Evelyn Stefaniak had a three day weekend and decided "What the heck! Why not make it a four day weekend?" She planned on taking Tuesday off and announced a mid-week paddle on the BASK email listserver. Both Don Fleming and I were able to take the time off to join her at Miller Park on Tomales Bay. We had a beautiful sunny morning with a calm bay to paddle in.
Our plan was to launch early, paddle up the beautiful west shore of the bay for a ways, and get back in time for lunch at Nicks Cove. Nicks Cove is the name of the cove next to Miller Park and also the name of the greasy spoon restaurant there. We paddled across the bay, around Hog Island, and turned north along the wild beautiful west shore of Tomales Bay. We went faster than I expected and landed on Avalis Beach with time to spare for a walk along the rocky shore towards Tomales Point. After lunch and launching our boats again, Don and I paddled across the mouth of the bay and tried to catch rides in the waves breaking over the sand bars off the end of Dillon Beach. The waves were too small and we had very little luck surfing, so we turned south and caught up with Evelyn in the calm water of the bay.
Soon we slid back up onto the beach at Miller park and went next door for lunch. To our horror we discovered that Nicks Cove restaurant was closed "for remodeling until spring of 2000". Since it was already fall of 2000 I fear that the restaurant, a favorite place for kayakers to eat, is never going to re-open. We drove around looking to see if the oyster restaurants in the town of Marshal were open, but they were not open for lunch on weekdays. We ended up settling for sandwiches at a deli before driving home.