The Bolinas Getaway

Julie's been taking a Permaculture class at the Commonweal in Bolinas. This is a year-long, one Sunday a month course that started in January. This past weekend was our second to this little hamlet, whose dislike of tourists is an open secret. (The waitress at Hilda's Coffee Shop in San Anselmo says that the locals - aka the Bolinas Border Patrol - remove the street sign at the Hwy 1 junction everytime a new one is put up. That seems to work, as we ended up in Stinson Beach the first time out.) This time we stayed at The Beach House, which is named after its owner, not its location. It's a lovely place, with beautiful views of the ocean, but the nearest beach is Agate and is a fair hike. Still, it has the best tidal pools I've found on this stretch of the Pacific coast so far. We all spent a happy hour there on Saturday looking at anemones, turban snails, star fish, kelp and a dead seagull. Great fun. The cottage was liberally stocked with an eclectic variety of books, and we found Choosing Simplicity by Linda Breen Price so intriguing we've bought a copy for ourselves. I'd arranged beforehand for a baker in Point Reyes (Maddie Sobel), to prepare a carrot cake for Julie's birthday (which actually fell later in the week). She really went all out, decorating it with edible wild flowers. One last, incidental comment. We also found some lesbian-oriented literature around the cottage, and I later found the Beach House listed under Lesbian Owned Vaction Rentals. This might explain why the toilet seat wouldn't stay up.