National Beach Day - August 30th

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Well not today but yesterday with a bro, drove 260 miles round trip to a familiar special half mile long dark sand and rocky beach at a popular state park that also requires about a half mile hike to reach. Beach arguably has the most colorful smoothed shore stones on our coastline, however very few others than geologists are aware of it. Access requires knowing an obscure route down off the bluff cliffs. We were down there 4 hours and no others were down at that shore though we saw a few others looking down at us that were probably wondering how we managed to climb down the steep crumbling bluff of maybe 80 feet vertical.

Today am post processing close-up images that I found was very productive yesterday. Below is a downsized for web version of one full 6000x4000 pixel post processed image focus stack blended from, 16 shots. A6000 Sigma 56mm F1.4.

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And below is a 100% pixels crop from the center of that image showing the real detail.
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They look like gemstones. Although might be a crime to remove them a jewelry maker could make some beautiful pieces!
 
A good reason for keeping the shore relatively unknown. And fortunately as a state park collecting is prohibited. Stones in my above image are still wet from previous waves that cause the rock colors to look fully saturated with glistening smoothness one won't see once dry. Thus my day with the high tide moving in was one of dancing at the edge of the wave wash while keeping an eye on waves that could get me wet. Each such wave resets the mix of stones and can bring to the surface new gems that were buried. The small white spots on the wet stones are bright sun and sky reflections. I plan to return in less than a couple weeks when full moon high tides occur.

It is the result of a jumble of already metamorphosized silicaseous tectonic crust plates on the edge of our Pacific Ocean diving down deeply into the crust where temperatures and pressures are high causing mineralizations. Then millions of years later as such layers rise to the Earth's surface, are eroded out with some becoming small stones, some to boulder sizes. Over millennia they wash out to the shore as conglomerates in streams where in large piles, tides and waves continually rub them against each other, a natural polishing process. Waves cause the stone movements to make a pleasant SH-SH-SHSING sound.

Another interesting rocky shore beach I sometimes visit is in the seacoast town of Fort Bragg where they used to have a municipal dump for decades until 1967 when it became protected park land. Despite that status and plentiful signs not to collect glass, given lack of enforcement and the fact it is a known Mecca for sea glass enthusiasts, significant numbers of people do so rather openly to the extent the uncommon blue sea glass (like Pepto Bismo bottles) is rare. If my beach was outed say on Facebook, the same fate would result. Have wondered why some coastal resort town doesn't purposely seed a rocky shore area with colored glass that after a decade of sloshing surf would be a strong tourist draw.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Beach_(Fort_Bragg,_California)
 

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