Somewhere on the Sonoma coast, August 1999

Last Monday I concluded my tale of our overnight trip to the coast in July 1998; this week I’m continuing the ocean theme with photos from the impulsive day trip I took with the Big Guy back in August 1999. Yes — we drove more than 200 miles round trip in a single day just for the brief chance to escape our daily routine and hopefully catch a few surf perch.

As usual, we stopped briefly at Doran Beach to collect our ghost shrimp. It’s become my job to grab each shrimp and drop it into our bait bucket, keeping count so we’ll know when we reach the legal limit. This time, while I was waiting around for a shrimp to grab, I snapped a rather blurry picture of a feisty fiddler crab. You can also see four of the small holes where ghost shrimp like to hang out.

After we had our limit of shrimp, we headed north up Highway 1. I have no idea where along the coast the Big Guy decided to fish that day; all I know is that the wind was blowing like mad, and there were a lot of rocks everywhere I looked. And I do mean everywhere.

August 1999

I did manage to find some tide pools among the rocks; I’m not sure what sort of seashore creatures they may have held because my single photo shows only a couple of sea urchin shells.

The coastal scenery and the ocean were as beautiful as ever, and it was certainly good to get away from the valley heat for awhile — but both the Big Guy and I decided that single-day trips to the coast were just too stressful, and the next time we visited we would plan ahead and stay overnight.

Next week, I’ll tell you about yet another of our coastal escapes, this one in the summer of 2000, including our stay near the Russian River in a lovely motel that seemed ready to slide right into the deep blue sea.