Accessing the Intertidal

 I'd heard that if you park at Doran Beach Regional Park and walk north along the beach, you will come to a rocky area at the edge of Pinnacle Beach which has some pretty good tide pooling.  Since I started to lose mobility, I've been thinking about trying it, but could never get anyone to go with me.  Then I went through the stage where I couldn't do anything without my walker, and I tried to stop event thinking about it.  But yesterday I was doing pretty well with a cane, and Cay and I took the drive down to Bodega Bay to give it a shot.

The first concern was whether or not the path to the beach would have an area that was too steep for me.  I was wearing my Columbia hikers with orthopedic insoles, and although my walker was in the car, I was relying on my cane for a walk for the first time in a long time.  Happily, the biggest problem was walking on the soft, shifting sand, but once I got down to the more packed, still moist sand below the tide line, it worked out really well.

So, on to the photos: 

It was a bit of a walk, butwe stopped along the way several times to look at things along the beach. I can see it from here, but Cay couldn't:

"Mole Crab"

As we got to the rocky area, we were treated to all our old favorites:

The great thing about this area is that there was plenty of sand between the rocks, which allowed a lot of rocks to be viewed.  There was very little in the pools themselves, in those areas where the rocks were either indented enough or close together enough to hold water.

But the now exposed and dry rocks were covered with life, and in many places, had plenty of room to get around them to see everything:

The most difficult part of the trip was the return to our parking area, because by the time we got back toward Doran, the sand had been well churned up by the passage of a number of people and horses.  None-the-less, I noted that I was not the only person walking on the beach using a cane, and that while walking in the sand was more difficult than at our arrival, it wasn't unduly so, and we made it back to the car without any issues.

All in all, between the trip up the beach, meandering among the rocks, and back down the beach, we did a little over 4 miles of walking.  It gave me hope that I will not have to completely give up on the coastal activities that I love.