The best hikes aren't alwaysin the woods

Having moved here from Colorado Springs, my wife Laura and I are predisposed toward hiking in the woods.

"Springs," as the locals call it, is situated at a dramatic geologic pivot point. The western edge of the city is in the foothills of Pikes Peak, easternmost sentinel of the Rocky Mountains. The east side of town slopes into a sea of suburbia that is the beginning of the Great Plains. That's where we lived, and we used to joke that if we dropped a ball, it would roll all the way to Kansas.

When it came time to hop in the Jeep and take a hike, we could head east into arid, featureless flatlands, or we could go west and quickly ascend into innumerable mountain playgrounds.

We went west, every time.

So when we hit Del Norte County, we answered the call of the redwoods and devoted our initial outings to the lush inland forests. Soon enough we found ourselves on coastal trails, but they were still forested, with only an occasional glimpse of the sea.

Of course we strolled along the sandy beaches. The Pacific had lured us here, after all. We thought of walking the beach as just that, a walk. Not a hike. Sometimes a remote beach was a nice reward at the end of a steep descent through the woods, but it never occurred to us to begin a full-fledged hike right from our front door on Pebble Beach Drive.

That all changed when we got around to discovering Tolowa Dunes north of town. The light bulb turned on as we looked south and realized we could walk all the way to Point St. George without leaving the beach. We weren't inclined to do so that day, since our car was parked back at Sand Hill Road. But the notion of a long beach trek was finally planted in our heavily wooded noggins.

It was already two hours past the ultimate ebb of a minus tide when we struck out from home Saturday morning, packing a picnic and other accouterments of day-hiking. There was still plenty of time to get around the one spot at the north end of Pebble Beach that tightens up at high tide. To the north lay nothing but surfside sand all the way to Point St. George.

A long hike on the beach might lack the suspense of wondering what's around the next bend in a forest trail, but this journey had its moments. Shortly after we started hearing the barking din of the Castle Rock sea lions, we came upon the carcass of a beached 10-footer. The turkey vultures had already come and gone. Later we watched a fisherman in waders reel in a red-tailed perch.

Our passage around Point St. George was not graceful. We ascended a bit too soon and, running into heavy brush, picked our way back toward the beach. I slipped on loose driftwood and got a new traveling companion: a golfball-size knot on my shin. Undeterred, we found a clearer path over the point and down to a whole new beach facing northwesterly.

Tolowa Dunes had to be somewhere up there, but our appetites intervened about a half-mile farther north. The ocean was swallowing up real estate by the time we finished lunch. Resolving to get an earlier start next time, we made the return trip before the rising tide forced us to wade or clamber over rocks. Besides, we wanted to get back in time for the rodeo at the county fair.

Is this a great place or what?