Weekend Musings – a relaxing weekend in Stinson Beach and buying StinsonBeach.org

Stinson Beach
(Photo from our morning walk on the beach)

My wife and I spent the weekend in Stinson Beach, the weather was beautiful and I’m feeling refreshed. If you’ve never heard of Stinson Beach, don’t worry – you’re not alone, and in many ways the locals would rather have it stay that way.

Stinson Beach is a tiny little oasis about an hour north of San Francisco. It has about 600 residents and isn’t actually even considered a town, instead it’s called a “census-designated place” in Marin county.

Being born and raised in the Bay Area I ended up coming to Stinson Beach quite a bit as a kid. One of my best friends in elementary school had a place in Stinson (okay his Dad did since ten year-olds don’t normally own vacation homes) and I have a lot of good memories of weekend beach adventures.

Like Bolinas and a number of other smaller beach communities, Stinson Beach really doesn’t want to be “on the map” in any major way and the residents have worked hard to keep it small and local. On a Saturday night in February you’ll find only one restaurant open, The Sand Dollar which is closing up at around 9:30PM.

That being said, this is what I love about Stinson Beach, it really hasn’t changed since I started coming here as a kid. There’s no major freeway to access the beach and there’s almost nowhere to stay once you’re in town which means at night it’s pretty much just locals and the few tourists that have decided to enjoy the peace and quiet of Stinson’s sleepy beach community.

I’ve always thought about having a vacation house in Stinson Beach some day, but since 2BR/2BA homes sell for $3.2M…I think I’m going to have to wait a bit.

Stinson Beach Real Estate

What was interesting about this trip is that I was trying to find more information about things to do in Stinson Beach before the trip and couldn’t really find a good site that was up-to-date. The best I could find was a site that looks like it was built in 1996 with tiny hard-to-read text and pretty out of date information.

Then I thought, I wonder if StinsonBeach.com is available? Of course it wasn’t so I went to take a look at the .NET and .ORG…and, it turned out the .ORG was available to hand-register. Given that Stinson Beach only has about twenty different businesses in total, I thought it would be pretty easy to put up a little site about each with up-to-date information and a more modern mobile-friendly look-and-feel. Could be a fun weekend project and since I go to Stinson Beach a few times a year it will be easy to update over time. Andrew Rosner from MediaOptions did something similar before NamesCon Portugal and whipped up a really handy site on things to do in Lisbon that myself and a number of other attendees used.

Relaxing on Stinson Beach

This afternoon we relaxed on the beach and then headed home in the early afternoon. I’m headed to Los Angeles tomorrow for a conference so I wanted to make sure to get time to pack and get ready for the week ahead. For those who are curious about the conference it’s called PI Apparel and it’s the main conference focused on innovation in the apparel industry. Companies like Nike, Patagonia, Lands End and many more attend and I’m in back-to-back meetings all day every day.

California Coast

On that note, I have to finish packing, have some dinner, and head to bed. So I’ll leave you with this photo that I took on the drive back. The California coast never ceases to amaze me with it’s beauty, and there’s nothing like spending a weekend in paradise to get me back in the zone for a busy week.

I hope you all had a great weekend, if you’ve been to Stinson Beach before feel free to share one of your favorite memories below.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton