Long walks on the beach

I just came back from a 5 day 4 night backpacking trip on the Lost Coast Trail. The Lost Coast is a section of California coastline north of wine country. Back when they were building Highway 1, which is a beautiful road that goes along the entire Cali coast, this section was deemed too rugged to build on. It is the last untouched section of coast in the whole state. Basically, this trip was a long walk on the beach.

If I had an online dating profile, it would say the following:

Dear gentlemen,

If you would like to take me for a long walk on the beach, your proposal should be supplemented by the following information:
1. Tide charts.
2. Accurate weather report.
3. Beach type: sand, pebbles, rocks: small, medium or large.
4. Insects present. Please note particularly whether there are any jumping maggots.

Love, potentially,
J

My fiance C--says I come off as a huge nerd with this letter. But let me explain.

Point 1: Tides. At anything but the lowest of tides, you may be forced to walk on dry-ish sand. Therefore your feet will sink with every step you take. You walking speed falls from 3mph to1mph. Assuming a long walk on the beach is at least 8 miles long, this could be 8 hours pure misery.

Point 2: Weather report. Look, what if a large wave almost bowls you over so that you have to dry off in the sun. If it's hot and sunny, you get sun burned. On the backs of your knees. Wtf.

Point 3: Terrain type. The correct answers are sand, which gets compacted into a nice, hard walking surface,  and large rocks, which you can hop on. The other two are why I can't walk today.

Point 4: Jumping maggots. They hop up, land on their backs, then writhe to right themselves. They only eat sea weed, but sometimes they land in your shoe. Then you've gotta do the jumping maggot dance. I guess that's kinda fun . . .

Anyway . . . this trip was actually 3 really good days of hiking, and one miserable, hot day of hiking. The scenery is beautiful. There are cliffs with mist rolling down through the naked salt-worn pines. There are grassy meadows with small private houses that can only be reached by private plane. There are groundwater creeks and large green creeks. On the really miserably hot day, we hid by a little creek in a gorge. The rock had a slight overhang, and we clung underneath it like mollusks as the sun slowly ate away at the little shade we had found. While there was shade, the creek was pleasant and cool. There were dragonflies.

Plus, we say all sorts of cool animals. There were sea lions. Mostly, they sunned themselves on rocks, but there was this one sea lion that followed us in the water for a little bit. He even raised his leg-flippers when we were taking his picture so that we could get a better view!

We saw a stag with a ton of antlers. We didn't get quite close enough to get a clear picture because I didn't want to make friends with those antlers.

Also, there were bears. The first day, we saw bear prints on the sand. I guess bears enjoy long walks on the beach. The last night, we had heard there was an aggressively food-seeking bear near our campsite. At dust, apparently, the group of hunters camped out next to us even had to chase him away. So that night we put our bear canisters far from our packs, which were far from where we slept. The next morning, the bear cans were scattered all over the place. There were claw marks in the sand next to mine and C--'s. Ja--, the guy we went with, had his bear can rolled down the sand for a bit. The thing is, a bear can has a screw-on lid, with these two notches that you have to press in before you can turn it. By rolling the can in the sand, the bear had managed to undo one of the two notches! Sooo smart! We took detailed photos of this crime scene. Since nothing and no-one got hurt, it was pretty awesome.

Oh! edit: Also in the category of "we didn't die so it was awesome": We saw a baby rattle snake! It was chillin' on a rock. Its rattler was pretty small, and it flicked it at us rather lazily. We were maybe 2-3 feet away, but its head was facing away from us. But yeah, I'm glad nothing happened, because apparently, the babies are the worst. After this incident, I read on our camping permit that rattlesnakes are more likely to chill in driftwood piles. I read this after I had been happily using driftwood logs as easy ways over annoying rocky bits. But I guess it makes sense. The ocean twists driftwood sticks into serpentine pieces of white and grey wood, which would be a great snake camoflauge. The driftwood snakes (not the real ones!) are also great fire-starters. So I didn't stay away from them too much, but I did make sure that all bits of driftwood I picked up were inert.

Now we're back. I look forward to walking 0 miles today. Except to the pharmacy to get some aloe vera.