I’m usually leery of places that involve enormous cliffs and are named for people as it makes me think some tragedy must have befallen said namesake. Fortunately, Patrick’s Point was named for either the scout who discovered it (Patrick Beegan) or a homesteader who planted the area’s first apple trees (Patrick McLaughlin), depending on your source. Regardless of which Patrick it was, he picked out a beautiful place – and we were fortunate enough to find it (mostly) not shrouded in fog.
We arrived and set up camp in about three minutes (as Flight mentioned we didn’t even have to disconnect the Toad from Davista) with the press of a few buttons. Our kids popped out to explore our site while Flight set up one of the hammocks in a small grove of nearby trees. He later triple dog dared Keeper to sleep out all night. Okay, he didn’t (actually, Flight’s recollection below is dead on), but Keeper did sleep in the hammock.
All night.
In bear country, he’ll have you know. For his perseverance (and I hope he’ll offer a blog post about the experience) he stands a little taller today and that’s pretty cool to see.
We enjoyed an easy dinner of pumpkin ravioli in brown butter sage sauce and finished it off with some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Yes – FALL! The girls and I mixed up the dough using a (gasp) hand-mixer (I do miss my KitchenAid mixer at times, but alas, we had neither room nor weight for such a luxury…) and we baked a dozen of those heavenly cookies.
The remainder of the dough we froze. I don’t know who the brilliant woman was who came up with the concept of icebox cookies, but I have definitely put it to good use. I have prolonged many batches of various cookies by parceling out the actual baked goods and tossing them in the oven as desired. It serves our family (and my waistline) far better to bake the three-dozen cookies over a period of weeks so none of us feel compelled to eat them all at once (= damage control at its best).
I crawled into bed feeling as though we had much more room to luxuriously stretch and wished we could stay a few more days. Alas, no. Time, tide, formation, eclipses, and California State Park campsite reservations wait for no one, so shove off we must.
The next morning we made pumpkin pancakes to celebrate Fall’s arrival in earnest. After Keeper and I made the batter, we let it sit while we went to hunt for agates down at the beach. It was a perfectly beautiful morning.
Ever on the hunt, I kept my eye out for sea glass treasures, but to no avail. Maybe there’s a reason it’s called Agate Beach and not Sea Glass Beach, but I wasn’t particularly successful in locating those gems either. At least I don’t think so. Frankly, I have no idea as my gemology skills are nearly as lacking as my California geographical ones.
Are there any agates in the above picture? Anyone? Maybe it would help if it were in better focus. Sigh…
The kids picked up several treasures from the beach, although I suggested we only keep the ones in which no one had lived.
I thoroughly enjoyed being on the beach as the sun stretched her rays to kiss each tiny pebble. Whatever Patrick’s Point was, I think I get it now, making a most auspicious start to our six-week exploration of the California coast.