You'll Never Find Your Gold on a Sandy Beach

... but you can find solitude.

And that's what we did when we went to Point Reyes two weeks ago. After our beautiful hike to Chimney Rock we felt a walk on the beach might be just the ticket. Drakes Beach is easily accessible and we thought it might be very crowded on this warm day, but to our surprise there weren't many people there. We were almost on our own here and pretty much had the beach all to ourselves.

It was so nice walking on the sand, listening to the waves and feeling the sun on our faces. I was looking for shells but mainly found empty crab shells as leftover from some seagull dinner, and even a jellyfish. We usually don't see too many jellies here.

We watched the sea playing with this - thing? I have no idea what it is, and if you know I would appreciate if you told me. There are quite a lot of these long marine plants (I assume) to be found on our beaches, they are lightweight and have some kind of seaweed attached to it.
Update: A friend told me on Facebook that it is Giant Sea Kelp. I actually should have known that...

Even here in this kind of protected bay a lot of driftwood has been washed ashore, and the ice plant is gently covering it.

Finally, we went to a beach further to the North, McClures Beach. Here you actually have to descend the cliffs through a canyon - it's about a 15 minutes walk and the reward is an almost empty beach. However, the weather has changed as it so often does on the coast in Northern California. Gone was the sun and the blue skies, somewhere above the marine layer that spread over the coast.

The walk along the beach was still beautiful, though.

Until we happened about this crab. The waves had washed it up, but strangely enough the seagulls that were close by weren't interested in it. We assumed that they don't like live crabs since they can't figure out how to avoid getting pinched by the claws. That poor crab was helplessly wiggling its legs and starting to blow bubbles. Another wave threw it further up on the sand. The "beast" was pretty big and I wondered how to grab it to save its life. Just when I had asked the Geek this question the crab got on its hind legs and stared at me.

Don't you think it's pleading with me to save it? So I grabbed it around its shell, running with it towards the waves and throwing it back into the ocean (and, of course, getting wet while doing that). It never turned up again, so I guess it made it - and I was happy about that.

After that heroic deed we had to climb back up the cliffs and into the fog.

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