Sept. 18 Half Moon Bay

Random roadside farm

We set out today for Fitzgerald Marine Sanctuary. It is in Half Moon Bay, a cool coastal town a little south of San Francisco. We heard there were tidal pools there that you can walk out and explore during low tide! This is exactly the type of thing we love to do so we typed the destination into the GPS and off we went. We were surprised, as we have been so many times, that the journey was as cool as the destination! The drive took us down a small 2 lane road that wound around the mountainside. There were many pumpkin patch type farms along the way and quite a few flower farms. So pretty.

Also, best surprise, Half Moon Bay is full of organic produce farms! There are roadside farmer market type stops that sell produce grown right there, all organic, so inexpensive. We saw so many brussel sprout, artichoke, carrot, pumpkin fields...unbelievable. Many acres of incredible oceanview property is home to brussel sprouts! We shopped at 2 different stands and bought bsprouts, artichokes, tomatoes, corn, garlic, basil,  peas in the pod, potatoes, kiwi and peppers! Oh and of course, a small pumpkin. All for about $30...by the way, they do not take credit cards and this is not an ATM type area...so glad we were prepared!

We finally made it to the marine sanctuary. It was almost 2:00 and low tide was about a 1/2 hour away, so we headed on down the walk. Wooden stairs took you down to the beach area. There were signs around warning not to take anything away and to watch for harbor seals. Cool. Sure enough, just as we had heard, all along the shore, the tidal pools were exposed in the out going tide. It was just as you would picture. There were a few other folks there, less than I expected for such a neat place. Anyway, we got right out into it and within minutes found anemones, fish, starfish, snails and hermit crabs. We saw quite a few seals as well in the distance. We walked and wandered around there for about an hour. We met a couple of Hokies, from Richmond out there...Rick told them we were JMU folks and they nodded at that irony.

Since we had such a fun time yesterday in Santa Cruz, and we felt a little bad that Rick missed it, we decided to drive south down the coast to Santa Cruz. It was an amazing drive. Just really beautiful scenery with cliffs and beaches and coastline.

A great deal of fog was coming in for part of the drive and when we got to Santa Cruz the fog was very heavy at the point where the big wave surfers hang out. We watched them anyway....by the time we drove out onto the wharf, the fog cleared and it was sunny. So strange how that works.
Very cool day. We can now check off -walk a tidal pool , from the list.