The Point Reyes Place Blogger Meetup

After our visit to Bodega Bay, we went south this morning to Point Reyes to have a picnic with Lisa of Field Notes. We met up at her house which is a beautiful A-frame cabin on the edge of Inverness. For our picnic we decided to stay on the Inverness Ridge side of the peninsula, so we took a little walk down to one of the beaches at Tomales Bay State Park. Usually when we head to Point Reyes, we go birding on the coastal side, heading towards the lighthouse, so it was nice for a change to walk in the mixed hardwood-conifer forest characteristic of the eastern side of the ridge.

We passed through the burned area from the fire a little over three weeks ago. There’s already regrowth: both sword and bracken ferns are sprouting in, the sword ferns growing back from the base of the burnt clump of stems of the old plants. We stopped for a little bit on the trail in a section with a lot of bird activity, and saw pacific-slope flycatchers, Wilson’s warblers, chestnut-backed chickadees, and winter wrens, the latter probably building a nest nearby. There was also a tree at this spot with a portion of its bark recently scraped away from about six feet up down to its base; we wondered if this was a sign of the bear that’s been about in recent weeks. The forest was oddly reminiscent of being in the native ohi’a forest on Maui last January; the physiognomy of the vegetation was similar, with a fern understory and a relatively low, dense tree canopy, not to mention that both places get lots of mist.

After our lunch near the beach we sampled some thimbleberries for our dessert, the fruits readily coming off their base and living up to their name by forming a little red fairy-sized berry cup. We then went back to the cabin for some tea. Dinah, Lisa’s chocolate Lab, had evidently figured out The Doorknob Principle to escape from the house and greeted us in the driveway. Over tea we talked about politics, Barry Bonds and the Giants, took some group photos, and saw a digicam movie of Dinah splashing in a river yesterday.

It was a wonderful visit. In homage to Coup de Vent, above is a picture of place bloggers on the trail.