What winter looks like at the beach

Perhaps we've given you the wrong impression. The beach here isn't strewn with an endless array of old plastic bottle caps and scraps of rubber. Yes, there's too much of that stuff. But unless you're looking for washed-up junk, what you're likely to notice is the sand. Lots of it.

Not the satiny white sand you find in Hawaii. Here we have hard-ground sand, bits of rock tumbled and worn down by the waves until they have become a multicolored mat beneath your feet. Walk barefoot on this sand, and it's like getting a massage.

On a winter's day when the tide is high, lots of stories have washed up onto the sand. A little pink crab's leg ... what happened to the rest of it?

We see plenty of whole Pacific mole crabs spread-eagled on their tiny backs. Yum, some dogs just love these salty critters.

This morning the surf poured across the width of the beach and chased us up against the cliff walls. We spotted a sand dollar as we passed five young men practicing their kick-boxing. A scoter rode out on the waves.