When we left Santa Cruz we thought we’d head up to Half Moon Bay for a couple of days before going on to San Francisco for Mitch’s kayak symposium. But about 40 minutes outside of Santa Cruz we stumbled upon a private campground, a KOA actually, that was kind of in the middle of nowhere, relatively speaking, and decided to stay. It turned out to be a great spot.
The camping sites were fairly well spaced for a private campground and again, we could see the ocean from our site (if the campground hadn’t been mostly empty, we wouldn’t have had that luxury). The bathroom/laundry facilities each had saunas and outdoor fireplaces. The campground shared the property with a small lodge and so they also had a restaurant that served great local beer.
After unhooking we decided to explore up the coast and check out Half Moon Bay. We really both wanted to see Mavericks. A person would never just stumble upon Mavericks. It isn’t signed. Even when you get there, you are not really sure you are there. You have to know when to turn off of the highway and then you drive through a very industrial-looking area and then make a couple of other unnatural turns. Finally you see parking for a trailhead. You walk close to a mile on a trail out to a beach and a headland with big doppler radar on top of it. We saw a jetty that resembled the one showed over and over in the news clips and we saw a big sign that said the waves could be very dangerous.
Finally, we saw a rock with “Foo” carved into it (the name of the professional surfer killed here) and figured that it must be the spot. The swell wasn’t big enough the day we went to have any organized waves so it was hard to envision what it must look like when it is working. It looked like an extremely unforgiving piece of real estate, though.
The next day we biked from our campground up Pacific Coast Highway for about 10 miles and then turned inland 2 miles to a little town called Pescadero. It was so cute! We had a great lunch at the local market, bought some garlic/artichoke bread, and then went to a goat milk dairy just on the outskirts of town. They had a dairy store open for sampling. I absolutely love goat’s milk cheese. Mitch hates it. So I had a great time. There were so many choices but I ended up getting a cranberry/walnut variety.
We took a different road back to our campground which was a little bit of a risk since we forgot to bring a map with us. But it worked out. The road climbed and dipped and skirted a state park and then followed a creek through a beautiful forest until it ended about a mile north of our destination.
After our bike ride we went to the beach for sunset. Can a day be more perfect?
Let's Take This Outside 