Tomales Bay: another road trip success!

The semester had started again and I was restless. It was hot. I needed to escape. Tomales Bay was the answer! Featuring warm, calm beaches, gorgeous weather, and the fabulous Tomales Bay Oyster Co, this was a most excellent day trip.

After picking people up in San Francisco and the usual kerfuffle getting going, we hit the 101N and then took Sir Frances Drake over to Point Reyes. Tomales Bay is at the northern tip of Pt. Reyes, and Tomales Bay State Park, where we hiked, was a bit difficult to find. We overshot by about 10 miles at one point. However, there is no bad here -- ocean and bay views are all stunning, Kylie was playing in the Focus's CD player, and we were none of us at work or studying. Does it get any better? We would soon find out.

We parked at Heart's Desire Beach parking lot (which was almost full -- we were among the last cars to be allowed to park. Be warned -- get there early!) and ate a pre-picnic snack at a table above the beach before hiking on Jepson and Johnstone trails to Pebble Beach and back around to Heart's Desire. We found this easy 3 mile hike here: http://www.bahiker.com/northbayhikes/tomales.html. Lovely -- much of it through forest and then emerging at the beaches towards the end. Lots of poison oak, though -- be warned!

After our stroll we felt somewhat justified in further libations and retreated to Tomales Bay Oyster Company, a fabulous spot right on the opposite shore of the bay. Whoever started this company had the genius, in our eyes, idea to provide bags of fresh (enormous!) oysters for sale, with grills and picnic tables gratis. The place was jumpin', but we were able to find a table, score a couple of bags of "medium" sized oysters, and figure out how to shuck and BBQ the beasts, thanks to friendly fellow barbecuers. The sun was shining, world music was playing, the bay was sparkling... life, in short, was bliss.

And the oysters -- did I mention the oysters? They were... well, first of all, they were ENORMOUS. So big one can only express this fact using all caps. And we only got the medium size. Even those of us who had previously eaten raw oysters were a bit freaked by the idea of ingesting these monsters uncooked, so we grilled them with garlic and lemon and lime slices -- and they were delicious, particularly when accompanied by Fat Tire beer. Yum.

Of course, many crude jokes were made that do not bear repeating here -- oysters having not so much an amorous as a lascivious effect, apparently, on our crowd. Blame it on the sunshine, or the enormous shellfish so suggestively shaped that even Georgia O'Keefe would have to put down her paintbrush and say "The vaginal imagery here is a little much."

Logistics: well, it really took about 2 hours to get there, factoring in getting lost and stopping for gas. The way back was straight to the east bay and therefore quicker -- an hour and a half. It's worth getting an early start, since the traffic from the city onto Sir Francis Drake can get a little backed up at points. But a better Bay Area day trip for September would be hard to imagine. Two oysters up!