Dave and I and our friend Doug spent the day hiking at Point Reyes. We had originally planned to hike somewhere else more inland, but when we saw this morning how hot it was going to be, how hot it already was by 8:30 a.m. or so, we changed our plans and decided to go someplace along the coast instead. So we took Sir Francis Drake Boulevard out to Point Reyes — a quick stop in Inverness for some provisions — and when we got to the information center in Point Reyes and looked over the maps, we decided on the eight-mile hike to Sunset Beach and back.
It was still hot, but nowhere near as hot as it got inland (it was over 100°F where we had been planning to go) and we had a breeze nearly the whole time. Most of the trail has a view of the estuary, and on our walk out it was low tide. We saw a lot of egrets and white pelicans flying low over the shallow areas looking for food. We didn’t see a whole lot of other wildlife, but there’s a remarkable variety of plant life along the way. The whole hike took us a little under four hours. I think I got a little sunburn on the back of my neck and the little toe on my right foot got sore, but otherwise I came back in better shape and better spirits than I set out.
Stopped for dinner on the way back at Sol Food in San Rafael, a terrific if noisy Puerto Rican restaurant. My ensalada con bistec (a salad with thinly sliced steak and grilled onions) was good sized even though I ordered the small, and tasty.
For the last sixteen or seventeen years (and even much longer in Dave’s case) Dave and I have spent all of Pride Weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, working our butts off as volunteers. This year we didn’t, and we didn’t go anywhere near the parade. Nice change of pace.
Now it’s time for a hot soak in the bathtub with a glass of wine, and to bed.
On one wall at the de Young is a large mural showing the varied animal life in the Pacific Ocean and surrounding areas. I couldn’t recall ever having heard of the artist before, and I didn’t think the mural was anything all that special, but Dave raved about the artist — Miguel Covarrubias — and said the mural wasn’t typical of his best work.
Dave and I were at the de Young Museum on Sunday afternoon. I haven’t been there more than once or twice in my life, and probably not in well over a decade; Dave, on the other hand, has been there many times throughout his life (he grew up in the Bay Area), and he’s familiar with a lot of the collection.
The banner at the top of this blog is adapted from the mural Whistler painted on one wall of the room. The peacock on the left represents Whistler himself, and it is fleering at the peacock on the right, who represents Leyland. Leyland’s peacock has silver shillings in among its gold breast feathers, has silver shillings in place of eyes in its tail feathers, and is standing on a pile of gold coins and silver shillings. (The whole wild story is both sad and funny, and the loss of Leyland’s patronage was a self-inflicted blow to Whistler’s finances that he never recovered from.)
Scratchings 