Fort Ross Reef actually has a simpler sign on the side of the road, it is a state park with the simple name "Reef Campground". You have to pay $2.00 for day use, and fill in this little envelope and form, and put the envelope in a pipe safe, since the state cannot afford to man the booth. (They can afford to drive around and give tickets to people who do not pay $2.00 apparently). The form asks you how many cars you have, how many people, trailers, boats, and a little check-box for Other. I checked it and wrote in kayak. I wonder if other kayakers often come here? The park has trails that zigzag down the cliffs, and car campsites in a protected valley that leads down to a rocky beach. I went there on a very low tide just before school started. I slipped on the slippery rocks pulling my kayak out to the water, and fell heavily on my left hand. Something happened to my middle finger under the water there. I never saw exactly what, but it hurt like crazy, even though the skin was not broken or abraded anywhere. It may have been bent backwards at the joint, or smashed between two rocks. But curving it around the paddle and pulling in the normal directions didn't hurt much, so I went on. Months later, I took it to a doctor, and they could do nothing for it. And months after that, it did finally, slowly, get better. While that finger was still bothering me, I usully never noticed it, unless I banged it on the steering wheel of my car, or carried something that pulled it sideways. Fortunately, the problem did not effect my button pushing abilities, so it had no effect on my typing and programming. However, opening plastic wrapped things was particularly bothersome: Tearing the cellophane off of a package of software for example.
The most prominent feature at Fort Ross Reef is a row of jagged rocks that stick out on the end of a big point just south of Fort Ross. During this low tide, there were a lot of abalone hunters out. It was strange paddling along, and going past someone who was farther out to sea than me, standing up to their chin in water. I asked one guy if they were AB hunting and how was it? He said "It's great out here! Just great!" There are huge mats of kelp all along the coast here on the Lost Coast area, so I assume that means the water is shallow. There is one large sandy beach just south of where I entered the water, but I assume this beach has access from the Reef Campground area. From that point on to the midway point where I turned around, it was the same boring lost coast area: shallow bluffs coming down to piles of boulders at the shoreline, and shallow water so I had to stay fairly far away to avoid being pushed into the boulders by the breakers.