Wandering around the Bayfront Salt Ranch

A few weeks ago, Mrs Notthat and I (minus the dogs, since Kaya was still under doctor's orders to "keep calm" - ha ha ha ha) took the grandkids out to the Bayfront Park Salt Ranch to do some poking around. Mrs Notthat had brought them here before and they were anxious to see the Tire Graveyard again.

You can park so that you can get to the Salt Ranch reasonably quickly and easily, or you can park so that you have to walk a bit to get there. Naturally, we chose the latter. You have to go up a hill out of the parking lot and Grandkid Second Born, showing some spunk, ran all the way up that hill.

From where we parked, there are some reasonably direct trails to the Salt Ranch, but Mrs Notthat used her skills to make sure some bonus distance and hills were added as we meandered through the park to the shore.

This place always amazes me - the salt-encrusted shoreline looks exactly like it is ice-encrusted.

This whole area is used to harvest sea salt, with canals to let in water, which is then allowed to evaporate, leaving behind the salt. Most of these salt evaporation areas are being eliminated since the land is too attractive to developers that feel we have too few strip malls, golf courses, and condos.

I had never wandered around out this far before, and it was pretty cool.

Grandkid Second Born found a dinosaur skeleton, likely some sort of meat eater that ended up with too much sodium in its diet.

In the background you can see the hills of Bayfront Park, which is a fun little park with a lot of trails and small hills to train on. It was somewhere about this point that, weirdly, the kids started finding golfballs.

Grandkid First Born staring into the majestic depths of a salt canyon. Looking for golfballs.

As we were headed back to the car, Second Born spotted a bench to rest on. So did I. It's not my fault the bench wasn't long enough for all of us.

The pain and suffering I have to go through.

They then tried to show me how to properly share the bench. I still don't get it.

It's not like First Born was willing to share this rock.

If you live on the mid-pennisula and have never been to Bayfront Park, you should give it a shot. It's not big, and it's all built over a landfill (the kids get a kick out of it randomly belching from the many gas relief valves scattered around). There are a lot of fun rock formations and nice trails.

But we will have to go back and try harder to find the Tire Graveyard - somehow we missed it this time.

That's it - move along...