mount tam

So over the weekend Darin and I decided to take a nice little getaway to Stinson Beach and Mount Tamalpais in Marin County. We really had a glorious time. It is nice to re-discover that it doesn't take long and you can suddenly be in a beautiful new setting, removed from the hustle and bustle of your personal daily life and just out in the world enjoying a fresh April afternoon.

We left around 9:00 on Friday morning and made it out to Stinson Beach by noon! And you know us, we do not drive fast. It was a gorgeous leisurely drive through rolling green hills and wildflowers. All around us, for the entire trip, this springtime world was GREEN GREEN GREEN. You know how you drive through landscapes like that, and you just want to get out and run and frolic in the hills, arms flung out, singing in the sunlight and flopping down in the soft grass? well we got to experience that...but more about that later. anyway we had a nice lunch in stinson beach of veggie burgers/sandwich and fries at this cozy place called the Parkside Cafe, with petunias blooming in the window boxes and a view of the park and the ocean beyond. Then we walked down to the beach with our cameras, backpacks, blankets, all that jazz. turns out it was way too windy to enjoy...sand continuously blew all over and into our stuff and in our eyes and i had to wrap all up in a blanket because it was a chilly wind! so we just walked a bit on the beach with seabirds coasting low overhead, and happened upon this enormous patch of blinding white lillies:

We ended up heading over to the tiny fisherman town of bolinas, a town so averse to tourism that they don't even use a road sign directing you off highway one! a town of artists and smiley's saloon and sunbleached terra cotta pots and seafood and janky jeeps and bursts of flowers everywhere. we found the little cove there to be much more sheltered from the wind and i got some good reading time in, finishing one of my spring break reading assignments. darin gathered an assortment of flotsam and jetsam:

After Bolinas, we headed up to the campground at the Pantoll Ranger Station on Mount Tamalpais. You take a switchbacky road up from Stinson Beach. We talked about how fun it would be for all of us and our friends to live in little cottages and ranches scattered around on the mountainside. It is absolutely beautiful: chaparral forests with madrone trees, cypress and redwoods, manzanita and lupine, amid, once again, GREEN GREEN GREEN rolling hills. we easily got a campsite and set up our camp. we had to carry stuff up from the car, here is darin carrying his very heavy load:

and us getting cozy in our camp:

we then did some late afternoon hiking through the forest and hills, pretending to be in the shire, and out to some gorgeous land where we could watch the sunset.

we had a nice freezing cold night in our tent with the wind howling wildly in the treetops. darin built a fire that whipped and swayed dangerously in the wind so we let it burn out. we wore all our clothes and bundled up in all our blankets and we made it through the night!

next morning we cleaned up our camp and headed down into town for coffee and snacks at the cute general store. all the bicyclists were gathering there and we sat out on the steps and watched people go by and imagined living in a tiny community like this where there is only one store that still sells organic fruits and vegetables, hummus, tofu, all the good stuff! as well as soda pop, household goods, catfood, toilet paper, beach gear. all the necessities, and if you live nearby you can just have a running tab.

we drove back up into the hills and spent the day hiking about on mount tamalpais. everyone in the bay area calls it "mount tam." as i mentioned before, we felt like hobbits crisscrossing the countryside on trails through the hills. i just cannot explain it, how wonderful it feels to come over the hill into the shade of a beautiful grove of oak trees and see people coming up the trail far off in the distance, and sit and read for awhile and daydream of building a tiny cabin out on the cliff overlooking the ocean.

here's the view from the east peak, the trail near the visitor's center, you can see all of marin county, san francisco, alcatraz, mount diablo, the farollon islands, and on clear days you can see the sierras 140 miles away!

i hope we can all come back here together sometime and let the kids zip around on these lovely trails!