The first mistake I made was wanting to take Highway 1 all the way home.  I'd never been all the way down it to San Francisco--for good reason.  It is slow, torturous, and very high up on the cliffs.  Not to mention that most tourists do not know how to drive it properly.  However, from Highway 1, I did spot a sign that said Point Reyes.  And another sign that said Lighthouse, with an arrow.

In my own defense, I must point out that at that point there was no indication of how far the Point Reyes Lighthouse was, or that the lighthouse and the town were at least twenty miles apart.  I saw the sign for the lighthouse, and as we were right by the ocean, I figured it couldn't be far, so I hooked a turn down a road.

A few miles into the side trip, I saw a sign that said specifically Point Reyes Lighthouse 20 miles. Heck, twenty miles?  About a half hour, right?  Twenty miles through slow rolling hills, close to an hour later, we were finally at the parking lot.  The visitor's center was a half mile up and down a hill. The actual lighthouse was another 300 steps down.

My fledgling thought of getting in another activation evaporated.  We made the hike to the visitor's center, I took a picture of the lighthouse below, and we hiked back to our car and stared unwinding the side trip.  Jan was amazingly mellow about the whole thing, but he did make me promise to Google next time before making a lighthouse side trip.

A group of hams activates Point Reyes from time to time, but they must have special access to haul their stuff in and down.  I'd still like to tour the station and maybe work portable for a couple hours there, but that will be an all-day adventure, not a couple hours at the end of a long trip.