Day 25: San Francisco, CA to North Coast, CA
Monday, 7 November 2005
Last updated 11 Nov 2005

1. Point Bonita ...	2. ... in Marin Highlands	3. Horses	4. Village of Bolinas	5. Eatery in a shack
6. Serving BBQ oysters	7. "Famous" crabcakes	8. Back to San Francisco

Decided to head out of San Francisco north along the Pacific Coast Highway to Mendocino (didn't make it). Across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco is Marin Highlands. An unmarked route takes you to [1,2] Point Bonita, with a lighthouse and vistas of the ocean, and [3] horse ranches along the way. It is hard to imagine that there is such a pastoral setting in a completely different world not 10 minutes away from downtown San Francisco!

The village of Bolinas tried to preserve its privacy from tourists and other non-residents by having a "sign war" with authorities and tearing down any sign that identified the village. So I went there (not hard to find with a GPS, and not particularly hard without one) to see what all the fuss was about. It's a [4] pretty enough village on a little bay, and probably more visitors from the notoriety than they would otherwise have got!

Continuing north along the Pacific Coast I passed by a [5] little place on the ocean, a combination convenience store and snack bar, advertising [6] BBQ Oysters, so I had to stop and try them. Recommendation: don't do this when you are in a hurry. They basically cook the oysters shell side down on top of a barbecue. Well, you can imagine that this takes the better part of half an hour and doesn't taste that different than if you had microwaved it (OK, perhaps it's a little better than that), other than there being a dollop of tomato-based BBQ sauce on top of each one. Tasty enough, but in retrospect I should probably just have had them raw.

Determined to snack my way to Mendocino, the next stop was a crab house at Bodega Bay where I had their renowned [7] crab cakes and then saw a sign saying that crab season was starting in 8 days. So where did these crabs come from? "From Canada, but they are flown in live." Hmm ...

Started raining and getting dark, and with still 2 hours to go on winding roads to Mendocino, and having got a taste of the rocky Pacific Coast north of San Francisco, I decided to head back to San Francisco that night rather than the next day. Met up with my Bohemian cousin Sunita again and checked out the "Nuevo Latino" restaurant [8] Destino (1815 Market St, 415-552-4451) in the Castro district where we told each other stories and, yet again, closed the place down.

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