Framedlight

After our fantastic foggy start to the day we got to the lighthouse as the mist cleared and the sun shone. Point Reyes is the windiest place on the north American coast (in the spring winds can reach up to 130mph velocity) and the second foggiest. Not surprisingly many ships were wrecked off it's shore trying to get into San Francisco harbour. The lighthouse was built in 1870, after blasting an area 300ft below the cliff to try and lower the lighthouse under the level of the normally high fog. A fog signal was built as well. On the day of the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 the lighthouse moved north around 18ft. The only damage was that the lens came off it's rail and the lighthouse keeper manage to effect repairs so that it was up and working by the next day. The manned lighthouse was in operation until 1975 when an automatic light was installed. The consequence of the lighthouse being lowered is that you have to negotiate a half mile walk from the car park followed by 30

I thought it might be amusing to show you the difference between our style of car camping and the goliaths we often parked next to. Here are a couple of pictures of our car first thing in the morning at the campsite at San Simeon. We left San Simeon and started our tour up Highway 1 and the fabled stretch of road and coastline, the Big Sur. However Mairi was so entranced with the elephant seals that we had to pay a return visit. We also saw the sea otters again, this time two in the same vicinity and also many of the extremely ugly turkey vultures which soared over our heads continually. The natives did not always seem friendly and suffered from runny noses. Tempers could be lost very quickly But hanging around in the water was quite relaxing The sequence below shows the fighting between the juvenile males. The sea otters were a lot prettier and spent their time catching crabs, breaking them open with their stone