Malinda Lo

Last weekend I went to Point Reyes to see the lighthouse, something I’ve wanted to do ever since I read The Strange Files of Fremont Jones by Dianne Day, an absolutely fantastic mystery set in 1905 San Francisco, starring intrepid businesswoman Fremont Jones and her typewriter. (Really, read it!) If I recall correctly, the Point Reyes lighthouse makes a memorable guest appearance in the novel (if I am incorrect, it’s because the lighthouse is in the sequel, The Bohemian Murders — also highly recommended).

I’ve lived within an hour of the lighthouse since 2000, but last weekend was the first time I got to visit it, and it was totally worth the trip — and the 300 steps you have to take to get to it. The views are spectacular, the lighthouse is isolated and beautiful and weird all at once, and there are deer and elk (yes, elk!) and cows wandering all over the place. I loved it.

Before we got to the lighthouse, though, we stopped in Point Reyes Station for some picturesque small-town gawking. I had to take pictures of the fruit on display at Toby’s Feed Barn, because they were so gorgeously orange and yellow (click photos to enlarge):

We also had lunch at the Station House Cafe, where I ate the most amazing, totally huge oysters I’ve ever seen. They were barbecued, which gave them an incredible smoky, charred flavor. They were served with two sauces — barbecue and garlic butter. The barbecue sauce tended to overpower them, and when I go back, I am totally ordering an entire dozen with the melted garlic butter. Oh, YUM.

After eating so well, could the lighthouse possibly have anything to offer? Hell yeah. It was a gorgeously sunny day, and at the top of the 300 steps leading down to the lighthouse, I took this photo:

I just love the way the water is silvered by the sun, and it looks as though the horizon truly is the edge of the world.

Just before you get to the lighthouse you go through a small building, which stores some old machinery, and has a little room in it with a desk and a chair. For some reason I loved the desk and the chair.

I just want to know who sat there, ya know?

Then we climbed into the lighthouse proper, which is built of iron bolted onto the rock — seriously — and took a look up into the Fresnel Lens, which is so powerful that it was covered during the day so that it doesn’t set anything on fire.

Finally, we climbed all the way back up again, and since I can’t resist anything giant, I posed by a giant whale skull:

All in all, it was a great time, and I can’t wait to go back again. Especially because I’m pretty sure that part of Point Reyes is going to turn up in the book I write after this one …