Point Reyes National Seashore

		Elk, Elephant Seals, & birds VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Point Reyes is a National Seashore on the western coast of California, just north of San Francisco. It is a peninsula of land on the Pacific Plate and separated from the mainland (which is on the North American Plate) by the San Andreas Fault. The peninsula has moved northward 350 miles (so far) by these two plates rubbing against each other. Drakes Bay and Tomales Bay are inlets formed by the peninsula. With marshes (oyster farming and shorebirds), coastline (elephant seals and sea lions), pasturelands (historic ranches and farming), the Pacific Flyway (nearly 490 species of birds), the fault line (the land shifted 21 feet during the 1906 earthquake), and hills (deer, Tule elk, hawks), there is always plenty of hiking and exploring activities to do and unique sights to see. As a result, it is one of our favorite places and we return here whenever we are near.

The Spanish explorer  Sebastian Vizcaino  named the land Punto de los Reyes ("Kings' Point") when his ship, the Capitana anchored in Drakes Bay on the Day of the Three Kings (Epiphany or the end of the 12 Days of Christmas) on January 6, 1603.

Point Reyes' first inhabitants, the Coast Miwok, lived on the land for thousands of years. They left evidence of well over a hundred encampments on the peninsula, with a population estimated to have been nearly 3,000. As seasonal hunters and gatherers rather than cultivators, they were nourished by fish, clams, mussels, and crab, in addition to the deer, elk, bear, mud hen, geese, and small game they hunted with spears and bows. Sir Francis Drake's 1579 anchorage at Point Reyes was near a Coast Miwok settlement.

Two large mammalian species, the Northern Elephant Seal and the Tule Elk were nearly hunted to extinction. In 1978, ten Tule Elk were re-introduced to Point Reyes and have now grown to over 500. While slightly smaller than the Roosevelt Elk and Rocky Mountain Elk, they are, nonetheless, a special treat to see.

The Elephant Seals, with their protruding noses and trumpeting, bellowing sounds, managed to survive and have recovered to the present population of 1,500 to 2,000 individuals. They return each winter to mate and raise their young below Point Reyes' Chimney Rock. Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” was shot nearby and John Carpenter’s movie “The Fog” was shot at the Point Reyes’s Lighthouse and the small, nearby town of Inverness, where we stayed this year. This attests to the coastal climate often encountered there and to the number of birds seen.