We recently spent a few days enjoying exploring Point Reyes National Seashore. We had a very pleasant and relaxing time. We spent our nights in a little cabin called the Hideaway just north of the little town of Point Reyes Station. The first day we visited the Point Reyes lighthouse and Drake's beach. The lighthouse was interesting at the bottom of 308 steps. 308 steps back to the top too. Great views, an excellent vantage point from which to watch the whale migrations. We walked for a mile north on Drake's beach and saw an unusual sight, an otter dragging a dead seagull across the sand. First time for that. On the internet looking up the diet of otters, one writer called them opportunivores, sometimes eating things that were offered up by chance. The otter rapidly drug the gull into a culvert and disappeared into the brush at the side of a little creek and I wasn't fast enough to get a picture. Day two, after spending some time exploring the town of Point Reyes Station (great market with lots of organic produce and an A plus deli that we ate from 3 times while we were there, thrift store, nice little book store, and several excellent galleries and gifts shops) we headed north to the Abbott's Lagoon trail out to the ocean.
Not a long hike, maybe 3 miles round trip, with a surprising amount of wildlife. A coyote walking across a field, a covey of quail searching for food beside the trail and walking within two feet of us as we quietly stood there watching, a great blue heron harvesting food in a shallow part of one of the lagoons, great number of gulls, pelicans, Canadian geese and many other seabirds I didn't recognize. Sitting at the beach, we saw a whale out in the ocean raise it's body up out of the water and saw a half a dozen spouting a number of times. On our way back we found a dead young pelican (sadness) and took a few of it's feathers to add to our feather altar. Day three led us to Limantour beach, a wide and very long stretch of sand. We walked south on it for quite a while and found a pool of fresh water, the end of a seasonal stream, where dozens of several species of gulls hung out and washed in the pool. The 3 gulls at the top left of the collage are Heermann's gulls of which there were many. Deer were also eating from the plant life that grew along the bottom of the cliffs where water trickled out to help them grow, The buck deer in the collage was in the yard where we were staying, harvesting apples that were starting to fall out of a tree while we were there. The residents of the area have left an easement on which deer can come and go from the forest. We're looking forward to returning to Point Reyes at another time to do more exploring including the Tule elk reserve. We did see a few elk at a distance north of the road to Drakes' beach. A very fun trip.