The Adventures ofCitygirl/Farmhand and Tim
rocks. It was some serious I'm on the Moon shit.
Part Three
Sunday, August 8, 2010 (continued)
So I believe I left us off at Tomales Bay. Tomales Bay is a long narrow inlet of the Pacific Ocean in Marin County in northern California in the United States. It is approximately 15 miles (25km) long and averages nearly 1.0 miles (1.6 km) wide, effectively separating thePoint Reyes Peninsula from the mainland of Marin County. It is located approximately 30 miles northwest of San Francisco. The bay forms the eastern boundary of
What?! No! I did not just cut and paste that directly from Wikipedia. Oh no wait, yes, yes, i did. That is a lie. What gave it away?
So now that you know the geography and other fascinating facts, you should know that we stayed in the best little inn ever, called The Dancing Coyote. Yes, it is a finalist for worst name ever, but the name is irrelevant. It was funky and awesome and yet also elegant with its own fireplace and porch jutting out right over the bay. This was the view from our kitchen:
Watching the fog creep in across the bay was an ethereal experience. Please note however: The Dancing Coyote is not appropriate for those who like umbrellas in their drinks, but it was custom made for weirdos like me and Tim who ride motorcycles in the woods. We walked into the spot and ran around like Tom Hanks at FAO Schwartz in "Big" except rather than dancing on a giant piano we were stroking the au naturel woodworking and admiring the skylight over the bed as only a specific type of woodsy-rustic nerd who also likes the finer things in life can.
Since we had a fireplace and were in the mood to get ultracozy, we decided to cook in and went into the town of Point Reyes Station which is this weird little ranch town that is also sort of awesome. It's kind of like a town for rich hippies and rich, starving artists which yes, is an oxymoron, but you know the type. In case you don't, I will elaborate by saying that we stopped by at a local art gallery for an opening of "The Box Show" which was a show of various types of boxes all made by different local artists that also functioned as a sort of silent auction. We picked up on the wealth vibe when we saw that just about every box (and there were hundreds of them) had bids and some of the bids were sort of high considering that these boxes were
not high art, but boxes like something a kid from the suburbs would make in his first college art class. Don't get me wrong, I love the notion of supporting local artists but other than one very cool box, they were mostly pretty silly. Back to my point which is that the entire town of Point Reyes Station was in the gallery and none of them seemed like they were starving but they all had their own box in the show. These are some very expressive folks. Check it out- I actually found it online. Wow, I guess it is actually the "famous Box Show". There you have it.
This one is called "Chuck in the Box".
After our brush with the local art scene, we hit the local market and found some of the most amazing (and cheap!) produce I've seen in a while, grabbed two bottles of local wine after much debate about whether we'd need three (Tim gets overly excited some times) and then headed home to cook up the best meal I think we've ever cooked together. Sorry Magical Baking Thingee, but this was our best to date.
We made:
- NY Strip steak on the open fire
- Sugar snap peas in a very light cream broth with mint (sound gross but god damn, was it good. I totally copied it off of my FARMSTEAD meal the night before)
- Heirloom tomato salad with fresh mint and cilantro
- Garlic couscous with some special homemade creamy cilantro delight sauce
- Fresh strawberries in cream with mint that I froze slightly so it was sort of ice creamy
We couldn't eat most of it and couldn't drink most of it, but we certainly tried. Tim actually ate until he passed out and I had to wake him up from his deep, Inception Level 4 state of dreaming complete with snores, so that we could wake up in bed together the next morning, which was August 9. And you know what August 9 means: Tim's Birthday!!!
The Adventures of Citygirl/Farmhand and Tim
Part Three
Monday, August 9, 2010
Tim's 25th Birthday
We woke up a bit fuzzy but the first thing I said to Tim (after Happy Birthday of course) was Thank God we didn't go for the 3 Bottle Throttle. Seriously. We didn't even finish two bottles of wine and were knocked on our asses. Three would have been a hungover Bday for Timmy. We went for a walk along the foggy bay when we got dressed and stopped for a few minutes to pose like total losers at the end of the pier as you can see here. We realized that if anyone was watching us, they were like "God those weirdos are vain" but we wanted a picture of ourselves in Tomales so you can suck it.
Birthday Boy
After the walk, we came back to the Dancing Coyote and cooked up a mean, enormous breakfast from the leftovers. We really didn't want to leave- ever- but finally hit the road around noon and drove out to the end of Point Reyes National Seashore which is really, really incredible. I kept calling it the New Zealand of the US. We're talking rolling green hills dotted with cows along dramatic sea cliffs with red moss accents lining the
rocks. It was some serious I'm on the Moon shit. We hit this lighthouse too which was super cool and we saw some whales and and dolphins and seals and other giant sea life.
And then it was time to stop dreaming and get back to the realities of city life. Although, this time the city was San Francisco, so it was still a vacation.
We met up with some of Tim's old buddies from Berkeley and had a good, clean Mexican dinner in the Mission. (As much as I prefer dirty Mexican, it was more appropriate for a birthday dinner.) We went back to our hotel pretty late, drunk on some sort of "healthy" margaritas made with agave and wine rather than sugar and tequila and spent a fun night at the not as fancy as it wishes but fancy anyway Westin in Union Square.
The Adventures of Citygirl/Farmhand and Tim
Part Three
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
We did the full San Francisco tour from the Haight to Chinatown to the Presidio to Land's End, enjoying a huge, dirty Mexican burrito for lunch in the Mission. If you've been to SF, you've done exactly the same thing so I'll spare you the cliched details but it was good to be back. I do love my SF.
We ended the day with romantic dinner for 2 at Farallon which I always wanted to go to when I was a poor young starving girl just out of college but couldn't afford. I don't think anything could ever live up to those sort of expectations but you know what, we actually had a really wonderful dinner and I had some awesome oysters with champagne and I even footed the bill as a thank you to my wonderful husband who I can't believe is 25 already.
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