The Rim Trail at Sue-meg State Park follows the coast line along the cliffs with several places to climb down to the beach or up to lookouts on big rocks. The day started out very cool, so we were wearing warmer clothing with hats knowing that the fog would eventually burn off and sunshine would warm things up a bit.

We have seen tropical rainforest, and this temperate rainforest is similar in plants growing everywhere fashion. We are just missing the colorful birds and monkeys-ha ha! Squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits are very common, though the rabbits are a darker color and smaller than the cottontails of the Midwest.

Mussel Rock Trail

The first side trail down to the shore had some wacky stairs that were straight at one point, I’m sure. It’s good to have hiking poles for these. This part of the coast had many rocks out in the water that were covered with mussels, which have a striking blue color on their shells. The sea palms are kelp that stand upright on the rocks and look like miniature trees.

Wedding Rock

Wedding Rock is a sea stack in-the-making as it is still connected to land, but eventually won’t be. There is a lower path that wanders down to areas that would be tide pools at low tide. We crossed a freshwater stream that had tadpoles in it. There were succulents called Bluff lettuce that grw on the cliffs, including the undersides.

The upper trail to the lookout parts of Wedding Rock had stone steps and low walls infrastructure that would lend itself to small wedding parties. It would be a dramatic spot!

Patrick’s Point Overlook Trail

Just past Wedding Rock is a path up to areas that lookout where we were able to photograph Wedding Rock as a whole. We also saw a lizard on this trail who consented to a photo before running under the rock step.

Rocky Point

The Rocky Point lookout had a grassy area before dropping off to the rocks in the water. I sat for a bit and observed two seals at play, and Tony managed to capture one in a photo.

Palmer’s Point

Four miles into our rim hike, we are at the farthest point and unable to get down to the beach due to a trail closure. We can hear sea lions down below and can see some in the distance on the edge of one of the sea stacks. Must remember binoculars on hikes…

Now, two more miles and we will be back with the cats.

Big Lagoon

This afternoon we needed an open spot to get a good Dishy connection to work on this travel blog, so we drove a couple miles up the coast to the Big Lagoon, which is at the other end of Agate Beach. We paid a small fee to park here and walked both the beach and the shore of the lagoon before leaving.

The beach had interesting remains of a whale carcass and a spot closed off for nesting snowy plovers. The lagoon was warm and had people swimming, paddle boarding and kayaking on it. They left as the fog moved in around 4:00 PM.

Tony had Google Gemini analyze the picture of the whale carcass and this is what it had to say about it:

“That is a fascinating, if a bit macabre, find. What you are looking at are the heavily decomposed remains of a large marine mammal, almost certainly a whale.

When a whale dies at sea and washes ashore, the decomposition process combined with the action of the surf, sun, and scavengers can make it look unrecognizable and quite alien.

It did indeed look quite alien. We have seen cow carcasses and other decomposing animals in the Midwest, but the sheer size of this find made it quite impressive.