Pillar point, Princeton by the sea

Sunday, 25 May 2014

Jacky and I started out at a reasonable hour, drove to Half Moon Bay. Well, more precisely, we drove to Princeton-by-the-sea. Left the car and wandered west along the shore.

Inside the breakwater, the beach is covered with what looks like spinach. Yummy!

I’m told that this is radar for SFO air traffic control. I often see this distinctive landmark from high on the ridge on my Purisima open space hikes.

Beyond the breakwater, the world-class surfing area Mavericks. Not much going on today.

But if you’re less insistent about mammoth waves beyond the breakwater, you can at least find interesting shells washed ashore. Inside the breakwater, just fine sand and spinach.

A motorized paraglider came over and disappeared behind the cliffs. A few minutes later, he returned and flew back inshore.

Although we started by walking along the beach, we couldn’t resist going on up the cliffs for the high view. Nice.

There were at least three of these crosses. Surfers who didn’t make it, maybe? Or just hikers who got too close to the edge?

Not excessively worried about getting too close to the edge, a millipede. Just about the only small animal we saw, other than birds.

We walked back into Princeton, wandered around the marina.

The beat-up rusty tubs are more interesting than the fancy boats. They have to offer a business case for their existence. Well, so do the fancy boats, if they are used for charter, but many of them are just luxury items.

Here we see three or four cyclists purchasing fresh seafood directly from the fisherman. I thought it would be necessary for the fisherman to provide enough ice to support some amount of delay in getting the fish home, and indeed, the cyclists were carrying good-sized plastic bags, doubtless packed with crushed ice as well as fish.

The clam chowder smelled good, but there was a line, so we went on into Half Moon Bay and ate at our favourite Mexican restaurant. Then a stroll around the HMB streets, and home.

Traffic heading toward the coast was moving along at a pretty good pace, which is surprising for early afternoon on a weekend. It’s usually stop and go by that time of day. But at the foot of highway 92, we came upon any number of emergency vehicles; they were still working on a downed motorcyclist, and westbound traffic was backed up well beyond I-280. Glad we hadn’t been caught in that mess.

Tags: Half Moon Bay, Mavericks surf, Pillar Point, Princeton-by-the-sea