Guadalupe Beach Bridge - Gateway to
the California Sand Dunes
The tucked away beach has several trails
to access Guadalupe Beach but the most fun, by far, is the trail that goes
directly over water and puts you right in the middle of the most beautiful
scenes you can experience on the Central Coast. When nearby "Dunites" from the
early 1900's adopted a love of the region in a town called
Halcyon, you gain an understanding and appreciation
for how life may have felt as they sat, ate, slept and communed so close to
these natural sand dunes.
Located on the Central California coast in
Guadalupe, a town or city between Grover Beach and Santa Maria, there's a
natural gem that oddly sits adjacent to the Oceano Recreational Vehicle Dunes
park. You can even hear the hum of the ATV - all terrain vehicles as you reach
the water's edge at Guadalupe Beach.
The Pacific Ocean is located approximately
1 mile from your parked car, according to locals, but in this walking
experience, the journey is truly a reward. If you don't have time or prefer not
to walk that far in piles of sand, do visit the bridge and sit for a moment.
This incredible bridge built several years ago is a window to a world where sand
meets water. A microcosm of sorts, its a similar experience to walk bridges in
wetlands. There's a cacophony of sounds and sights as birds take flight
overhead, then dive just inches from you. This is their terrain and you are but
a participant in their experience and life.
The bridge is one of the most interesting
bridges you'll find. It actually goes a few hundred feet down a sloped, gentle
decline, then takes a right-angle turn over the water. A three to five minute
walk across the bridge lands you back on the sand path to the ocean.
While this region is not called a
wetlands, it has all the earmarks of one. The dunes are federally
protected where the ATV trails abruptly stop at Guadalupe. For miles south of
this location there are many environmentally-sensitive habitats, sometimes in
Surf Beach adjacent to Vandenberg AF Base, and sometimes at Ocean Beach in
Lompoc.
To the north of Guadalupe Beach are Oceano
and Grover Beaches. And when you go just north of that to Pismo, the beach often
disappears, becoming cliffs where hotels and homes are perched.
Flying in California on commercial jets
between Northern and Southern California, the flights often travel an inland
route between San Francisco and Morro Bay. They often veer over the ocean at
that location and you often can see the Guadalupe sand dunes. We've never
spotted this bridge on flights but we can see Guadalupe Beach quite often.
You'll recognize it by the quilt patchwork of farm fields in colors of green,
brown and tan. The fields stop and suddenly there's millions upon millions of
grains of sand leading to the ocean. It's an awesome sight if you are lucky
enough to catch it. While flight attendants typically don't have time to figure
out where the aircraft is, you can figure it out for yourself by looking for one
great landmark nearby. Morro Bay has this huge mound called The Rock. It is so
huge, you can spot it easily from the air. Once you see this huge rock that sits
on the land's edge in the water, you know the dunes aren't far away, when
heading south.
