Park 46: Pinnacles National Park (and Lands End Lookout at Golden Gate NRA)

5/28/14. We started our morning at Lands End Lookout which is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. We became fascinated with the ruins and history of the later 19th century Sutro Bath House.
The pictures of the original structure made it seem like it was right out of a Victorian novel.

We also walked down to the Cliff House, trying to imagine the huge Victorian structure that once sat on the cliff in all its elegance.







Here's a picture of the Cliff House from 1902:

 The beach was also fascinating. The waves were beautiful, coming in row after row, but there were signs all over the entrances saying that people who swam or waded in the water have drowned here. Needless to say, there was no one in the water as far as we could see down the coast. We began to understand why they wanted the huge bathhouse to swim in.


We drove down the coast for a ways, stopped at Fort Funston for the amazing views of the water and coast, then headed into the mountains on our trek to Pinnacles National Park. We were curious to see this newest National Park although we knew that the "bat caves" that are a focus of the park would not be open because the bats can't be disturbed during the summer.





We arrived after a long journey into the barrenness of the desert and mountains. This is a very remote park! We thought there would be very few people visiting here because of the long, hot, barren drive, but the ranger told us that they were very crowded this weekend and all the camping spots were reserved at one point.

We drove up a little ways to the  Gulch and did one of the shorter trails. It was peaceful and quiet and the wind in the trees was lovely. We didn't think that this park was all that special compared to other national parks, however. Most of the views and experience were similar to areas outside the park. We assume that we needed more time here and needed to experience more of the park to discover what made it worthy of national park status.

 
We left the park and headed southeast to the I5 in the Central Valley. Oh my goodness, it is hard to describe the barrenness and desolation of this drive! It was a couple of hours of dry, barren land with an occasional ranch. It looked the setting from western movies like Rango! We were so happy to finally make it back over the mountains into the Central Valley and hit the Interstate! I don't think we would hurry back to this park given how hard it was to get to. But we are looking forward to exploring more of the California park units this summer!