Point Bonita Lighthouse

This one you have to earn on foot, and it's worth every step. Pull into the little trailhead lot here on Field Road. It's tiny, so if it's full, don't circle and fret. There's overflow parking back at Battery Alexander, just a short way behind you, and the walk in from there is no hardship at all.

From the trailhead it's roughly a half mile out to the point. The path narrows as it goes, and partway along it ducks straight through the rock in a hand-carved tunnel. Take a look at those walls as you pass. The work is said to have been done by Chinese laborers, chipping this passage clean through the headland by hand. Mind your head, and let the cool dark of it settle over you before you step back out to the wind and the water.

Now, here's the light itself. As the story goes, it was first lit up high on the ridge in the mid-1850s, but the summit had a problem the builders hadn't reckoned on: fog. On the very days a ship most needed the beam, the crest was buried in it. So a couple of decades later they moved the whole light down here, low to the water where the fog tends to sit above it. And it's still working. Behind the glass turns a Fresnel lens said to be the same one that's thrown this beam for well over a century. It's counted among the last of California's lighthouses to keep a live-in keeper, tended by hand right up until it was automated around 1980.

Here's the thing to know before you go. The suspension footbridge that carries you the final stretch to the light is closed until further notice, so today you'll reach the viewing platform and no farther. That's still a stunning place to stand. Stay back from the edge out here, because the drops are steep and unfenced. And the days and hours the light itself opens can change, so check nps.gov/goga before you count on going in.