#north-bay-marinpoint-reyes

#north-bay-marinpoint-reyes

"They didn't even try to fly away. They just feebly made noise," a woman told the Santa Barbara Independent on Saturday after spotting over two dozen dead or dying cormorants near Goleta Beach. "A few were on their stomachs, wings spread [and] gasping for breath.... Heartbreaking."

Condors, once reduced to a mere 23 individuals, have seen their population rise to over 600 due to extensive conservation efforts. However, they are not thriving as expected.

When you walk in, you're going to smell the wood burning fireplace. You're going to see all of the antique furniture. Our goal is to have people who come to Pelican Inn feel like they stepped into 16th century England.

Human remains found on Bay Area beaches in 1999 and 2023 have been identified as those of Walter Karl Kinney, a banker who disappeared in 1999. The remains were discovered by a family searching for sea shells in 2022, leading to an investigation that linked the remains to Kinney's family through DNA analysis.

"The mystery to me is how something so big and that was supposed to be so prominent has gotten so forgotten," Richard White, a Stanford professor emeritus of American history, told SFGATE.

Get up early to drive into the hills and park in the main lot, which opens 30 minutes before sunrise. This will leave you with enough time to make your way to the peak through the wildflower-scattered trails and watch the sunrise over the Bay.

For 2025, there was good news and bad news: overall, these areas were visited 323 million times over the course of the year. That's the good news; the bad news is that this figure was down ever so slightly - specifically, 2.7% - from a record-setting 2024.

Named after the legendary Big Sur female pioneer and rancher, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park stands out even among the rest of the region's attractions. The park features stands of centuries-old redwood trees and provides a haven for a variety of California wildlife, though it's best known for the 80-foot-high McWay Falls, an impressive cascade that drops directly from a sheer cliff to the sandy beach below.

Times are hard, but don't believe the rumors about the death of the Bay Area art scene. Yes, art institutions and galleries are closing. Yes, the techies have taken over, outpricing artists and polluting culture with their AI inventions. But there's an inherent spirit of rebellion to the region that won't be quashed so easily, and an inspired community that fights for it every day.

For decades, whale watching has been a seasonal ritual along the Sonoma Coast, drawing locals to wind-swept bluffs, binoculars in hand. Now the pastime has earned national notice: Travel + Leisure has declared Sonoma County the best place in the country to see whales. In a story published Feb. 3, the magazine said there is no better place in the United States for whale watching than the stretch of coastline from Bodega Bay to Gualala and no better time than now.

A group of ranches and dairies in the Point Reyes National Seashore has about two months left to close down under an agreement with the Nature Conservancy. The federal park announced on Jan. 8, 2025, that six dairies and six beef ranches operating there would cease operations within 15 months following a confidential legal settlement with environmental organizations that had long sought to ban agricultural uses of the park.

Waterways across Contra Costa County are increasingly threatened by invasive plant species that engulf canals and drains, decreasing biodiversity and reducing safe habitats for wildlife. In an effort to address and restore the environment, the Contra Costa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District is working to reverse that trend. The district hosted its recent 12th annual Giving Natives a Chance event at the Clayton Valley Drain near Concord's Hillcrest Community Park, inviting volunteers from across the county to plant native species around waterways and drains.

Global travel booking website Skyscanner has named its top five destinations for solo travel this winter, and a Northern California favorite the Sonoma Coast made the list. The Sonoma Coast invites a different kind of stillness, the guide notes, praising the rugged shoreline as an antidote to crowded itineraries and overplanned escapes. The roundup also includes Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas, Tangier Island in Virginia, Olympic National Park in Washington and Red River Gorge in Kentucky.

It was off-limits to the public for a century until recently, when a nonprofit land trust called the Wildlands Conservancy liberated the coastline following 10 years of planning. Accessing the preserve is allowed after reaching the farthest end of Bodega Harbour, a scenic coastal community of 700 homes linked within an 18-hole golf course. But once word about the hike began to spread last month, locals began saying their neighborhood was upended overnight by hundreds of cars.