Montaña de Oro State Park

November 30, 2020

A short, lazy post for a short, lazy day. Neither one of us woke up too inspired to take a bike ride, so we opted for a hike instead. Even though it’s only 10 miles away, we drove to Montaña de Oro State Park, the spot that looks like it has the best hiking around. Cars are so corrupting!

We were glad we did though, once we approached the park. The final four miles look just a bit scary, in normal circumstances - a squiggly, up and down ride through a eucalyptus forest on a vey narrow, shoulderless road. I didn’t even like driving on it that much, really. Today though it’s especially scary because there’s a big construction project underway and huge gravel haulers are running up and down the road. I really wouldn’t care to be passed by one of these on this road while biking.

It’s worth getting to though. What a splendid park! Montaña de Oro is a large property, with seven miles of spectacular coastline and miles of trails along the coast and into the hilly interior. Today we took a walk into what is probably the least frequented section, the grassy sand dunes at the north end. After some tough walking through the dunes we made our way down to the shore, poked around the fascinating rock formations before reversing ourselves and struggling back up. This part of the park was almost totally isolated - I think we only saw a single other person once we left the parking lot.

We took a second hike further south in the park, but this is enough for one post so we’ll stop here. I feel sure we’ll be back for a second look before we leave town, and we’ll feature a different section then.

Sand Verbena, according to the park brochure.

These puzzled me. You see them everywhere, in large concentrations.

It looks like they’re the dried blossoms of an ice plant.

We have the place to ourselves today. We saw one other person wandering the dunes today, and no one at all on the beach.

Such a strange beach. Those rounded mounds are especially curious.

The shoreline is carved with deep, slender inlets following the axis of folded strata.

Heading back. We’d like to have been able to just walk back along the beach, but the beach disappeared on us.

For some reason Rachael was sure everyone would find this humorous.

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