Here’s a first – I’m blogging from the beach. Point Reyes to be exact.

Anne’s been wanting to do a backpacking trip here for a long time, so she made reservations a few months ago.

On the way in, we realized that we had never actually gone backpacking with just the two of us. We’ve gone on many hikes and car camped of course. And we’ve gone backpacking together with friends before, but never just us. So I guess this is first though it seems like the bazillionth time.

The route we took in was the same that I took with a friend in 1995 when I was doing an internship in Mountain View. We went out to Arch Rock, then up the coast trail to Coast Camp where we are staying the night. Apparently we got a really good site. It’s at the very end so you don’t have anybody walking by and you can’t see into any of the other sites. Unfortunately that also means it’s a looong way to the bathroom.

On my last trip here we stayed at some roadside campsite nearby where this woman just feet away from us blabbered on all night and kept us awake.

There were only two geocaches on our 8-mile route in. I’m surprised there were even that many because this is a national park and the NPS has explicitly banned them. I guess they must have been placed before the ban. We’ll hit two more on our loop back tomorrow and maybe some more on our way home, but it seems unlikely that I’ll meet my goal of averaging 2 per day for this week since the two today were the only ones all week.

I have a new enemy in the plant kingdom: stinging nettles. This nasty little plant got me in a few places while searching for the first cache. It still stings a bit. Between them the poison oak, going anywhere off the paths is like walking through a minefield – except sometimes you don’t know you stepped on a mine until 48 hours later.

Once we unpacked we realized the first thing we forgot – a pot. I have a small one in my mess kit but it might make our dinner of couscous and green beans more challenging than planned.

It got quite chilly in the evening. It started to make sense why some people walking around here were dressed like Eskimos. This was when we found that we did not bring gloves. No problem, tomorrow’s socks work great as today’s mittens.

After dinner when it gets dark, we’ll head down to the beach to walk around and see if anyone was successful in setting up a fire in the sand. It should be cool out there. Stars are unlikely because it’s all fogged in which is typical for here.

Tomorrow we’re heading up the mountain to see how well our feet hold up on the second day. Thinking positively, we’ll have less water, propane and food to lug back.

Hopefully when I get home and do “the reveal” of my feet they’ll be free of toenail trauma from my boots and blister-free.

Yeah, that’ll be a first.