5 miles of hiking • 0' elevation gain • 1 night
Picked up someones cancelation for Sunday when I realized that it would be a full moon. Normally this is booked solid even on weekdays. My office is only 11 miles away, so I double-checked that the campground had showers, and made sure I had no meetings at work before 10:00. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite like coming in to work on Monday after having been on the beach all day Sunday and having walked along the beach in the morning before work.
My friend Dan from Austin was in town this weekend and I was very grateful to have him join.
The campsite is tiny lots for RVs, and not really that much to look at, but the beach is super nice. You can set up your tent on the beach during the day and watch the sunset, it's quite a treat. We brough a solar panel and charged our phones and ipads in the tent, and then cooked dinner on the beach by digging a hole for a windscreen However setting up the tent at night in the campsite is a bit harder, especially since the ground is very hard. BRING A HAMMER if you're going to stake into the ground. I really like falling asleep to the sound of the ocean (I used to go sailing a lot with my dad when I was younger, I love the sea). Normally this is for car campers... so now on to hiking...
There are trails along the beach, but we "hiked" on the beach. It's about 2 miles out, and then another 2 back. Wear sunscreen. There's some cool cliffs just a little way down, on which you can see the erosion that menaces California's beaches. There are trees that stick out on top, as if their roots were a balcony, but the soil around them is gone. There's a few ravines that make some edges into the cliff.
At night, when the moon is full we went hiknig yet again about a mile out and back after setting up the tent. Oceans are surreal at night under full moons. You don't need a flashlight, but it's not quite bright enough to seem real. A bit like being in a movie.
We got a bit of a surprise in the morning when it started raining.
The showers are coin-op, and they (along with the restrooms) are not the cleanest thing in the world but that's probably because they get heavy heavy usage, and because the sand from the beach.
I would recommend this for a relaxing trip, but there's no serious hiking to be had, and no serenity in the camp. I definitely recommend it on Sunday nights especially if you work in San Mateo.
