After a day of diving, Paul and Joe joined us for dinner, then Paul headed home. Joe rented a campground so he could stay the night and join us for a paddle the next morning. We met at Andrew Molera State Park and rolled our kayaks out to a protected south facing beach. Joe and Maryly took Joe's Tsunami X2 double and I had brought my new Mariner Coaster. Both boats were strapped to wheels and rolled a kilometer and a half down trails towards the ocean. The last few hundred meters we dropped the boats in the creek and paddled through the shallow fresh water.
From there we started north paddling into the wind towards Big Sur. The shoreline was rocky with kelp everywhere and a few sea otters to watch. There were lots of calm sandy beaches we could have stopped at but we kept going until we got almost all the way behind Big Sur where we stopped for lunch. After lunch we went for a walk the rest of the way to the end of the last beach before the point.
Walking on the last long sandy beach, we started picking up pieces of black abalone shell. This abalone is considered extremely rare, almost an endangered animal. We could have been finding old shells from a midden, but on one rock we found a live black abalone! Perhaps there is a poorly known, or poorly publicized, pocket of healthy black abalone here near Big Sur Point.
We got back in our boats and worked our way between the rocks and back out to deep water out by the point. We had pushed our way through a lot of thick kelp on the surface and wanted to find deeper water for an easier trip back. The wind also was now at our backs so we made excellent time back to the protected beach at Andrew Molera Park. After landing and corssing the spit I discovered that the water of the creek was quite deep. More than deep enough to roll my kayak in. I rolled the boat over and over to wash the salt off of it, my equipment, and myself. I called this procedure the "rinse cycle". Then we wheeled the boats back up the long dusty trail and the dust clung to all the water drops on my (formerly) nice clean boat!