Mt. Baldy

In order to climb the summit of Mt. Baldy, you need to be accompanied by a ranger. Apparently, several years ago, when a child fell through an unseen hole, they realized how fragile the dune really was, due to trees decomposing under the sand. These guided tours occur several times throughout the week, but we thought trying the sunset one would be lots of fun, so that's the one we selected.

 

Although it's a bit of a trek, you can go to the beach area unaccompanied, so we got there early enough to do that before the ranger-led hike. It was a fun walk, and plenty of people lugged their beach chairs to the water, but we had no desire to do so. I guess we're spoiled with short walks to many of our beautiful South Florida beaches.

Just remember that if you run down the dune, you have to climb back up!

We returned to the parking lot to wait for the ranger. A lot of other people had the same idea.

After a bit of orientation and history tidbits, we were off. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see a sunset, or much of anything else. It was a cloudy evening. However, it was still pretty cool, and I'm glad we had the chance to have this experience.

Before heading back to camp, we stopped at the neighboring beach - Central Avenue Beach. This also had a long walk to get to the water, and it was still cloudy and getting dark so there wasn't much to see, but we were able to check it off our list!