On the Friday of the Thanksgiving weekend I drove out with my boys—Julian, Nicky and Mathew—to Point Reyes. Nicky’s friend Tamen came along too. It was a balmy, almost summer-like day. As I told people on my recent trip to Japan, we are lucky to live so near such a beautiful, spacious and wild park as Point Reyes National Seashore (many of them couldn’t believe my description in terms of the sheer amount of wild land with so few people near a major city like San Francisco).

We parked at Drake’s Bay, and walked along the beach under towering bluffs at extreme low tide until we reached the Drakes Estoro inlet to the Pacific. We rested a while, built a fort, and the boys splashed in the cold waters of the ocean.

On the way back, at sunset, I stopped to make the images of waves, camera on tripod for long, slow exposures. Meanwhile, I kept a weather eye out to make sure the boys didn’t kill themselves trying to climb the unstable cliffs, or whack each other too hard with driftwood from the beach.

In other words, a good time was had by all, each of us in our own way!

If you are interested in Point Reyes, you might like the Point Reyes category on my blog and Point Reyes and the Marin Headlands, my postcard book. The postcards in this book show scenes from Point Reyes, Drakes Bay, Mount Tamalpais, the Marin Headlands, the Golden Gate, and more.