Pt Reyes

Today we took a road rip (Zoe's longest ever!) to Point Reyes for a hike. Along he way, we stopped at Point Reyes Station to make a stop into the Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station


Here's my opinion about Cowgirl Creamery: They have some decent cheeses and I fully support the mini-renaissance in stateside artisanal cheeses. However, none of the local cheeses I tasted had much character. "Insipid mockeries of french cheeses" would be going too far, but that was my first reaction. I also do not see the point of transporting low grade Comte and Gruyere halfway around the world from France to a small town in rural West Marin. If you're going to burn the plane fuel, at least make it comte de Montagne! One last thing -- their cheese cooler is *way* too cold (maybe thats a health regulation though) for cheese.

From there, we continued on to the end of the road at Pierce Point here.

We bundled ZZN up:

near the farm:


and headed out. We only got about 1/5 of the way there before we got tired of pushing the stroller up hills and sat down to enjoy some baguette and Point Reyes Bleu. We turned the little poop machine around aftwerwards, and started heading back


and were surprised to see a herd of Elk!






don't worry - we kept our distance. That last shot is maximum zoom, cropped way down from the 10 mega pixel file.

After the long process of destrollerizing, changing and car-ifying the baby, we started driving back down Pierce Point Road.

I had read in Heat that the most critical ingredient for good homemade pasta is the egg. I had also read that the best eggs in the bay area can be found right in Pt. Reyes Station at the Marin Sun Farms, so we had to stop there to get some eggs, despite being almost out of gas. We also picked up some organic basil, more baguette and some pastries in town, and then pointed the Prius back towards oaktown.

As soon as we got home, I checked out our $7 (!) eggs



and got to work making a simple Fettuccine Pesto, which turned out pretty well.