Description: Bean Hollow State Beach is a long stretch of beach on Highway 1, about 45mi south of San Francisco.
To get to the beach there is a choice of two parking lots. If you want to see the colorful pebbles in the tufa holes, you should head for the northern one. Here the entire beach consists of the colorful pebbles. The southern parking lot leads to a more sandy section of the beach. At low tide you can find tide pools here. The beach is also popular with anglers.

Our rating: This was one of the places I was most looking forward to before our vacation in September 2019. Ever since I had seen a photo of the incredibly colorful pebbles in the holes in the tufa stones, I had wanted to go here myself. You could have guessed that the photo was a very personalized version of reality. As is often the case, you find a slightly different picture on site. This is also the case here. The stones are far less colorful and much smaller than I had imagined from the photo. Nevertheless, I found the beach beautiful and it was fun to climb through the bizarre shapes of the tufas. If you are traveling in the area, you should definitely make a short stop.