Day #11 – WCA – Patricks Point State Park, CA (July 3-4, 2019)

Mileage Driven: 0 miles

Points of Interest: Agate Beach, Wedding Rock

Facts about Patricks Point State Park:

During the summer months, sometimes the fog doesn’t burn off for days at a time. So apparently we got lucky having crystal clear days while there.
The park only experiences about a 10 degree difference in average temperatures between summer and winter.
Summer highs average 62 degrees with winter lows to 38 degrees.
The Yurok tribe have made a remarkable recovery after nearly being wiped out by disease introduced by settlers in the mid to late 1800’s. Now, the Yurok tribe is the most populous tribe in California, and nearly 5,500 live in Humbolt and Del Norte Counties.

What a glorious morning after an even more glorious night’s sleep! Lows in the upper 40’s, crisp clean air…absolute heaven! As John Muir said, “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out until after sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” In places like this you can’t help but hear the intermost whispering of your spirit in the breeze as it caresses your hair.

Today our plan was to stay in the park and explore so this post will be mainly pictures, but they are so beautiful that hopefully you will enjoy them. We decided to make the walk down to Agate Beach and try our hand at finding Agate. It looked very enticing from far up on the cliff.

The color of the sky and the distant fog made for a very powerful picture of Agate Beach as we descended toward the shoreline.

We found a ton of quartz (the white rocks you see) but only one piece of “wild” agate. The colors of all the different stones resting on the beach were a beautiful medley of colorful journeys, having traveled far to finally come to rest where they were.

A sweet heart rock for my love!

We thought these were agate at first as the ranger showed me at the visitors center what to look for…hold the rock up to a flashlight and the clean light that shines through is a sign it is an agate. These all showed clean light but in fact these were quartz instead. Agate has a much smoother surface and more see through consistency throughout the stone.

After exploring the beach, it was time to head back up and check out other points in the park. If you come to the park even just to drive through, this is a must stop. There is adequate parking at the trailhead and restrooms are located there as well.

We decided to go check the Sumeg Village located in the park. The Yurok people lived in more than 50 villages in this area up to Crescent City and in 1990 an all Yurok crew came together and built this village to educate the park visitors on Yurok heritage and traditions. They made 3 redwood plank family houses, a sweathouse, a dance pit, three changing houses and a really neat authentic redwood canoe. Sumeg means forever in Yurok.

We were very impressed by the size of this redwood…little did we know this was just a baby compared to what trees we would see tomorrow when we headed north to Crescent City and explore the Redwoods National Park.

We decided to head back to camp and eat some dinner before heading to Wedding Rock to watch the sunset. Wedding Rock is just around the bend from Rocky Point where we watch the sunset last night but would offer a different view as the sun reached the horizon.

As we headed down the trail to Wedding Rock, it was fascinating to see the different landscapes and the varying rocks protruding from their salty homes.

The area in this photo below is Rocky Point and where we took the pictures of the sunset last night so was neat to see where we sat watch the sea lions the night before.

It was a steep drop where we sat and as each minute passed sitting here, we could see the landscape change as the tide came in. The spray got higher and the rumbling of the waves seem to get louder…a very powerful thing to witness.

The guys had fun jumping and climbing higher and higher to get the best vantage point for the sunset that was rapidly on its way.

Here it comes!!! Wait for it….

And it was now time to say thank you for yet another amazing day of adventure, beauty and togetherness as the sun reached the horizon to share its light on a whole new population…all of which I am so grateful for.