Point Reyes—Coast Camp
Camp Review
I’ve been to this campground twice now (even at the same campsite) and my previous reviews stand without changes.
What I Learned
Instead of eating an instant meal, we cooked Kraft Mac and Cheese with some additional ingredients. We added dehydrated broccoli, dehydrated corn, 5 packets of hot sauce (Panda Express’ Chili Sauce), 4 individually packed cheddar cheese, and 1 fresh onion. We cooked 3/4 of the onion in 1 stick of butter before adding it to the cooked mac and cheese. The rest of the onion was added raw to lend some acidity to off set the fat from the cheese. The food was absolutely delicious, especially since we had it with half a loaf of wood-fire oven baked baguette that we got from Brickmaiden at Point Reyes Station.
We wished that we had a second knife for cooking, though we cooked just fine with just one.
I don’t remember this from the previous times, but there were lots of rabbits all around the campsite, making little noises here and there. At first, I was a bit startled at the noise, but we got used to it throughout the night.
It was a new moon, so the stars were absolutely shining for us the whole night. The Milky Way was easily visible and it was quite the spectacular show. I even saw two shooting stars!
What Happened?
2.0 miles, 49 mins, 331 ft of ascent
3.3 miles, 1 hr 11 mins, 184 ft of ascent
We had camped the previous night at Wall Beach in Tomales Bay and we wanted one more night in Point Reyes National Seashore. After a delicious visit to Point Reyes Station, we headed to the visitor center for some chocolate and a souvenir pin. Afterward, we headed to the Point Reyes Hostel, which was the starting point for the Laguna Trail.
The hike to Coast Camp was easy-peasy. The trail was covered on both sides with blackberry bushes and we lamented the fact that we had missed the blackberry season by about two months. We arrived at camp with fingers that were not reddened with blackberries and got to the task of setting up our damp tent. Because it was so warm and dry at Coast Camp, we were able to dry out all the camping equipment that was wet from the previous day, including our tent, blankets, and cooking equipment.
With time to kill, we took a walk on the beach to Sculptured Beach—a beach with beautiful large blocks of eroded rock that juts out to the ocean. Because it was high tide, we were not able to continue onto the Point Reyes Crater, but we got our fill exploring other oddities on the shoreline.
The Mac and Cheese we made for dinner was absolutely delicious and we stuffed ourselves full before heading to the bluffs to watch the sunset. The sunset, like all sunsets, was poetic and tragically beautiful. After, we watched the stars and went to bed.
We slept for about 9 hours (it’s so funny that we seem to get better and longer sleep when we camp compared to at our apartment!), though we both woke up a few times in the night due to the sound of critters and waves that seemed far too loud for how far the beach was from camp. In the morning everything was covered in dew even though the sky was clear. The bear box, our tent, the picnic table… everything was covered in water! We did the best we could, packing carefully to avoid getting our sleeping bag and pad wet. Our final act in our campsite was getting hot milk tea to warm ourselves before we departed.
The hike out was tranquil and drama-free. We hiked out along the Coastal Trail as to make a pretty loop, since we had hiked to the camp site via the Laguna Trail. The Birch grove that grows besides the Coastal Trail was as beautiful as I remembered seeing three years ago when I came here last.
On the way home, we made it a point to stop by Amy’s Drive Thru, where we gorged ourselves on their delicious Crispy Chick’n Sandwich! What a blessed life!
