Bolinas Beach

When I visited San Francisco for the 2nd time, I’d thought I’d seen it all. Great vintage shops, beautiful parks and great food but this place re introduced me to California. The journey to Bolinas Beach was just as much apart of the adventure then the arrival. Once over the Golden Gate Bridge and through miles of beautiful curvy roads through a grand forrest, the beautiful landscape of Norther California that looked like it was taken right out of a postcard was amazing. According to my friend, a local who lives in SF, this beach is kept under the radar to avoid too many tourist so getting a map and sticking to it is best due to lack of signage. My friend joked that it’s “the beach off the edge of Fern Gully” and that the best way I could put it. -- A definite must see for a calming hike and moment by the shore if ever in SF.

An intimate beach enclave of bric-á-brac shops, art cars and wildflower-strewn boat houses, this unincorporated North Coast town displays all the charms of a hippie haven. As I enter the main stretch of Bolinas, I slow down to a heedful 10 mph. Families lunch on garlic oysters at the small Coast Café, a retired boomer sits in deep thought outside the empty Bolinas Museum, and bearded fisherman unload the day’s catch from a vintage boat that looks like it’s too rusty to start. At the beach, I climb a graffiti-speckled tide wall to watch wetsuit-clad surfers having a field day with the waves. An enthusiastic mother in a foldout chair cheers on her son who is catching a wave for the first time. A pair of veteran sun-kissed surfers stroll by, their suits half-zipped and rears spotted with lumps of sand. Dogs splash about enthusiastically in the frigid water with bikini-clad children. This spurs envy in a bare-bummed toddler, his shaggy hair waving in the wind as he tears loose from his mother’s hold.