Walking the California Coastal Trail

Last week in August 2026.

We arrived in Miramar late yesterday afternoon and headed straight to The Barn; the burgers there are good. Unfortunately, they were closed, so we walked to our second option, Barbara’s Fishtrap at Princeton. The place was packed, with a constant stream of people trying to get a table, as it always is. The Fishtrap has been the place we’d go for a quick meal for many years. The food is decent and the portions are huge, and the fish comes off boats docked a few hundred yards away.

My wife works with clients at Stanford, so she comes out here to meet people in person, and I come along for the ride. While she works, I have the coast.

This morning I walked the California Coastal Trail from Miramar to Francis Beach and back. Seven miles.

It was overcast when I started, but slowly the fog yielded to the sun. Then the fog came back in and sat over everything for a while and finally burned off, and the last stretch home was warm. Usually, once the fog lifts, it doesn’t return.

Just at the end of Mirada Road there is a new pedestrian bridge. But before you get to it, there are a few buildings that were hand-built starting in the 1970s by local artist and sea-kayaking pioneer Michael Powers. Designed as an homage to his Viking roots, the structure has a triangular facade, wood-shingle tiling, and drift burls. My friend Gustavo Rabin had an art studio there. He isn’t with us anymore. I walk past that spot every time I am here.

From there, the path runs along the bluff most of the way south to Half Moon Bay.

The birds caught my attention immediately today. A flock of brown pelicans came through low over the water, flying in a loose line followed by a second flock. There must have been fifty or more of them altogether. They fly just above the ocean surface, riding the air the waves push up, and they can go a long way without a single wingbeat. Then one of them spots a fish, folds up and dive-bombs for the food. They hit the water hard enough that they have air sacs under the skin to absorb the impact, and they go in almost straight down, which takes the bend out of the light and puts them where the fish actually is. Pelicans were nearly wiped out once by DDT, which thinned their eggshells. They were only removed from the endangered list in 2009.

There were birds of prey working the bluff, a sight I have never gotten tired of watching. Wind coming off the water hits the face of the bluff and turns upward, and a hawk parks itself in that column and stops moving. No flapping, no drifting. It just hangs there over one patch of ground, holding position against the wind while it looks down for something to move in the grass. Then it slides sideways a few yards and hangs again. I have stood and watched that for longer than I would admit.

There was a clump of naked ladies (Amaryllis belladonna) in bloom next to the path, the pink lilies that come up on bare stalks after their leaves have already died back. They only flower in late summer. Of everything I photographed, that is the one thing that tells you the time of the year I was here.

Cypresses are everywhere along this coast. Rows of them behind the farm fields, single ones out on the bluff, all bent away from the water and flat on top. They look like they have always been here. They have not. Monterey cypress grows wild in two places, both near Carmel, a few miles of shoreline at Cypress Point and Point Lobos. Everything else was planted. Ranchers put them in as windbreaks because they stand up to salt air, sandy soil, and constant wind.

Along one stretch of fence, people have attached painted signs to the boards. Wooden fish in every color, a blue heart, whales, a bicycle cog. One small board says SMILES ARE FREE, GIVE GENEROUSLY, hand-lettered in blue. Somebody made that, carried it out there, and screwed it to a fence for strangers. There is no name on it.

Everybody I passed said good morning. Everybody smiled.

It reminds me of Minneapolis, which is home now. People there are genuinely friendly, though it comes with a reserve. Out here it is looser. A stranger says good morning and nothing is implied by it. It makes me feel warm, nevertheless.

Just before Francis Beach, the trail crosses Pilarcitos Creek. The bridge runs over the creek and the wetland beside it, and the willows have closed overhead into a long green tunnel, dark and cool. I came out the far end into white sand and full sun.

Overlooking Francis Beach, a curved concrete foundation lies in the brush. I have wondered about it for years. Today, a woman coming the other way told me it is a World War Two gun position, one of the big guns covering the bay. That is what everybody says. Every version I have heard is something military.

This time I looked into it. Every source I checked gave a different answer. A Facebook post credits the Half Moon Bay History Association and says the concrete is the start of a hotel foundation, though the Association’s own published account of an unbuilt hotel describes a different ruin two miles south. I wrote to them and have not heard back. I still do not know what it is.

The whole way, the bluff was eroding. Deep gullies cut back from the edge, and there are signs telling people to stay back from unstable cliffs, tagged over and half peeled. Down at Miramar, there is riprap piled at the base of the beach house to hold the bank. The coast I was walking is falling into the ocean.

The waves sound violent. The noise is constant, and I am calm. None of it is touching me.

A major reason I stayed in America in 1982 was this place. In Silicon Valley, you were half an hour from the coast, always. I am not a surfer. I don’t swim here; the water is too cold. It was about being able to get to the water.

By the time I came back into Miramar, the sun was out in force. Seven miles. My legs confirmed it.

I read too much bad news at home, and I left it there. Here it doesn’t intrude; it’s just a morning where a flock of pelicans works the water and a stranger tells you a story about a cannon, and everyone you pass says hello.