Goat Rock Beach is a sand beach in northwestern Sonoma County, California, United States. This landform is a sub-unit of Sonoma Coast State Beach, owned and managed by the State of California. At the northern terminus of Goat Rock Beach is the mouth of the Russian River and the southern end of this crescent shaped expanse is the massive Goat Rock, an iconic outcrop of the Sonoma Coast, which is barely attached to the mainland by a narrow isthmus.
Goat Rock Beach is frequented by beachcombing visitors, but usually not in high numbers except in mid-summer; there is some wading and surfing activity, although these uses are moderated by the rip current generated by a steep gradient into the water that leads to an underwater trench parallel to the waterline. The beach is also a regular resting ground for seagulls, sea otters, elephant seals, harbor seals, and sea lions, the latter three species often hauling out of the Pacific Ocean. The state of California recommends that a 50-yard (46 m) distance be preserved between human visitors and the seasonal marine mammals, especially in the pupping season.
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Famous quotes containing the words goat, rock and/or beach:
“If we didn’t live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I’ve no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“When we were at school we were taught to sing the songs of the Europeans. How many of us were taught the songs of the Wanyamwezi or of the Wahehe? Many of us have learnt to dance the rumba, or the cha cha, to rock and roll and to twist and even to dance the waltz and foxtrot. But how many of us can dance, or have even heard of the gombe sugu, the mangala, nyang’umumi, kiduo, or lele mama?”
—Julius K. Nyerere (b. 1922)
“We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,—at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives on the sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)