I love day-cations. SF is special in that way. In about an hour you can drive either North, South or East and end up somewhere that feels worlds away from the bustle of the city.

 

And every once in a while I get a huge craving for loads of fresh oysters. So that's when we end up heading North, over the Golden Gate Bridge to Tomales Bay in West Marin County.  Driving around West Marin is so magical. I love to look out the window and daydream about which house we could live in. I think about how I would fix it up and what I would do with the garden, and how wonderful it would be to live in a small quiet town surrounded by nature.

 

 

 

We can never go to Tomales Bay without going through Point Reyes Station to stop at the Bovine Bakery downtown. Their chocolate chip cookies are quite yummy, thick and chewy with just enough chocolate. Oliver grew up eating those exact cookies when he lived in Stinson Beach, and he can never pass up an opportunity to relive that part of his childhood.

 

For oysters, we love to get them by the dozen from the Tomales Bay Oyster Company. We always come prepared with our cooler, our oyster shucker, lemons and Tabasco sauce. We usually get two dozen oysters and then we find a place to set up. These oysters you have to shuck yourself so we make a little picnic out of it.

 

I am  always excited about the destination, but the journey is something I look forward to just as much. We always find something new. On a recent trip, while exploring one of the idyllic little towns we checked out a tiny antique and vintage shop and found a set of amazing milk  glass coffee mugs, a vintage crab cracker, (it's dungeness crab season right now so we needed one) and a rolling pin; All things that were on our ongoing thrift list! I also scored a beautiful, vintage, one stem glass vase. (Glassware is always on the list.)  Now where to put it?