Ma-le'l and Manila Sand Dunes
Bureau of Land Management
I headed a little further down the sand that cuts off the bay from the ocean for more sand dune adventures. For Ma-le'l Dunes, parking is on either side of the gun club with a bit of fenced off area in between. Lots are locked a half hour after sunset to sunrise and the north side is only open to the public Friday through Monday. The map shows established trails, but keeping to these can be difficult. Plenty of other trails exist and this time of year, the established ones have a tendency to be under a bit of water.
After a little false starting finding myself with pools to cross that were difficult to deal with because anyone going that way started at a different spot in the parking lot, I find myself wandering southerly on a main trail that has easy bypass spots for the deep pools.
Once on the main trail, it is easy to just get into traveling, but there are some little things it is nice to take in. Plenty of big things, too.
A sign marks the edge of BLM land and the start of Friends of the Dunes where there is another collection of trails winding up and down the dunes. At a particularly large bit of lake on a junction between trails, I go for something going a little higher than what I have been on.
I can see Manila below. It has a base and I seem to be getting close to it as there is fencing out into the dunes. That is the end of my southerly travel for now, so I wander down to the beach to return. The tide is high and there is easy walking on the shelf above the beach, so I stick to that slightly higher land.
I watch the little sand pipers for a moment as they dance with the waves. They become a line running from each wave as it comes in the last few feet. As falls back into the ocean, they rush it, flying over the foam left on the beach and into the water to grab their food. When the waves are far out, they are scattered all over the beach until a new wave comes up high and sorts them again into a line leading the edge up the beach.
Eventually, I take to the dunes again and continue northerly along some high trail. The gun club sings and no one seems to worry about it. More people are playing in the dunes as the day gets later. There is fencing blocking further movement in this direction too.
It is a short drive south along the road to access more dunes south of the fences. The access is at the Community Center and signs show another set of trails. Signs also point out efforts to eradicate invasive plants and point out that most of the grass on these dunes is an invasive English beach grass that stabilizes them much more effectively than the native dune grass. There are also photos of four rare area plants that you agree not to step on (or so the sign hopes) when using this area.
Starting down a trail and finding nothing looking particularly official other than continuing down this one quite wide stretch, I find myself on the beach again. The tide is going out, so I stroll along on the sand this time as I head southerly. A low spot in the cliffs leads to trails around on the dunes again.
Coming back does seem to be on a smaller trail that may be unofficial, but it passes by a dilapidated circle of interpretive signs at the top of a dune. The platform they stand on looks unsafe, so they are fenced off. Someone must have decided that they could not keep up the repair of this display, but there is more information on these signs (somewhere underneath the graffiti) that is not presented below.
©2017 Valerie Norton
Posted 1 February 2017
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