The park was so beautiful with all of those tall, broad redwoods that I stopped at a service road and just took a walk thru the woods and then back to my car for about 45 minutes.
There was more windy and twisty road down route 1 along the Pacific coast, but I did get to look up long enough to catch frequent looks at the Pacific Ocean stretched out beside me to the horizon.
At the end of the day, I was headed down a side road to a state park campground when I passed a KOA campground. I have generally avoided KOA since I remember staying there once very long ago and finding it very unwoodsy, with campsites one next to the other. I thought it might have WIFI, however, and nice showers so I decided to take a chance on it. The campsites were pretty much as I remembered them and they only allowed a half hour of free WIFI, but they did have a movie in the evening, a playground for kids, a game room. and other recreational activities, and I realized that this wasn't really a campground at all in the usual sense of that term. It was actually a sort of short-term summer camp for families with kids. There was plenty for the kids to do and the parents could mostly just relax, play cards, or kibbitz with each other. I saw a little bit of the movie. There was only one family watching. It was called "The Tooth Fairy," about a guy who somehow got himself an assignment as a tooth fairy and didn't like it. I arrived late and left early. It was absolutely the worst picture I can ever remember seeing in my whole life. In any case, I now think KOA is not so bad for what it is, as long as one doesn't confuse it with a place where you might go for a little peace and quiet and an opportunity to commune with nature.
At about 7:15, I took a walk down toward the beach to see the sunset. I had only been out a few minutes when a truck came out of the state park campground just down the road from the KOA headed in the same direction and the driver offered me a ride. I pushed some bundles of firewood aside and hopped on the truck tailgate. In a couple minutes we came to a fairly high sand dune which we climbed and from where we got a great view of the sunset. It was somewhat different than the ones I have seen in Bat Yam in that there seemed to be a halo around the sun and it was all shimmering as it sank into the sea. A perfect sunset! It was such a lovely evening that I declined a ride back and walked back to my campsite as the evening darkened.
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