West Marin is one of the best places to explore California's natural beauty

view.JPGView full sizeDramatic views of the Marin coast include the Point Reyes headlands, seen here from the Chimney Rock trail.

The Golden State has seemed a bit less golden recently: With a slumping economy, aimless political leadership and an increasingly tarnished infrastructure, California no longer feels like the heavenly spot I landed in in the '90s.

But I still love the place, in spite of itself -- and it's hard to be mad at topography. When business took me to the Bay Area, I decided to stretch the trip out a bit to restore my sense of California's natural beauty. There are few better places for such a trip than the Marin coast, especially off-season, since the rushes of tourists have stopped.

West Marin has a fortuitous setting: tiny towns that haven't been suburbanized to death, ample Pacific coastline, numerous smaller bodies of water, including Tomales Bay, and plenty of wildlife in the redwoods and eucalyptus groves. It feels like the edge of the world but you're really just 40-some miles from San Francisco. By the time you drive in through Samuel P. Taylor State Park -- a shady enclave with Lagunitas Creek running alongside -- you've left the sprawl behind.

I stayed in Point Reyes Station, a tiny town -- the road sign calls the population 350 souls -- with a two-street downtown that sits on the inland edge of the Point Reyes National Seashore. (The seashore is an odd triangle of land, almost an island.)

You're in about as unspoiled a natural setting as you can imagine in such a highly developed state. Every time I walked outside I was hit with a fragrant burst from the trees and forest floors. Around almost every turn in a road awaited a creek or bay or array of rolling, parched hills.

Sitting on a plane and in a rental car had me itching to get into the countryside, so after check-in at the inn I drove to park headquarters, which offers, alongside a bookstore and bathrooms, a number of trail maps and trail heads, and helpful staff.

I took the Bear Valley Trail, which was not the most dramatic or challenging of those available but offered a lot of what I like in a hike: a body of water (a creek) you can hear, trees (Douglas fir) you can smell, ample shade and few people. The trail opens up about a mile and a half in at the aptly titled Divine Meadow. A young couple hiking there were headed out to camp a few miles along. I was envious.

West Marin dreaming

Getting there:

Point Reyes is about 45 miles north of San Francisco, and is easy to reach by car from the Oakland or San Francisco airports. Visiting during the week helps avoid crowds, though some spots are closed.

Where to stay:

The area is full of inns and bed and breakfasts. Here are a few:

Holly Tree Inn

, 3 Silverhills Road, Point Reyes Station, 800-286-4655,

;

Olema Inn and Restaurant

, Olema, 415-663-9559,

;

Ten Inverness

, Inverness, 415-669-1648,

.

Where to eat:

Station House Café

, Main Street (11180 State Route 1), Point Reyes Station, 415-663-1515,

. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner six days a week; closed Wednesday.

Osteria Stellina

, 11285 Highway 1, Point Reyes Station, 415-663-9988,

. Lunch and dinner Monday to Friday, brunch and dinner Saturday and Sunday.

Bovine Bakery

, 11315 State Route 1, Point Reyes Station, 415-663-9420. Baked goods, coffee and pizza.

Outdoors:

Blue Waters Kayaking, Two locations,

More info:

The day had been sunny, warm and dry, but as dinner got closer fog began to roll in. Even in the fall, much of daily planning in west Marin seems to involve trying to outmaneuver or outguess the fog. I got a dramatic example of that when I went out driving after my hike.

Limantour Road begins as a winding path through the trees, but within a mile or two, fog was rolling in thick and fast, the skies darkening. My car stereo was playing the genial swing piano of Teddy Wilson, but Wagner would have been more appropriate. After climbing, I got a peek of Tomales Bay through the pine trees on my right, and the elevation changed with every hairpin turn.

After a stunning vista of Drake's Bay -- where Sir Francis Drake is thought to have landed, claiming everything in sight for the English crown -- I descended to the beach itself, took a quick walk and called it a day. This was no weather for sunbathing, and the drive had been an adventure in itself.

That night I made my first trip into town. Olema, Inverness and Point Reyes Station all have small downtowns dominated by little nonchain shops and bed and breakfasts. Point Reyes Station's is the largest, split between offerings for tourists and locals.

Station House Café offers a very good burger and decent local beer. Bovine Bakery opens early and has excellent baked goods. (Everyone coming through seems to be dressed for a major biking or water adventure.) Point Reyes Books is an exceptionally good small-town bookstore.

The trip's best meal came the next night at Osteria Stellina. A friendly, handsomely modern place that opened this year, Stellina offers imaginative food using local ingredients but based on cuisine from Italy, especially the northeast. The lamb ragu was impressive, and the cornmeal pound cake with lemon cream and blueberries even better.

One of the downtown's other virtues is a barnlike structure that houses a gourmet deli, a produce market with tempting displays and the production facilities for Cowgirl Creamery. Most mornings, you can actually watch the cheese being made.

Besides the mountain bike, which was invented here, and New Age silliness, of which I saw very little, the Point Reyes area is famous for its oysters. They're served at most restaurants, and there are some legendary spots -- Hog Island Oysters, on Tomales Bay, was the one recommended most often -- where you can eat them on the half shell and in some cases after more elaborate preparations. Either way, you consume them right on the body of water from which they've been pulled.

So I bought a dozen at Drakes Bay Family Farms. The guy who shucked them told me they had sold 20,000 over Labor Day weekend.

Getting mollusks there offered another advantage: It put me on the road to Drakes Beach, probably the most dramatic of all the area's beaches, with the softest sand I've ever walked on, numerous small birds, and sheer cliffs that reminded Drake himself of the white cliffs of Dover. I walked for about an hour.

The Marin coast is the kind of place where it's enjoyable just to walk around, breathe the air and drive past the cows feeding on the hillsides. The last active thing I did was a couple of hours of kayaking. At Blue Waters on Tomales Bay, I rented a kayak with a rudder and went a few miles down the bay, pulling up on empty beaches to stretch and then gliding back out into the water -- which I pretty much had to myself -- on a gentle, cloudless day.

After two hours I was satisfied, if a bit lonely for human contact. Next time I'll bring my wife and little son. For now, California had turned golden again.

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