Marin County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Marin County

Two inches per year — the northwestward creep of the Point Reyes peninsula along the San Andreas Fault, separating Marin County's Point Reyes National Seashore from the rest of North America and making PRNS the only US NPS unit located on the actively-moving Pacific tectonic plate per US Geological Survey San Francisco Bay Area regional fault studies. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake's epicenter was located 2 miles offshore of Point Reyes per USGS retroactive seismic analysis (the rupture jumped 21 ft horizontally on land at the Earthquake Trail interpretive site near the visitor center — visitors can stand on the marked offset and see the displaced fence line). Marin County's 520 sq mi wrap the entire northern Golden Gate, Muir Woods National Monument (the most-visited ancient coast-redwood grove on Earth at 800,000+ visitors per year per NPS visitor counts, with a mandatory parking reservation system administered through Muir Woods Shuttle since 2018), Mt. Tamalpais (2,572 ft, the highest point in Marin and an east-bay-region landmark visible from anywhere in the Bay Area), and Sausalito's Marin Headlands (Golden Gate National Recreation Area's northern unit, the most-photographed angle of the Golden Gate Bridge).

Samuel P. Taylor State Park campground (60 sites, no hookups, accepts rigs to 40 ft) on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard is the only state-park RV-friendly base inside Marin County; reservations open 6 months out through California State Parks' ReserveCalifornia system and summer weekends sell out within minutes. Point Reyes National Seashore permits backcountry tent camping by permit only — there is no RV-accessible NPS campground on the seashore. Mt. Tamalpais State Park enforces a 14-day max stay and accepts rigs to 32 ft only at Pantoll Campground (16 walk-in sites, no hookups). Marin County's coastal road network is famously rig-hostile: Sir Francis Drake Boulevard from Olema to the Point Reyes Lighthouse caps at 26 ft per Marin County Public Works advisory, and CA-1 (Pacific Coast Highway) through Stinson Beach and Muir Beach has signed grade and curve warnings caps at 28 ft. The Marin Civic Center (Frank Lloyd Wright, 1962) in San Rafael is a National Historic Landmark and offers self-guided tours during weekday business hours.