Mad River Sand Spit

Mad River County Park

(map link)

I want to see the river cutting across its built up sandspit so, having no reason to believe it might have got around to doing such a thing, I headed out on the dunes. Again, I decided to flow with the water, downhill all the way, first along the river and then along the beach.

The trails are starting to get puddly. They'll get worse as the rainy season goes on.

A first sight of the river.

The river is no longer a placid mass of water. Sticks buried in the bottom and sticking out the top were showing a bit of a wake. Not one single lazy nose of a sea-dog was sticking out and looking at me, but that might have more to do with what the fish are doing than the flow of water.

Sticks with a small wake, anyway. The water of the Mad River is certainly flowing.

The river still has tides at this stage.

I found the big patch of ice plant and couldn't leave it alone. It's rather vast with scattered pieces, so I probably missed a bit. It wasn't actually the last of it along the sand spit. I had just missed seeing the rest of it because I'd been so close to the river edge. Of course, worse than the ice plant is the marram grass. There's actually some restoration in progress out there, but it's a long progress to get rid of these invasives.

There's always something going on. The sanderlings are out for food.

The great blue herons took off, but not together.

I came to the break in the grass across from the creek. It hadn't completely broken through the sand spit, though. It had certainly been washed by tide or storm.

There's a break in the grass all the way across the sand spit.

I was thinking I'd turn at this break since I could already see the sand still goes to the hardened river bank, less the width of the river. Then I noticed the chair again, and decided to have a seat on that lookout. Why not? It washed up from something because it is encrusted with barnacles.

Who can resist a throne? Ready to watch the waves wash the sand.

Perhaps it would have been better for these goosenecks to resist this throne.

Trinidad Head and all its stacks. I could barely see the light flash through the haze.

Back along the river. The creek mouth across from the sandy gap is the left cleft.

From there, I did start back along the wide beach. The tide was far out, leaving a lot of beach scattered with sand dollars. The muddy, sandy stuff along the river is horrible for walking when wet, but the pure sand is excellent when wet. I generally stayed out in the wet except when something caught my eye.

Lots and lots of beach to return along.

A sand dollar just before the surf took it elsewhere.

Layers and layers of waves coming in.

Since I was trying things, I decided to try out the badly set up swing. It performed as badly as expected plus it bounced a bit hanging from a buried tree rather than a rooted tree.

Swing with one side much shorter than the other. The thing is the moment arm defines the frequency of the pendulum and so the long side is dragging back while the short side tries to pull forward...

Maybe if one leans just right? Get enough weight on the short side, which is also a little higher to make it worse. But you could pump it by leaning side to side while standing on it. There's something. It's all quite silly. I headed the rest of the way back. Lots of people were standing around looking toward the west even though it was ten minutes past sunset. The marine layer cloud bank was too thick to see much changing. I climbed up and over the dunes back to the parking lot.

A viewpoint up in the dunes, just watching the dying of the light.

*photo album*




©2022 Valerie Norton
Written 18 Jan 2022