Over Christmas vacation, my daddy planned a trip for us to take to Big Sur where there are a few beaches for Lolo and I to run on, and a few hikes that dogs are also allowed on! (Remember how I have mentioned that in some parts of the state, California is super dog UNfriendly?!)
Luckily, there is a website dogtrekker.com that is solely dedicated to uncovering the dog-friendly side of California. After daddy realized that he hadn’t planned for all the work he had to do with his going back to school, we were left without our coastal beach trip. And once momma has something in her head, she gets determined to make it happen.
So, she looked for a nice beach trip for us to take in one day from here, and discovered on dogtrekker that there was a nearby dog-friendly beach, which was the same beach our buddy Hwang (whose dog Red we like to play with) recommended for a pup-venture!
The beach is called Dillon, and we discovered once we arrived that it is right at the mouth to Tomales Bay. If you’ve been following my blog you will remember that we took an overnight paddle-in camp trip in Tomales Bay in December with our friend Amy and spent much of the evening keeping the coyotes away from our camp!! Anyways, Dillon charges $10 to park at the beach lot, but has bathrooms and allows all dogs (under control) to be off-leash south of the seasonal creek.
We went on a drizzly, rainy day last week but there were plenty of other people out with their pups on the beach. There were also a lot of surfers at Dillon, too and even some people fishing from the shore. And no wonder, it is a gorgeous beach!
Momma brought the chuck-it ball thrower to keep Lolo occupied, and I had a grand time exploring, as there are some dunes next to the beach with lots of grass and critters.
We also discovered that there is an RV and tent campground right there too on the other side of the dunes, which may be such a nice, easy place to take a break from the summer heat in Davis!
We walked all the way to the end of the beach as the tide was coming in. It would probably be an exceptional place to explore at low tide when all the great smelly things are out!
We had our lunch snack there on the beach and had a lot of space to ourselves for a very long time, which isn’t something that we are usually lucky enough to get in the Bay Area!! Up in far northern California there are beaches that I swear there is no-one on for really long stretches, even more so than Oregon!
Of course we met only friendly canines on the beach, sniffed our hellos and kept on going. It’s nice for momma that both Lolo and I are polite dogs with other dogs 😬 I only object if a dog runs up at 100mph to me, which is what Lolo likes to do. So momma usually makes him lie down and wait or else puts him on a leash so he doesn’t do that to other dogs who may not like it. But he’s such a friendly, submissive dog that no other dog in all the dogs we have met has ever gotten annoyed with him!
Now as beautiful and nice as Dillon was, don’t start thinking that I like the beach better than the mountains, because the mountains win for me 100% of the time. Lolo on the other hand could be a lot more 50/50 because he has such a water obsession and likes to chase balls which we only throw at the beach. I mean we throw balls at the park, but what we don’t do is throw balls in the mountains!
All in all, I am sure momma will be taking us back to Dillon, and maybe even with Pedro so we can camp and bring the SUP to paddle around in Tomales bay again where there is just SO much wildlife to enjoy!
Olaf 