Tom_in_CA
Elite Member
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2013
- Messages
- 20,793
In the state of CA, most all of our coastline is state administered beaches. With a smattering of city, county, and federal stretches. But most of them are state-run . Eg.: that have the bathrooms, parking lots, picnic tables, etc....
And for as long as anyone here can recall (even talking to us old-time md'rs from the 1960s and '70s), they've never been a problem . It's not unusual to see md'rs on the beaches here. You can detect till you're blue in the face.
But in early 2018, the following occurred : I was reading a CA face-book md'rs page. Someone had made a post asking which beaches "were allowed" in CA (apparently they were going to be here on vacation or something). They gave their range of travel as being from "Monterey to north of S.F."
I was shocked when I read someone else's reply to this inquiry. The person answering made the comment that they were "bummed that it was not allowed on Marina State beach".
Now .... to clarify : Marina State beach is ~20 min. from me. I/we have detected there since the "beginning of time" , as long as anyone can remember. So I was a little curious where this person was getting their information from. So I chimed in to ask "Where did you get this information ?"
Turns out, they had logged in to the CA state park's dept, and clicked the "contact us" button. And simply asked if it was ok to metal detect at Marina State beach. Someone there answered back "No". And as you can see : Alluded to boiler plate verbiage about "removing items" . Doh! Which, no doubt, is to prohibit things like commercially harvesting sand, or taking home the park benches, etc....
But the odd thing there, is that you can md till you're blue in the face (yup, right in front of park rangers, lifeguards, etc....) and no one ever says so much as "boo".
This is an obvious case of someone land-locked pencil jockey, faced with this "pressing question", passes out some silly "safe answer". That has utterly no bearing on reality.
And it's examples like this, that make me also wonder, whenever you read , on an md'ing forum, of someone musing over a certain city or park or beach or forest, etc... Someone else can come on saying "Not allowed". And when you press them for details (like I did in this case), it's often-time chalked up to nonsensical bologna like this.
Yet : Links lead to links with lead to links, etc... And before long, you can never put it to rest. So guess what someone will do to "Get this clarified" ? Yup, you guessed it: Ask a bureaucrat. Anyone seeing the vicious circle ? And before ya know it: A law or policy is born
And for as long as anyone here can recall (even talking to us old-time md'rs from the 1960s and '70s), they've never been a problem . It's not unusual to see md'rs on the beaches here. You can detect till you're blue in the face.
But in early 2018, the following occurred : I was reading a CA face-book md'rs page. Someone had made a post asking which beaches "were allowed" in CA (apparently they were going to be here on vacation or something). They gave their range of travel as being from "Monterey to north of S.F."
I was shocked when I read someone else's reply to this inquiry. The person answering made the comment that they were "bummed that it was not allowed on Marina State beach".
Now .... to clarify : Marina State beach is ~20 min. from me. I/we have detected there since the "beginning of time" , as long as anyone can remember. So I was a little curious where this person was getting their information from. So I chimed in to ask "Where did you get this information ?"
Turns out, they had logged in to the CA state park's dept, and clicked the "contact us" button. And simply asked if it was ok to metal detect at Marina State beach. Someone there answered back "No". And as you can see : Alluded to boiler plate verbiage about "removing items" . Doh! Which, no doubt, is to prohibit things like commercially harvesting sand, or taking home the park benches, etc....
But the odd thing there, is that you can md till you're blue in the face (yup, right in front of park rangers, lifeguards, etc....) and no one ever says so much as "boo".
This is an obvious case of someone land-locked pencil jockey, faced with this "pressing question", passes out some silly "safe answer". That has utterly no bearing on reality.
And it's examples like this, that make me also wonder, whenever you read , on an md'ing forum, of someone musing over a certain city or park or beach or forest, etc... Someone else can come on saying "Not allowed". And when you press them for details (like I did in this case), it's often-time chalked up to nonsensical bologna like this.
Yet : Links lead to links with lead to links, etc... And before long, you can never put it to rest. So guess what someone will do to "Get this clarified" ? Yup, you guessed it: Ask a bureaucrat. Anyone seeing the vicious circle ? And before ya know it: A law or policy is born