Tidepools and Foggy Coastlines - Salt Point

I’ve been at my cubicle for the past 3 months. Ever since winter started, I’ve been hibernating.

For the first weekend in a while, circumstances aligned and I had enough energy, time, and decent weather to head outdoors. So when my friend invited me to go on a hike with her coworkers, I couldn’t turn it down… even if it meant waking up at 6 in the morning on a Saturday.

Located about 100 miles north of San Francisco lies Salt Point State Park. With over 6000 acres of forests, fields, sandstone features, and beautiful CA coasts… I’ve been meaning to come explore this area for over a year after hearing about it through friends of friends.

Salt Point around 10am:

I’ve actually never been this far north on the Californian Coast. My friend’s coworker is an avid hiker and has explored the area a few times before; she led the hike and shared with us different lookout points, historical sites, and cool waterfall spots. At the parking lot, there were at least 2, 3 cars parked with scuba divers getting their gear ready. Pretty exciting.

Waterfall… I forgot my gorillapod.

The fog was ebbing throughout the day, providing a mysterious haze to our hike… the last time I hiked in the fog was a few years ago when I camped at a hike-in campsite at Pt.Reyes.

It was such a cool ethereal experience, with just the 4 of us hiking along the lush greenery on the foggy coast. It was mostly empty for the majority of our day there.

There are a lot of tidepools and mushrooms to be found as well. Though we didn’t forage for mushrooms, we did find quite a few tide pools with a lot of mussels and sea urchins! Salt Point site advises against eating them though, due to high levels of toxins.