2026 Birthday Update

 I posted in May about my big birthday goals! This is how I have done! 

1. Walk or run 500 miles this year 

I hit 500 walking miles August 21 and 200 running miles October 6.  Follow me on Strava. I am not fast but I am consistent! 

2. Give away 50 things 

Not as big as my 2018 purge when we moved, but still I took 22 bags of stuff to the thrift store in 7 trips. 

3. Try 50 new recipes 

Nope. I have tried a few. I have successfully gotten my kids to take charge of dinner once a week! WIN!

If you have any build your own ______ bowls recipes, send them my way. That is the stage of life we are in now. 

4. Read 50 books 

I read 50 by August 28, but have a few more topics to cover from my yearly list.

June Reading

5. Walk 50 kilometers of coastline with friends! (Measured by Strava/Garmin) 

I DID IT! Check out this post for all the details if you want to make a similar goal. 

Related Posts:

40 Year Post 

40 Year Update

40 Year Update plus 6 months

50 Year Post

Beach Walk Overview Post to Come

Beach Walk 19: Wharf to East Beach

This is the last section!  My friend Donna joined me on Sunday September 12 at 4:30pm for the .7 low tide. We set out from the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge and did almost an extra mile round trip from there. 

This section is pretty simple with no need for low tides. The lower tide does allow you to see more beach, nice rocks and shells. 

East Beach Sept 25th

We walked the short distance along the beach with no tricky sections and turned around at the wharf to head back. We did this one round trip from the bird refuge with a roundtrip total of 4.2 miles.

Thanks to Donna for joining me for this last section!  It was 1.2 miles of unique beach-- 88 km (51 miles)!

I also did most of this with my friend Jamie later on Friday September 25th. No low tide for this one but a beautiful way to start the day! 

Related Posts:

Walk 17: Breakwater to the Wharf 

Sandspit Beach 

East Beach 

Walk 8: East Beach to Butterfly Beach

Beach Walk 18: Padaro Lane to Carpinteria State Beach

 

The last tricky section was the one from Padaro Lane to Carpinteria State Beach. We knew there would be some wading involved (if we didn't want to do a work around that involved going up to the train tracks and around). The last person I talked to who did this said there were sting rays when she did it earlier this summer. 

My friend Katie and I set out at 6:30am a bit after low tide (-.03 at 4:30am) on August 28. We started at the beach access point on Padaro Lane that I accidentally found in July. It feels a bit like you are trespassing to get in and out here, but it is legal. (I now refer to this as the Narnia Beach.)

Driveway at the Beach Access Sign

Small Passage at the end of the driveway

At the end of the narrow passage, the beach is gorgeous! There were amazing clouds on this day. 

Padaro South

Padaro North

This is another place where there are homes right on the beach. The range of styles is diverse. 

About this point, I realized I didn't turn on the Garmin, so this section is not measured very specifically. (Maybe I need one more walk?!) It picked up around Sandyland.  The beach was beautiful and wide until we got the the large rocks near the Carpinteria Marsh. Here we had to do some serious wading and each got knocked down at least once! No pictures of that until the end because we didn't want our phones out. 

Thanks to Katie for being up for the adventure and "wading" with me! It was 3 miles of unique beach (estimated)-- 79 km (49 miles) down!

Related Posts:

Carpinteria Salt Marsh

Carpinteria State Beach

Carpinteria Valley Museum of History

Tomol Interpretive Playground
Carpinteria Bluff Nature Preserve

Tar Pits Beach

Beach Walk 17: Breakwater to Wharf

 

I am on the home stretch! The section from the breakwater to the wharf is mostly on the path above the beach (unless you are ready to paddle or swim the harbor :). for this section, I invited my whole homegroup to walk with me, even the littles (there are 17 adults and 20 kids in our group-- 13 kids under 6!).  This is a short section where the tide didn't matter (1.7 was the low). On August 11, 13 of us set out from the break water (at Gracie Restaurant) on the path toward the wharf. It was a beautiful day. 

Thanks to all my homies for joining me for this section! Thanks especially to Claire for taking the pictures. (I will only post the one of us walking since I don't post pictures of kid's faces on here.) It was .7 miles of unique beach-- 75 km (46.7 miles) down!

Related Posts:

Harbor Walk  Walk 12: Breakwater

Sandspit Beach 

Walk 7: Arroyo Burro to the Breakwater

Beach Walk 16: Carpinteria State Beach to Rincon

 

There were just a few good tides in August. The August 11 -1.2 low tide was at 3:40am so I was risking getting wet leaving at 6am!  I met my niece and friend Mandy to walk from Carpinteria State Beach to  Rincon Point. I shouldn't have worried about the tides because the conditions were beautiful. 

Toward Rincon

Toward Carp State Beach

The beach was wide and the tide was SO low. We reached Tar Pits Beach at about .8 miles and then about a mile in we hit a snag at the Seal Rookery.  Here we were met by a very determined woman who wanted us to go up on the bluff, so the seals had the beach to themselves. The county does close the beach during the winter and spring months for the seals. Concerned citizens had posted their own signs even though there were no seals on the beach (and it isn't even the season for them).  We thought this was overly cautious, but respected her request. So we did some rock scrambling up the bluff to walk along the bluff for .3 mile. 

Mossy rocks at low tide

Around 3.2 miles in we passed the houses at Rincon which are each quite different from each other. After we rounded the point past ther houses and we headed up the path to the Rincon Point parking lot.

Thanks to Mandy for getting up so early to walk this "southern" most section with me! It was at least 3.5 miles of unique beach-- 74 km (46 miles) down!

Related Posts:

Carpinteria Salt Marsh

Carpinteria State Beach

Carpinteria Valley Museum of History

Tomol Interpretive Playground
Carpinteria Bluff Nature Preserve

Tar Pits Beach

Beach Walk #15: Arroyo Quedmada Lane to Cañada San Onofre

 The next section I walked was a -0.1 tide on Saturday July 18. My friend Shelley and I started at Arroyo Quemada Lane between Refugio and Cañada San Onofre at 7:30. We started this walk at the eastern side because I felt better about walking up the path at Cañada San Onofre. Getting to this beach involves turning left off the freeway 2 miles north of Refugio State Beach. It is a very bumpy, poorly kept road that ends in a gate. About 600 feet before the gate, there is a large gravel parking area.  After crossing the railroad tracks, there is a path off to the left that descends very steeply down the bluff to the beach at the beach wall. Shelley was a trooper! 

Entrance to Beach at Arroyo Quemada Lane

Once we were down on the beach, it was a beautiful day. We headed toward Gaviota and had plenty of beach to ourselves. After this, there are a number of houses on Arroyo Quemada Lane with beach access. 

We reached the bridge at Arroyo Hondo around 2 miles in. I tried to visit this one back in 2020 during our second Summer of the Beaches but the path down seemed far too steep for kids. Maybe we needed to find this ladder? (If not, which beach is this?) 

Arroyo Hondo Bridge

Ladder?!

Of course, we saw some beautiful tidepools along the way as well as some fishermen.

There were a few places where the beach was narrow and would be inaccessible at a higher tide. We also had to use the rocks to cross at the points a couple times, one around 3.4 miles. 

We crossed a huge amount of rocks at the mouth of Cañada del Molino. It was dry at this time of year, but might have been hard to cross in the winter/spring. We saw so many incredible rock formations!

I knew we had reached the right spot when we saw the next small rock grouping as well as the beach hut! The path up is on the left (west) of the rock grouping. 

San Onofre Beach

It is also possible to do this walk in reverse starting at Cañada San Onofre. Going North on 101, you take the Maricopa exit, then head south 1 mile to the turnout. 

Entrance to San Onofre

San Onofre Parking Area

Thanks to Shelley for joining me for this section! It was 4.4 miles of unique beach-- 68.5 km (42.6 miles) down!

Related Posts:

Gaviota State Beach

Canada San Onofre to Gaviota

Arroyo Quemado Lane to Refugio