![]() ![]() On a grand scale, there is the arroyo spanned by the Golden Gate Bridge, which, were it not for the enormous volume of the current there, would've been blocked by a grand barrier beach, and have made the whole of San Francisco Bay its lagoon. Though Highway One is mostly bedded above the cliff on the loamy shelf amid the artichoke fields, every few miles it dives into an arroyo, skirts the sand at the floor of the canyon, then rises again to the top of the bluff. These appear like a repeated motif in the coastal landscape. So to get down to the beach, you need to find an arroyo. The ocean has carved this palisade of cliffs into the limestone, cliffs that drop a hundred feet from the edge of a flat field to a fringe of yellow beach blasted by the surf, a beach that may disappear entirely at high tide, when the waves break straight into the cliff's base. It steps up from the beach to the redwood-crowned Santa Cruz Mountains in terraces of marine limestone, cakey and blond at the road cuts. This coast is land risen from the waters. The path came down the slope through the thistles and cow parsnips and hemlock, met the stream at the floor of the little valley, then disappeared into sand dunes, beyond which the ocean opened its broad, bright face. Meadowlarks and red-winged blackbirds sang down there in the reeds, and as the trail descended beneath the rim, it got warm and quiet in the windbreak. At its rim I looked down on the tops of the small willows that filled it, the stream audible but not visible beneath them. There was no "Private Property" sign to be seen. From the road, a well-tamped trail ran westward toward the ocean, along the edge of a field of brussels sprouts. ![]() I saw two cars parked on the shoulder of the coast highway, one of them with racks for surfboards, and pulled over. The arroyo I descended to get here also merited no name on the map. The sand is tawny and hot sea lions hoot from the rocks offshore. Except for three surfers, a half-mile out by the point, I have the place to myself. On this unnamed beach somewhere between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, the sea cliff to my back barricades the sands and me from the rest of the continent. And to the north along Highway One stretch some of the most pristine, deserted beaches of the California coast. Within the city limits are probably a dozen good beaches - broad ones with volleyball nets, rocky coves, beaches for teens and beaches for sunbathers, and at least two world-class surfing beaches, Pleasure Point and Steamer Lane. On the higher ground above the river's floodplain sits a settled residential community, stucco and tile-roofed California bungalows between tall Victorians crowned with widow's walks. Its small older hotels have neon deco signs and names like The Sand and Sea and The Magic Carpet. It has a pleasant, sun-warped appearance. Santa Cruz is a surfing town and a college town. So Santa Cruz is warm, and though it is only two hours from chilly San Francisco, it feels hours farther south, with its palms and its surfers, its crowded beaches and its boardwalk. The coastal mountains inland and the broad harbor of Monterey Bay protect the town from the wind and the open ocean. I follow the surfers' vans south down the coast, for a day at some secret beach along Highway One, or for a weekend at Santa Cruz - a real beach town with good waves and a roller coaster.Īt Santa Cruz, the West Coast manages to face the sunny south. So I still manage, in the Eastern manner, to find a beach about two hours away - to make the ocean a real destination. This has always seemed a little unreal to me, as a transplanted Washingtonian, having the ocean so close to the city that you smell the salt as you go to do your laundry. Window._PLUGIN_STATE_ = JSON.On clear days, the Pacific winks at you from the ends of the avenues on the west side of San Francisco. ![]()
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