Sanny's been building up her mileage in training for the Chicago marathon she'll be running come October. Meanwhile, I've been spending most weekends chasing points on the bike with the ultimate goal of upgrading to Cat 3 on the road before the season is up. As a result these past few months have not seen us on many day trips.
We made an effort to improve on that this past Monday, which Sanny had off thanks to the 4th of July holiday. We rolled out of bed at a comfortable 9am or so, made some Dutch pancakes, and then got some things together to head out for a short hike at Pt. Reyes (which we had decided on just before starting breakfast).
Pt. Reyes is only about 35 - 40 miles away but due to holiday traffic, slow winding roads, stopping for restrooms and food along the way, and my getting lost once or twice, we didn't find ourselves at the trail head until around 2:30pm.
(Our first stop: Restroom Overlook @ Stinson Beach)
Once parked we had only a short 4 mile hike to our destination, Alamere Falls, and the coastal beach it feeds into. Sanny repeatedly mentioned that this was the flattest land she'd ever trekked in CA (although, all said and done, our GPS said we climbed ~1500ft).
(The hike out and back; notice the 2nd to last and last where Sanny had to be reminded to smile)
The trail to the falls is an offshoot off a larger trail and is quite literally a trench of foliage -- much of was poison oak; you can see what I'm talking about with the first part of the video I've posted below. Once through the foliage, however, you're basically above the falls themselves with only a few short scrambles down some slippery dirt and shale sections separating you from seeing them in their (segmented) entirety. Once we'd walked around a bit we sat down and shared a BLT we had picked up from Coastal Cafe just south of the park.
(The waterfall and surrounding areas -- lots of couples had the same idea as us: hike, sit, eat)
Overall, a nice hike and we'll be returning for more. But since I don't like hiking much for the sake of hiking (it seems rather pointless without a campsite in mind to provide the destination and purpose) we'll be looking to make a two-night backpacking trip out of it.
And here's the video I put together from the hike using the iPhone -- iMovie on the phone only lets you do so much so don't get your hopes up too high.