Alamere Falls, near Bolinas

So, heading to this spot for the third time since last fall. It’s been nearly two months since my last hike, and it’s good to be back in CA. Had to go to New Orleans for awhile for work. Didn’t do anything there resembling a hike – urban or not. Maybe next year. Anyway, for this hike, it’s a night hike and it’s a full moon. I’ve never hiked at night – at least not intentionally – and I’ve never hiked under a full moon, so I was fairly stoked about this. It’s not an easy hike and there are a few tricky turns and climbs to navigate, but pretty good. I’m a morning person so starting a hike around 3:30 p.m. is kind of odd for me and throws off my body-clock for a bit, but I can keep up. The waterfall on the ocean was as impressive always. Picture a 40-feet-high torrent of water pouring over a cliff into the ocean and then standing under it. Not bad at all. Was about 12-mile hike and around about the 9-mile mark, the sun started fading pretty quickly. The last hour or so were totally in the dark. The moon should have provided the light except we were in trails that were covered by trees so no light there. But then our headlamps or flashlights should have helped too, right? Probably so, if I had a headlamp as several hikers had suggested I get. I did bring a flashlight but it was small and the batteries were fading quickly since I hadn’t used it in forever. (How often do you use your flashlight at home?) So, I’m a task-oriented kind of guy — “see the problem”, “solve the problem”, etc. so my solution to the darkness was to walk really, really fast as darkness approached and force SLB to keep up. She did, and we reached the parking lot of the trailhead around 10:30 p.m. One member of our hiking group had already reached that point and was waiting for his wife. Seemed she fell behind, missed a turn, and got lost. Oops. Probably not a high point for a marriage.