Showing posts with label tomales bay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tomales bay. Show all posts

Friday, September 11, 2009

dutchman's point (inverness california) tomales bay


this is a nice ride. take highway one north from mill valley to in between olema and point reyes station you take a left (sir francis drake) and head to inverness. then there's a secret area that we we're lucky enough to stumble upon called "dutchman's point".. here there's a photo of the legendary dutchman himself (who found this land on christmas day 1952 and has lived there ever since.) any explanation would be futile, but i can tell you that he has clean running water (a hole in the ground), several alters, nice beds tucked out of the wind in various locations, he's building walls everywhere to prevent erosion and other things beyond my comprehension, communicates with animals such as foxes and birds, watches the sharks breed in the bay, clears away the trees from shading the beach, lifts "weights" using tension on branches in elaborate systems... etc. etc. etc..    he's in his 80's now and when he had a stroke and the dr. told him to go on medication he was offended and instead went to "spiral mountain" to heal himself. the "black mountain as my alter and the sky as my god" or something to that effect is something he once said to us.  (black moutain is seen behind the "faux" dutchman.. for some reason this pic makes it look small) he grew up on the border of holland and germany durring world war II and the blackbirds that fend off turkey vultures mid-air remind him of dog fights he witnessed as a child.



absent are the stats from this ride. i can tell you that it's about 80 miles.  i still can't believe i have a photo of the legendary dutchman. makes me holler out NORTHERN

Sunday, August 2, 2009

to dillon beach and valley ford in sonoma county on a rainy day


this was the longest ride i've done in a day. i was shooting for bodega bay and realized when i got home that i was only about five miles away from it. it was raining on and off all morning and finally started to clear up after samuel p. taylor park on the way home (tree pic).
i ended up taking dillon beach road (unaware of the insane climbing/bailing to be had) so i got to hang out on elephant rock (pictured) the other pictures are of highway one, and there's one that is from marshall or some other extremely small very old tomales bay town. i would stop under the shelter of buildings in each one as the rain was continuing as i progressed north.
i met quite a few friendly people on this ride.






this is durring the period of time that mytracks (the free GPS program made by google for the android OS) was quite glitchy. i lost plenty of tracks.. also durring this time the phone would display the stats but the gps files wouldn't have them.. the data presented is what i can make out of a blurry photo i took of the phone on it's stats page. i remember the miles and elevation gained to be correct, and most other stats you can make out. the only really fuzzy one is max elevation.

Total Distance: 134.45 mi
Total Time: 11:30:31
Moving Time: 7:51:47
Average Speed: 9.94 mi/h
Average Moving Speed: 14.56 mi/h
Max Speed: 64.80 km/h (40.3 mi/h)
Min Elevation: 123 ft
Max Elevation: 812 ft
Elevation Gain: 7260 ft
Max Grade: 19.6 %
Min Grade: -25.7 %
Recorded: Sun Aug 02 14:41:46 PDT 2009