The World is your Oyster

Jill's Journal: Do you know what this is? Heaven for your mouth, that’s what. Oh my. It’s not just delicious. It is divine. D-I-V-I-N-E.

It all started at this dinky little shack, down a long, one-lane, dirt road in the middle of nowhere, or at least outside the tiny little town of Inverness on Point Reyes. It may not look like much, but oh my…what a treat was in store for us. This is the home of Drakes Bay Family Farms, an oyster farm and the last operating oyster cannery in California. The fertile and pristine waters of Drakes Bay (named for the landing spot of Sir Francis Drake when he sailed around the world in 1579 and hauled his ship onto the beach to make repairs) have been in commercial oyster production for over 100 years.

Now, we’ve always liked oysters and liked them a lot, but we’d heard that once you've tried them here, eating other oysters would be the equivalent of a man leaving a Lamborghini for a Fiat or leaving Angelina Jolie for Rosie O’Donnell. Surely they couldn’t be that good, we thought… but how wrong we were. These oysters, just hours out of the bay, are that good and better. They’re harvested daily and sold both in the shell and shucked in jars. If you didn’t bring a cooler to transport them or a knife to do your own shucking to eat on site, they also offer them on the half-shell, open, and of course, uncooked.

They were so freaking good we had to go back for a second plate. I’m going to dream of these oysters for years to come. They are officially the standard for which all other oysters will ever be measured. My only regret is we didn’t bring an entire refrigerator along and fill it to overflowing!

Victoria is our only truly adventurous eater at this point. She tried one…well, sort-of.

This shows the growth of an oyster, from seed to adult. It takes about 20 months from planting to harvesting. If I could plant these oysters and have them turn out like this, it would be worth every day of the 20-month wait.

Okay, I’ll try to stop the oyster love now and move on to the rest of Point Reyes National Seashore. This large cape is essentially separated from the rest of California by the famous San Andreas Fault. That old joke about California falling into the ocean…it feels like it really could happen here! It’s a beautiful place though, with miles and miles of hiking available. We (and several other people around us) spotted whales off this shoreline! Two of our girls got to see their blowholes and we saw one whale feeding on a school of fish.

We took the short hike to view the lighthouse, distinctive because it’s built 275 feet down on a bluff. The fog gets so bad here that the lighthouse has to be near the water or the ships would never be able to see it.

However, we didn’t take the “stairway to heaven” down to the lighthouse, partly because the hike back up those stairs is the equivalent of climbing a 30-story building. Chances are too good all three of our girls would want to be carried up that…um, no.

The colors on these bluffs are so striking and beautiful.

Madelyn loved these little trees. It’s amazing how resilient plant life can be in harsh conditions.

Historic ranches, most dating to the 1850s, abound all over Point Reyes and the cows have the right of way.

Their ocean views aren’t too shabby either. I wonder what they think of oysters…