Now that the politcs are out of the way for a while (unless you live in LA), I thought it high time to get outside and back to nature. I was dying to go to the beach, luckily, my ward had a hike planned for yesterday. It was fantastic!
First of all, I have to say that I’m not a fan of Northern California beaches. I don’t like seaweed, I don’t like cold, I don’t like rocky beaches. That said, I WILL TAKE ANY BEACH (oceanic, no lake beaches!), ANY DAY over no beach at all. Have I mentioned this before? Lol.
We started out around 8am from Walnut Creek and reached Pt Reyes by 9:15. We made really good time. If anyone is familiar with the whole highway 24/580/101/1 interchange system, you’ll know that if we had left a couple hours later, the trip would have taken around twice as long. Yes, on a Saturday. Bumper to bumper traffic. It’s heinous... The point is, we made good time. Great time, actually.
We took the Laguna trail from the Youth Hostel (yes, we actually have at least one Youth Hostel in America!) down to Coast Camp and hit “Sculpture” beach. It was fantastic! The rocks are like living sculptures carved out by eons of wind, sand and water. The rocks themselves range from creamy whites to grays.
Tons of sea-life, mussels, anemones, sand dollars & starfish. Beautiful!
We hoofed it about a mile down the beach to where the rocks cut off the beach, hopped down and kept going, exploring caves and poking anemones as we went. (Watch out, they'll squirt ya!)
We finally reached an arch that we had to maneuver through as the waves receded to make it around the point.
I didn’t do so well, I’m not gonna lie. I'm not the most graceful/balanced person in the world. Not even close. I slipped right in, drenching myself through all of my layers and dunking my lovely new(ish) digital SLR. Great.
The biggest concern at this point was not the camera (it’s under warranty still) but the cold. We were a good three miles of sand and hills away from the car, we weren’t done with the hike, it was drizzling rain (from the fog) up to that point, but had just started to actually rain. Thank goodness for the priesthood. Between them and my backpack, we had everything we needed (to make sure Kamikazee Christy survived, lol). I had the first aid kid (for my bleeding cuts and scrapes) and they had towels and a spare fleece. Couldn’t do anything about my soaking shorts but ring them out. Did a quick change and then joined the group in the mouth of a cave for lunch watching the waves and the rain. We explored a bit more and then headed back. Luckily I had some dry socks, shoes and pants in the car (a must when going to the beach in NorCal), so I changed and got all warm and toasty for the ride home… No cold, no pneumonia, just a really fun day!
