Every few hundred feet along Half Moon Bay is a new beach showcasing the beauty of the California shoreline. What is particularly wonderful about this area for a wheelchair traveler is the Coastside Trail, a 3 mile paved pathway from Half Moon Bay State Park to the town of Montara. The trail is almost entirely flat but good exercise. Occasionally, there will be an "off road" dirt trail leading to a bench, picnic table, or just closer to the ocean cliff, which is recommended as long as your ability can handel it and you don't mind getting a little dirty. All the beaches have handicapped parking but only some have accessible restrooms.

Venice Beach is a couple miles down Highway 1 after making a right off the 95 Freeway. It has two or three parking lots so finding a disabled parking spot should be easy. What's also nice about this beach is that there were accessible restrooms available in the parking lot as well as a couple along the trail heading towards the town of Montara. In the above middle photo is an example of the "off road" dirt path that takes you right up to the cliff's edge.

Popular Beach is another starting point on the Coastlside Trail for the the wheelchair traveler. The parking lot is dirt and unfortunately there are only one or two handicapped parking spots., so it's likely that you'll need to park in the dirt but it's packed real hard. Similar to Venice Beach, Popular Beach has a trail that hugs the shoreline so you can be to enjoy sweeping views. If you are looking at the ocean and head left on the trail you'll eventually get to a mini forest, which is really neat. There are also lots of great open spaces where many people fly kites. However, eventually this direction turns into a dirt road, which is packed really hard and has a number of uneven surfaces that you'll have to be careful going over. Going the other direction will ensure a much longer and smoother ride but the forest is worth seeing.

Pillar Point Harbor is a very popular place to bird watch along this part of the Coastlside Trail. The wheelchair accessible part of the trail at this point is only about 0.5 miles but nonetheless worth getting out and looking around. In addition to bird watching , nearby is the famous Mavericks surfing point, a quaint beachfront town, and sometimes you can spot sea lions resting and playing on the shore.

Miramontes Beach