After hiking to Mori Point and exploring hills around this place, we had more time during the day and started driving towards Half Moon Bay. On our way we came across various beaches but the one which appealed us the most was Gray Whale Cove Beach. This beach is close to the highway and a small part of this beach is visible through trees.
Across the highway, there are parking areas near these beaches. Some of these parking areas are paid but most of them are free. The one near Gray Whale Cove Beach is relatively bigger and there are no parking charges. There are few toilets near this parking area, although a little hidden. One needs to climb a bit to reach these. While driving from San Francisco to Half Moon Bay, this parking area is on the left and beach is on right side of the highway. Keep a watch on your left for parking after crossing Devil’s Slide Bunker and that’s a good landmark after crossing Pacifica beach and the tunnels.
We parked our car in this parking area, picked our stuff and started going down towards the beach.
There is nice pathway to the beach from main road. Some of the tricky terrains are converted into nice wooden staircases. It was really nice to see all this infrastructure around these beaches. One thing which disappointed me the ignorant behavior of some people who make these places dirty. If you look down these stairs, you would see plenty of plastic bags and empty bottles.
After reaching the beach, we located a nice place to sit which was a little elevated. We sat there, enjoyed our snacks and drinks while watching people walking around the beach, folks indulged in fishing and a group for professional prepping up for a shoot. We reached the beach at around 9:30pm and gradually lot of families started coming to the beach. By 12 noon, there good number of families settled around the beach to enjoy weekend evening there. But still it was not crowded.
A man was involved in fishing and he had some good catches on that day. His daughter was also helping him and there was a moment when a strong wave flew the bucket in which they were putting their catches. They lost some of the fish from that bucket. I felt very bad for them, but that’s a cycle it seems. He was taking out fish from the ocean and ocean took some tax.
We sat there for more than an hour and had some interesting conversations. This was the time when I met a friend after 5 years. He moved to Bay area 6 years back and during my past visits I could meet him 5 years back. Gray Whale Cove Beach was one of the best places we explored together that day. Peaceful and clean beach !
Please drop your comments if you have any specific questions or ideas to share with us !
If you liked this post and found it helpful, I would request you to follow these things when traveling -
1. Manage your waste well and don’t litter Use dustbins.
2. Tell us if you went to a place and found it hard to locate a dustbin.
3. Avoid bottle waters in hills. Usually you get clean water in hills and water bottles create lot of mess in our ecosystem.
4. Say big no to plastic and avoid those unhealthy snacks packed in plastic bags. Rather buy fruits.
5. Don't play loud blaring music in forests of jungle camps. You are a guest in that ecosystem and disturbing the locals (humans and animals) is not polite
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