Hike A Little, Eat a Lot (Heart's Desire to Shell Beach)

There are two ways to hike from Heart's Desire to Shell Beach in Tomales Bay State Park: The long way (5.6 miles) or the short way (3.1) miles. The short way sounded like a good choice since we planned to eat out in a restaurant after the hike. But in retrospect, the long way would have required us to burn more calories before lunch and be much hungrier when we finally sat down to eat. In any event, we took the Lazy Man's Hike, thereby eliminating 2.5 miles and 500' of elevation gain.

Our group shrunk again this week with only seven of us joining Wendy for this relatively easy walk. After leaving cars at the Shell Beach parking lot, we headed out Pierce Point Road about 1 mile from the "Y" and pulled off to park.

During our usual pre-hike confab, Susan regaled us with stories of the "Southern Belles" she met during her recent trip to Virginia. We then set off downhill on the Jepson Trail towards Heart's Desire Beach, but after a tenth of a mile, we made a sharp turn to the north, crossed a paved road that leads down into the park, and continued on the Johnstone Trail.

The Bishop Pine forest and understory along this trail is quite thick. At times, it was like walking through hedgerows on a narrow path. Apparently the tall pines capture moisture from fog blowing in from the ocean and, in the process, provide a natural "drip irrigation" system watering the plants growing under the forest canopy. Although Summer had formally begun, we still found a couple mushrooms alive and well along the trail. We normally see few if any hikers on Tuesdays, but another large group headed in the opposite direction passed us in two waves.

After about a mile-plus, the Johnstone Trail begins a long, slow half-mile descent to Shell Beach. By the time we were headed downhill, the sun had burned off the marine layer and the weather was quite pleasant. Although the beach is no doubt quite crowded, on Tuesday there were just a couple of guys lounging around on the sand, a lone woman talking on a cell phone (you just can't get away from it, can you?) a little farther down the beach, and two kayakers paddling south just off-shore.

After hanging out on the beach for a while to look for butterflies and bugs, we continued along the shore for another quarter mile or less, then climbed back up to the parking lot to ferry drivers back to our starting point. Once all of the cars and hikers had been retrieved, we drove back to Olema for a leisurely and civilized lunch out on the deck of the Farm House restaurant. At the end of the meal, the servers brought out a decadent chocolate dessert with a candle for Stan, who was celebrating his 144th birthday (he only looks half his age!).