not from rain.

In Point Reyes we worked our way over to the lighthouse.

This is the water catch system for the lighthouse. It is a hill of concrete that ends at this thing. This caught the water to be used to drink, and to produce the steam that ran the light in the lighthouse.

Baline from a gray whale

The light from the lighthouse

Gray whale skull

This lighthouse is quite the modern marvel. It was built way out on the point in a very precarious place. Bolted down to the hard bedrock moved by the San Andres fault, the structure teeters on the edge of existence. It was far both from the crashing sea which is notorious for pairing up with its friend fog and sending many a ship to the rocks long below the light house. It was also, however, far from the top of the ridge where people could easily navigate to. Building the lighthouse, and getting to there was quite a conundrum to solve.

Somehow, with the insane ingenuity of the 1850s they had managed to work their way down 30 stories of elevation along a narrow ridge, and bring all the building materials there to construct this light house.

The lighthouse was built to be cared by someone with complete independence from the outside world. There was a building down near the lighthouse for working, and feeding coal to the steam engine. Then, over 300 steps up to the ridge was a place for the lighthouse keeper to stay.

 

This line of work was very grueling and lonely.  The area logs 2,000 hours of fog yearly, and once the light house had to go for 9 days straight, day and night, to keep sailors off the rocks below.

This building was located just below the lighthouse… it made a very loud foghorn sound about every 30 seconds

Stairs inside the lighthouse. We weren’t allowed to go to the top

Another faclity of the lighthouse above the steps. Anchored to Point Reyes Conglomerate

This is where the park rangers for the lighthouse live. What a view.

After leaving Point Reyes we worked our way up the coast. The 1 winds in and out of rugged coast. We saw some beautiful places such as the town of Jenner where the Russian River meets the Pacific. I wish we had stopped there, but we had FINALLY overtaken a car that was holding us up for miles, and we didn’t want to give up our position. We did stop at this point, however. You can see the 1 winding it’s away along the coast (grey line in the middle of the photo). The large rock in the distance is Goat Rock which lies at the threshold between the Russian and the Pacific. You can also see the fog in the background, this would be a companion for our whole trip.

Our next stop was Fort Ross. This is an old Russian fort that was settled in 1812. About 50 families lived here of Russian, Alaskan, and Indian origin. Russians had positions as far south as Bodega Bay in the United States.

Most of the people at the fort lived outside of the walls in a little town just on the otherside of the walls. These buildings aren’t in very good shape.

This fenced off area is where the village was.

Sign says “environmental living program garden” there is nothing growing there

Wall of the fort

Looking back at the town. Somewhere over there is the world’s tallest Euctalptus tree. Take that Australia

The bay where the Russian ships would land.

This is the sort of view we got of the inside of the fort. All of the doors were locked. How fort like.

locked door

It was getting dark so we hauled it the rest of the way to Gualala where we would stay for two days. Gualala is the sort of town that you sort of just drive through between destinations on the coast. It is the largest hamlet between Bodega Bay and Point Arena. While the sign says it has 585 residence, we are told it is closer to 2,000. I learned that the sign hasn’t changed in over 20 years. So the government will kick people off their land (and I assume pay just compensation for it) but they won’t update the signs along the highways.

Gualala is an interesting story. My dad originally heard about this little town in a California Coastal Commission meeting. In a turn of events much more bizarre than people giving Obama enough money to buy a brand new BMW people a county down, and a mile away, from Gualala actually convinced the CCC to ban the Gualala annual Forth of July fireworks show. They claimed that the sound of the fireworks was harming birds that lived on an island a mile and a half away from the fireworks, across the bay, over a cliff, through the trees, down the other side, from where the fireworks were being set off. In fact, you could hardly even hear the fireworks from where the island was!

 

The science these people presented to prove that the birds, not endangered or even threatened birds but common birds, were being scared away was so unscientific and shoddy that they should have just been laughed at. They flew planes directly over the island to count birds (how much sound does that generate?) and considered a nest abandoned if the bird was standing next to it, but was not in it. Also, there are hundreds of cities all up and down the coast who do firework shows without any issue, including Monterey and Point Reyes, both of which set them off directly over sanctuaries.

 

While this should have been thrown out on its face, the loony bins who run the Coastal Commission AGREED with the neighbors who live across the river and county line from the town and banned the fireworks! It is worth noting that the ONLY reason why the CCC exists is because of these people across the river from Gualala. The place is called Sea Ranch, it is 10 miles of HIGHLY regulated housing along the pristine northern California coast. Let me rephrase that: along the pristine state-owned northern California coast. Only, they were not allowing access to the state beaches along their property.

 

The fight was so bitter that the Coastal Act was founded to help prevent developments from doing such things. Sea Ranch gave up eight access points in exchange from being EXEMPT from the Coastal Act. They are the only place in the coastal zone exempt from the act. And now they are using it to fight Gualala’ fireworks. Gualala is the town they all go to for their food and activities, they use their roads and their facilities without giving property tax to help maintain the town. Sure, they spend their money there, but Gualala doesn’t see their fair share of sales tax revenue so it is a moot point.

 

My dad found this story, thought it was crazy, and blogged about it. The residents of Gualala found him, and started to contact him. My dad does a lot of work with the CCC so he has a good idea of how things work. He began to advice them on how to go forward. In exchange, we got the royal treatment in Gualala from free rooms at the Surf Motel to a tour of the place where all of the fuel pumps used in professional motorsports in America are designed to free kayaks.

 

The guys all fighting for the fireworks are a bunch of really nice guys. The stories they have to tell from the insanity of the Northern Coast are just amazing. It is astonishing what some people believe. These guys are the Gualala Festivals Committee, who exists to try to make the town interesting enough for people to stop in, not just drive through (and I do suggest stopping and giving them your business. Especially Bone Smokehouse, great BBQ). Most of the people in the town really like what they do as it gives them something to do. There really isn’t much to do way up here. But others… well, let’s just say that they live on another planet.

 

The first year they did a town Christmas tree they forgot a tree topper. In a last minute save for their folly they hung an American flag at the top. While some may think that the town would get offended at a Christmas tree, a sign of Christianity, in their far-left town, they weren’t. No, they were fine with the tree, just not with the flag. The local paper was flooded with angry letters asking why the Republican flag was on the top of the tree, why Bush’s flag was on the top of the tree, why the flag that stood for war and destruction was on the top of the tree. Funny, I always thought it was a symbol of your freedom to say stupid stuff like that, and that it was tied in no way to Republicans or to Bush or to Iraq. I thought that Betsy Ford designed the flag back during the Revolution. I didn’t know that it was something Bush drew with crayons on the kid’s menu at Denny’s (they only give you blue and red anyways). I guess I was wrong.

 

How do these guys put up with it? They live in an extraordinarily beautiful place. The coast is dotted with the typical northern California jagged rocks and micro-islands.  The Gualala river has cut a mightily fine cliff into the coastal plane before hitting the pacific, creating an even more stunning landscape. The river only makes it out into the Pacific in winter and spring. In summer and autumn it is separated by a spit of sand, forming a lagoon. The river snakes up a valley surrounded by huge redwoods in a forest that looks primeval. However, it is not. The forest is second or third growth. The whole area was logged to rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. Funny, all those environmentalists living in their old growth redwood homes are so against logging!

 

There is no natural harbor at Gualala. There was no way for the boats to dock to carry the logs down to Frisco for the rebuild. Instead, again in the ingenuity of this era, they built a massive tree slide. Mules with a rope and pulley system pulled the logs over the cliff I was describing earlier to a massive slide which took the trees down to a boat that was anchored down below. Some boats were sunk in the process when a tree hit with too much force (they be heavy things), but for the most part the system worked and the logs got where they needed to go.

 

We got into Gualala about 6 in the evening. Walking back from the restaurant a man passing rolled down the window and called out my dad’s name. It was the man who found his blog! In a town this small it isn’t hard to find someone. We chatted a little and worked out plans for the next day.

Flowers on the side of the road

We had dinner at Bone’s Road house. Some of the best bbq I’ve ever had. I highly recommend both the pork and the beans.

Stay away from clift

Sunset: