We had made almost 30 miles in our first two days, when we had originally planned on only 20. We had launched from the resort at San Francisquito instead of Alberto’s cove which saved us 4 miles of paddling. We had parked our cars at the fish camp at Santa Rosalia which saved us another 6 miles at least. So we were way ahead of schedule. Since this location seemed pretty interesting we decided to take a layover day to rest, read our books, and explore. John went fishing. Penny, Bob and I walked back to explore some ruins we had seen from the water. This turned out to be some rock walls, perhaps a corral. A dirt road ran behind the beach giving access to cars, from the evidence of their tracks. We continued walking down the top of the berm, which had a large amount of shells mixed into the boulders and gravel. Farther down the beach we investigated pieces of a whale skeleton, including a long section of backbone.
I left my companions and took a side trip up the steep valley behind the corral to look at what I though were more man made walls, perhaps a cistern. These turned out to be natural piles of the same volcanic rock used in the corral. I climbed farther up the valley until I reached some caves we had seen from the water. The mountainside was riddled with these small hallow caves with flat sandy bottoms. Most were not large enough or deep enough for me to fit inside and get out of the sun.
Later back at camp I lazed the hot mid-day away reading, dozing and working on my journal. In the afternoon, after the sun had calmed down and a breeze came up, I went for a walk in the other direction to the “sandy yellow” field we had seen from the water. The yellow color turned out to be two different dried plants, a flower and a grass.