Hello and welcome to Cambria! The boardwalk on Moonstone Beach is a wonderful and relaxing place to view beach scenery. Where you are standing is unique, because it is one of the few places you can see sandstone bedding in Cambria.
Cambria sits on top of a 5000-foot-thick slab of late Cretaceous sandstone, which was deposited here back when tectonic plates gave rise to what is now coastal California. This slab builds the ridges here between Cayucos and San Simeon. At the bridge, you have the rare opportunity to observe how the sandstone here can create bedding layers.
Some of the sandstone rock at Moonstone Beach is distorted and sheared, meaning it has experienced strain from the geological processes that shaped it and it appears cracked, warped, and so on.
To log the cache, answer the following questions.
Describe the shape and texture of the rock beds near you. For example, are they more blocky? Lumpy?
What direction does the bedding face? Is it more of a sheer cliff of sandstone, or more of a mass gathered along the shore?
Do you think the ocean has changed the shape of the sandstone here? Why or why not?
Can you point to any evidence of geological shearing?
How do you think this exposed sandstone might be different than the massive part underground?