Northern California's Pacific Coastline

The next several posts cover places we visited up to two weeks ago.  We apologize for the lag in uploading material, but 1) San Francisco is the kind of place that begs to be experienced—not the kind of place you spend hours penning the next post; and 2) government shutdown.  So here is your first post about the California Coast:

From many locations in our travels we were in contact with the Pacific Ocean, and with this post we'd like to focus on our experience with the Norther California's coastline. Our first exposure with this iconic feature was in Crescent City, CA, our jumping off point for the Redwoods. The weather here was raw with cold rain and fierce winds, and the surf was actually a bit terrifying. The roar from the ocean was substantial and the danger presented by the waves was real. The rule, "never turn your back on the ocean" was heeded here so that no one got snatched away to sea where, as the guidebooks say, survival is unlikely.  I captured this photo from my iPhone while the girls and Ellen stayed dry and warm in the van.

As you might remember, we had some wet camping gear from our stay at Crater Lake when we first got to Redwoods, so we made the most of the some limited sunshine one afternoon and laid things out on the beach to dry. Unfortunately we broke the first ocean rule, and a sneaker wave caught us by surprise, dragging our tent into the surf. Acting as fast as we could we ran to grab the tent as a wave grabbed from the other side. We saved the tent, but it was a small consolation because it was even wetter, sandier, and saltier than we would have ever liked. Fortunately we had enough sunshine and wind and that was enough to dry things out.

One of the most striking features we observed from this coast are the enormous seastacks that remain along the coast where less durable sedimentary sandstones and mudstones have been eroded away. The seastacks are composed of silicious rocks like chert and stand strong in the surf creating lots of rocky habitat for tidepool and surf zone organisms.


Because the ocean was whipped up from the stormy weather we were unable to get a real satisfying glimpse of the tidepools around MacKerricher State Park (we remain so thankful that we had such a great tidepool experience on the coast of Oregon). We did find many hermit crabs, sea anemones, washed up kelp, and in the distance, harbor seals.







While camping at MacKerricher, we also had the chance to go to Glass Beach.  As the ranger told us, "it's not like what you see in the pictures."  Yes, it's a place where you can find great little pieces of white, blue, green, and brown sea glass, but you're constantly reminded that the only reason there's glass on the beach is because it was a dump.  The people of Ft. Bragg no longer dump their household waste off a cliff and into the Pacific, but the remains of that history are well displayed.  Glass Beach provided a priceless lesson in the 3 Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle.

For the full set of photos from our stay at MacKerricher, go here.