View of Stump Beach from the Bluff Trail, behind the sea stack

We had seen the sign indicating Stump Beach plenty of times before, but on this trip we stopped to check it out. Once down on the beach, the Big Guy headed south along the cliffs to find a good fishing spot; I lingered on the beach for a few minutes before following him. Besides spotting a trio of harbor seals that seemed to be bottling just offshore, I was fascinated by the black sea stack on the north side of the cove. Its black horizontal ridges proved that it had once been part of the adjacent cliffs. A couple of days later, we returned to Stump Beach and hiked the Bluff Trail, which took us up along the northern side of the cove.

All but the first picture above were shot with a Nikon D3500, using a 70-300 mm lens — my very first time using this awesome camera, which I was able to check out from the Library of Things through the Sacramento Public Library.

One of the sleepy seals

A pair of black oystercatchers, seen from the Bluff Trail