My Beach Sunburn! Ocean at Shelter Cove!

Black Beach, Shelter Cove, California

 

Warning Sign on Black Beach

This is DEFINITELY bigger than a horse trough!!  This is Black Beach near Shelter Cove and the beach was all this black gravel/rock.  Near the water is was smaller but never sand grain size and then became larger up towards the shore.  It was deep and hard to walk in.  Warning signs were posted all over about the dangerous rip tides and to stay out of the water.  Sadly, my friend told me, people ignore the warnings and there are several drownings every year on this beach.

 We had my friend's Patterdale terrier with us and she found a place to cool off at Black Beach in a small fresh water creek that ran to the ocean.

 

People on the beach at Shelter Cove

We then drove south to this beach but I don't recall it's name.  It's the cove part of the shoreline and here people were swimming and sailing.

Just beyond the rocks you can see a sailboat in the distance from the shore at the cove.

 

We had lunch at this nice cafe with a patio overlooking the ocean.  I had fish and chips.  Is there anything else to order for lunch on your day at the Beach?  The seagulls were very experienced scavengers at this place; they perched on the roof just waiting for you to drop something.

Seal Beach

After lunch we went over to Seal Beach where we saw.........(drumroll) SEALS!  They are kinda like rock slugs. Not much action there.  This beach had California sea lions.  The males were huge and one male wanted to go back in the water so he inched down and then waited for wave action to lift him off.  It must be very hard for them to navigate around on the rocks.

A view of some of the homes in Shelter Cove.

While at this point of the beach we could hear all this commotion.  It was the bird above, and another one who were doing some sort of ritual thing.  Maybe a mating dance? Or mating shout-out would have been more like it.  We watched them for quite some time.

This was my last day in California and I got sunburned!  So when I got back to Wyoming I made SURE to tell everyone I got the sunburn at the beach!  LOL.

It was a wonderful trip with a great traveling partner, and I saw many of my good friends and visited their farms and horses, and basked in their wonderful hospitality.  Thanks to all of you.  YOU ROCK!

(In fact, we had such a great trip for 2011 we are planning on riding the Amtrak Coast Starlight, probably south from Sacramento!)

And now back to my regular rambling blog.  Hope y'all enjoyed the trip.