Today Mary and I went to Point Reyes National Seashore to hike the Tomales Point Trail. We stopped at Safeway to pick up some sandwiches for lunch (Chicago South Sider for me and the Primo Italiano for Mary) and also got some Peet’s Coffee next door. It’s about a 1 hour and 40 minute drive from San Jose. We got to the trail head around 12:30 PM and decided to eat our lunch before hiking. We were on the trail by 1. Despite the weather forecast of clear, sunny skies, we were treated to a chilly fog. Fortunately, we were prepared with layers of clothing.

The Tomales Point Trail starts at the Historic Pierce Point Ranch. There’s a short interpretive trail around some of the old ranch buildings. We walked through the main barn hoping to spot a barn owl. No such luck. I’ve never really spent much time looking around the old ranch, so I cant tell you much about it. I mostly just come here for the hiking and the wildlife. I know there are quite a few ranches around Point Reyes. I believe most of those still in operation are dairy farms.

That main attraction of this trail is the Tule Elk Reserve. Apparently there used to be thousands of tule elk around California in the 1800’s, but were hunted nearly to extinction. The last tule elk in Point Reyes was killed in the 1860’s. By 1874 only a few of the animals were left in the state. Discovered in San Joaquin Valley, they protected and served as the breeding stock to rebuild the California population. They were reintroduced to Point Reyes in 1978. Today there are more than 400 elk in Point Reyes and more than 3,000 in the state. Once you pass the cattle guard at the start of the reserve, you have a great chance of seeing them along the road before you reach the Pierce Ranch.

I’ve been on the Tomales Point Trail many times before, but I have never gone all the way to the end at Tomales Bluff. I usually visit the Tule Elk Reserve after visiting other parts of the park and the trail is 4.7 miles to the bluff (8.4 miles round trip). This time we did go all the way to Tomales Bluff. fortunately, the fog cleared for a bit while we were near the end of the point, so we had some nice views of Tomales Bay to the East and Bodega Bay to the North (see picture on left). During the hike we saw some Northern harriers and a red-tailed hawk, but not much else (besides the elk of course).

In spite of the fog we had a great hike. We saw a lot of elk on the drive in and along the hike. For more pictures, check out my Point Reyes October 2007 Galley. You can also see a map of this trail I made at Gmaps Pedometer.