With some of the lowest tides of the year falling on the weekend of the first of May, we headed out to one of our favorite spots: Salt Creek / Crescent Beach / Tongue Point Recreation Area. We are so fortunate to have this jewel right in our backyard. It really is 3 places rolled into one: a huge camping area with saltwater views and other spots tucked into trees, playgrounds for kids, horseshoe pits, basketball courts, picnic areas, and trails that lead to WWII bunkers hidden in the hills; a nearby beach where you can flake out on the sand, run with your dog, surf, kayak, and watch seabirds and even an occasional whale; and a rocky area that is one of the best places I know of to go explore the world beneath the tides.

We had the grandkids with us, so we went for all of these. The wind never dropped much below 30 knots the entire weekend, but showers were scattered among sunbreaks, and with enough layers, the weather doesn’t seem to matter much. Even though it seems almost silly to go camping at a place that is only 45 minutes from home, you don’t quite experience the full impact of this place on simple day trips.

Sure, it is always fun to look for hermit crabs and make sea anemones close up around your finger in tidepools, or to holler inside a dark, concrete bunker and listen for echoes, or to slide down a spiral blue tube and land in a pile of sawdust (yes, even grandma did this!).

But it’s sitting around a campfire, telling stories about raccoons and cougars in the nearby woods, passing out from exhaustion while listening to the ocean rolling in and the wind rustling through the trees, snuggling in between grandparents when you wake up in the middle of the night because it’s a wild place out there, and then waking up in the early morning and having 3-bears’ mush and hot cocoa – oh yeah, that’s what it’s about.

Pictured here are

  • Anthopleura xanthogrammica: green sea anemone (open & closed)
  • Codium fragile: dark green branching algae
  • Katharina tunicata: black chiton
  • Mytilus californianus: huge mussels
  • Pollicipes polymerus: gooseneck barnacles
  • Solaster stimpsoni: seastar starfish
  • Strongylocentrotus purpuratus: purple sea urchin (the underside)
  • Some tube worms that look like a sponge but are not – still looking these up!
  • Lots of kelp and algae and hermit crabs and more!

My favorite book for looking up sea critters is the Eugene Kozloff classic, “Seashore Life of the Northern Pacific Coast.” I have an older version, dated 1983 – but I see there are newer versions out now that cover the entire west coast of BC, WA, OR, & northern CA. Here is the link.

Absolutely amazing stuff right out our back door!

More Salt Creek Adventures