Drakes Beach

For Jackie's birthday, we went to Drakes Beach at Point Reyes. The day started well. We got food, made sandwiches, and drove out to get a fire permit. Drakes Beach was recommended to us by the person who gave us the fire permit. And I have to say, it is a lovely area. (Bonus: there is an excellent bathroom that was unlocked even though the visitor center was closed)

While exploring the area, we found this grotto with a cross dedicated to Sir Frances Drake's landing in the area. While looking at the cross, a turkey vulture flew to a nearby tree and tried to eat a rodent it had caught. Eventually it accidentally dropped its meal and looked rather embarrassed.

While exploring the beach, I dug into the sand by the surf to see if we could find any sand crabs. What ended up happening is that every scoop of sand contained dozens of sand crabs. They were just everywhere. 

After scouting out a spot for our fire, Laurel started building up a little teepee. Jackie and Karl looked for tinder while I worked on stabilizing our seating situation. We ended up burning up almost all of our tinder without getting a stable fire. Sadness set in as we realized that there was a good chance we might not be able to light a fire. But guacamole saved the day. I went over to where the food was, ate some guac, looked over at our supplies, and realized that we had a whole roll of paper towels. It only took one or two to get the fire going.

Laurel exclaimed, " We could totally survive in the wilderness!" To which Karl replied, "If we had a lighter." And I added, "And paper towels."

With the fire lit, we set out to stuff ourselves full of food. Hot dogs, corn on the cob, baked potatoes, s'mores. We didn't even get to the watermelon; there was just too much good stuff.

As we looked up into the heavens, I was lucky enough to see a shooting star. The constellation Scorpio was prominent in the sky.

It took awhile to put out the fire. One of the bigger logs refused to stop steaming despite the amount of water we poured onto it. Beach curfew neared, so we threw the log into the ocean. On the way back from the surf, I stepped onto what I thought was sand but turned out to be the tide coming in. My sandals squeaked as we headed back to the car.