Sunset Beach State Park February 7-9

Day 10, 11, 12:  Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, February 7, 8, 9   Sunset Beach State Park, Watsonville, CA

We checked into our campsite at Sunset Beach, which is full of yellow flowers, green grass (unmowed), and trees.  It is right next to rolling hills covered with strawberry plants – I will notice in a couple of months when I am buying California strawberries from Watsonville!  

Ocean view from our campground

Our campsite

Strawberry fields, viewed from the park, each plant with
a little hole poked in the plastic above it

We drove down to Moss Landing and up the Elkhorn Slough road, stopping at Kirby Park and walking up along the slough trail.  We saw Long-Billed Curlews, Western Plovers, and got a great picture of a Marbled Godwit.   We also saw a sea otter, on its back, munching on the shellfish it had picked up diving down to the mud.  Back at the campground we walked up on the hill and had our evening glass of wine with a beautiful view of the sunset over the sea.

Sunset at Sunset Beach State Park.  Wow!

Elkhorn Slough

Sea otter on his back munching shellfish

Marbled Godwit

Monday we drove down to Watsonville, found a place to park, and rode our bikes on the bike path that is on the dike along Pajaro Creek.  We rode to the east end of the trail, along homeless camps, strawberry fields, a riparian area with lots of birds, some manufactured homes in a row that looked grim.  (On the way back we rode along the front of these homes, which had porches full of plants and flowers that showed these folks had pride in their homes!)  We rode to the far west end of the path, to near Pajaro Dunes Resort, then back, for a total of 18 miles.  Flat, but often headwinds!  A nice dinner and another pretty sunset, and a walk around the campground with Sarah.

Tuesday we put our kayaks in at Kirby Park, lucky with sunshine and a peak tide at the time we were there, so we paddled upstream as the tide was coming in, and back downstream as it was going out.  This was a 6 ft tide, very high.  We paddled over sand flats with plants sticking up, and Jim felt his kayak scrape a couple of times.  Time to cut back on snacks!  It was a beautiful day, and we saw Egrets, Cormorants, various ducks.  

Pelican

High tide at Elkhorn Slough

Lots of birds!

In the afternoon we visited Carolyn Graefe, who was a Stanford friend of Linda’s and now lives in Aptos, CA.  Jim did an Auto Store errand while the ladies had a great time catching up with their lives!  After dinner we walked around the campground, again enjoyed a sunset at Sunset Beach!

Campground trees and flowers

Another sunset at Sunset Beach

Wednesday morning we walked down to the beach and along the ocean.  No dogs are allowed here on the beach, so there were many shore birds.  They are particularly trying to protect the Western Snowy Plover, which nests on the sand and is an endangered species.