the lost coast - day two

The morning of day two was cold and clean and heavy with moisture. I think I leaned up against the side of the tent during the night, and as a result the condensation pooled and soaked through my sleeping bag and led to my rising early. I unzipped the tent, stepped clumsily over Andy, and went poking around the area surrounding the campsite.

Drops of moisture were everywhere, hanging off of evergreen tips, suspended on tree branches. I sipped some drops off of trees as I followed the scent of ceanothus and examined all the lichens and flowers and stones underfoot. I took care of morning business and listened to the stream running off into the rolling ocean waves, and after all this quiet time I picked my way back to the tent to find Andy starting up some coffee and squinting at me through eyes that had been in a deep sleep only moments before. We had a hot breakfast of oatmeal and torn-up dried apricots, swiss cheese croissants and coffee and spiced tea, then Andy packed up the tent and we readied ourselves for the second day of hiking.

Did I mention the black sand beaches? I love that this beach exists. I want to visit every beach with black sand in the world. There would be stretches of this sand, then outcroppings of boulders, then fields of medium-to-large rocks, and this constant change in terrain really wore out my feet, but the change kept it interesting. And then there would be breaks along the beach and the cliffs where the streams cut through and run out to the ocean and some of these were so gorgeous we would stop just to stare and take it in.

About midday we began to notice the tide pools on the edges of the shore, and we would take breaks to explore them. We saw one ochre sea star, a lot of mussels and snails, kelp and various seaweeds. We spotted one sea urchin rasping along a rock and cormorants and seagulls flying and taking breaks on some of the bigger boulders at sea. Since the tide had gone out tons of sea treasures were left strewn on the beach and gave us new things to focus on...so fun!

Walking along the beach got old (wet sand and heavy packs, ooog) so it was great to go up into the hills covered in wildflowers (hooray!) and poison oak (nooo) and trek along on dirt for a while. And with the mist rolling off the mountains towards the shore, the sun intermittently shining hard and then peeking out from behind sheets of grey clouds, day two was a pleasant and almost easy hike compared to day one...!