Muddy Hollow Trail

The Muddy Hollow Trail is short - about 1.8 miles in one direction, then you backtrack the same way to return.  It starts from a trailhead parking lot above Limantour, goes down to the beach, then back to the parking lot.  I did it in reverse.  It was an easy hike, but I wanted to go up first then down on the way back, which is why I did it the way I did.  It was totally lovely.  The main attraction is what seems like a pond, but is really an area where a stream feeds into the estuary.  The hike starts with a meandering estuary through tall grasses (not sure what they are called) that leads to a large "pond" that's mostly covered in water lilies and such.  I saw a number of egrets on the actual estuary and then three in the pond area along with a blue heron.  There was a lot of evidence of elk, deer and possibly bob cat, but I haven't seen much (land) wildlife other than birds these last two hikes.  There were many quail, as always, but this time there were bunches of baby quail.  Very, very tiny little chicks being attended to by 3 or 4 adults.  I saw a number of groups of these.  There were at least 20 babies in each group - cute as could be!  I actually hiked up to the Estero trail and went up it a bit.  This will be the next hike, I think.  It's a long one, so I need to prepare mentally....  Like many of the trails at point reyes, this one intersects with a few others and when you put them together you make a loop.  In the end you end up hiking a long way.  I turned around on the Estero trail when it started to get dense, hard to walk through, and there was a plant that looked suspiciously like poison oak.  I need to make sure I can identify poison oak.  I had shorts on, so I turned around at that point.  It was UP all the way, so it's going to be a tough one.

After I got back to my car I went down to the beach and walked the Limantour Split trail.  It's just a mile out and then a mile back.  You can cut over to the beach at the end of the trail, so I did and just sat on a log for about an hour, watching the waves and the pelicans.  Three pelicans had found a good spot for fish right in front of where I was sitting.  I love watching them dive.  Apparently they are the only pelicans in the world to do that.  I've been told they always spin left when they dive for fish and that because of this old pelicans become blind in that eye (and then of course that's how they die - they can no longer see and starve).  I'm not sure that's true, but in every dive I watched the bird spun left.  I wonder if it's like being left or right handed, and that some spin the other way?  I love pelicans in any case.  I also loved being out there in the evening.  I got out to point reyes at 3pm, which is very late.  But the sun doesn't go down until 9 or so, so there was plenty of time.  The light was amazing.  It's been a long time since I've been at the ocean at that time.  I think given the fog situation in the summer I may try later in the day from now on, as long as it's a weekday.

Next is the Estero trail and the ones adjoining it: Estero to White Gate to Muddy Hollow Road, which looks to be 10 miles +.

Coast Trail - Laguna Loop

The coast trail goes from the youth hostel out to limantour and back a different route.  It wasn't the most spectacular hike.  The first part, out to limantour, was sopped in.  I could barely see ten feet in front of me.  I love fog, but I don't like those conditions when I'm hiking somewhere I've never been.  I kept thinking a cougar or a serial killer was going to leap out of the white walls surrounding me.  I've never been to that part of limantour - I've always gone north from the entrance, never south.  It was totally astounding.  The tide was low when I got there and there were all kinds of rock formations exposed, which meant tidepools!  The rocks were crusted in muscles.  There's a huge kelp bed out there too that I didn't know existed.  Plus, there were anenomies everywhere, mostly exposed and out of the water so I had to be careful not to walk on them. And then there were sea stars.  I mean, there were sea stars everywhere.  I had never seen so many.  It was like a sea star colony.  Everywhere you looked, there they were.  Big ones, little ones, purple, yellow, brown, orange.  They weren't moving at all, just happily staying put.  The beach was littered with body parts of crabs and very cool sandstone like rocks in amongst all the normal amazing rocks and kelp and sea weed.  I also ran across the carcass of a LEOPARD SHARK!  She was about 4 feet long.  It looked like something maybe took a bite out of her.  She was partially decomposed, but at the stage where death smelled relatively fresh still.  She was gorgeous and precious and I didn't want to just leave her there, but it looked like the tide would take her back out in a few hours.  What a gift.  There were hundreds of pelicans flying in groups of 8 to 30.  I don't know if they were all different groups, or if they were the same flocks (?) flying over and over again.  Pelicans only ever seem to fly south to north.  I've never seen them go the other way.  But they must.  The most amazing and extraordinary thing I saw was a POD OF DOLPHINS!  I've never seen dolphins in this area.  They were leisurely swimming by, going south, about 20 yards from the shore.  I counted seven of them.  A woman walked by and asked if I saw some kind of fish out there.  I said, no - they're DOLPHINS and it's totally amazing that we got to see them.  Do people really not know that dolphins are mammals?  Of course at that moment I was parked on a log a little ways from shore trying to catch the pelicans as they flew by with my big camera.  I sat dumbfounded watching them swim by.  I could either watch, or put down my big camera to find the digital and probably miss seeing them.  I'm not sure the thought even crossed my mind I was so shocked.  But I'm so sorry I don't have a picture anywhere except etched in my brain.

I took my new camera and camera backpack today, total weight a little over 20lbs.  I did okay.  It was heavy, but not unmanageable.  Not bad for an old lady, out of shape and weak.  Next time I'm going to try the Muddy Hollow Trail that also connects to limantour.  I do think the limantour area from drakes bay down to where I hiked today is the place I love most in the world.