Point Reyes hike

Yesterday was another weather-blessed Saturday that I spent hiking at the Point Reyes National Shore, north of San Francisco. This hike consumed almost the entire day. Got up at about 6:00 AM, and got ready in time to reach the meeting point at 99 Ranch Market in Cupertino. This time, there were some new faces: A Chinese girl Sandy (Americans can decently pronounce most of the Indian names, but its very hard to get the Chinese names right. So many Chinese people have an "english" name. For example, back in UIUC, a guy working with Sarita Adve had his english name Jerry. His real name was Xiaodong.) and Aditya (with whom I had hiked before at McNee Ranch). Later at the trailhead, we were joined by "Secondary" Scott, and another Chinese women (Wei). The drive from Cupertino to the Palomarin trailhead was a 2 hour drive, and since neither me nor Vaishali are experienced enough, Laxshmi decided to drive. The drive till the Golden Gate bridge was okay, but later, when we joined US-1, the road was way too curvy, and I started feeling some motion sickness. It was much better when I opened the windows.

We started the hike on time at 10:00 AM. We did the coast trail to Alamere falls and back (as described at bahiker. Hey, did you see. She (Jane Huber, the author of this website) did this hike just 3 days earlier), covering 7.5 miles in 4 hours. It was a moderately easy hike, with a small elevation gain. And with a view of the Pacific for the most part of it. The sun had come out nice by the time we reached the falls (at 12:00 PM), and we could see the entire coastline upto the Chimney rock. We took a lunch break, and then climbed down to the beach. There were a few Seagulls, and some dead sea-weeds along the beach. And while at the falls, we were joined by Vikram, who had been a little late to show up, but caught up with us eventually. The return journey started at 1:00 PM, and it was quite comfortable since we had all warmed up. We were back at the trailhead at about 2:45 PM.

While coming back, we saw sea-lions in the Bolinas Logoon, took a short coffee break at the Stintson Beach, and were back in Cupertino at about 5:00 PM. We had planned to drop Sandy and go for some Chaat, but we are all sweaty and stinking, so taking a bath was a more appropriate thing to do. Aditya took some nice snaps during the hike with his hi-tech Canon camera. Look at the pictures he has taken at www.poptechnologist.com, the camera is real good. I have a Canon Powershot digital camera which I hardly use. From the next time, I will remember to take my camera with me.

Hmm, nothing really planned for today. May be I'll do some biking and try to finish Frederick Forsyth's The Negotiator that I've started reading last week.