May 2026 Photo of the Month: SNO61

My May 2026 Photo of the Month is SNO61, made at San Onofre State Beach in Northwest San Diego County.

SNO61 Background

This month’s image came from a trip to San Onofre State Beach with friends Alex and Shuwen.

While “San Onofre” is most famous for surfing and the nuclear power plant, it offers a nice long beach with impressive rock strata.  You get a very large San Mateo Formation sandstone layer (the ligher color stuff), with a couple million years of darker deposits.  It is quite impressive to see!

Photographically, it is a bit of a challenge to give an image a true sense of size and scale.  This was one of the times when I went to the beach, but spent almost all of the time facing inland.

Because this is May, we also had plenty of marine layer coming in, providing a nice backdrop.  The folds in the San Mateo sandstone provided some nice light and shadow, which I liked.

I am no geologist, but I do know some nice geology when I see it.  I have long overlooked San Onofre, remember camping there as a kid, once getting a tour of SONGS, but not much else.  So these cliffs were nice, and definitely worth returning to.  Not to mention I love old roads. Old Highway 101 is how you enter the place).

Now, I will say that we have made a long habit of hitting up a taco shop after these excursions, and I am pretty sure we did, but now I don’t remember where that was.  I should keep better notes to give you an accompanying taco shop report (PS:  they’re all good).

As always, thank you for viewing, and I hope you enjoyed the image.

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tmschultze

T.M. Schultze is a San Diego-based photographer, traveller, and writer. He writes, photographs, and draws things of the outdoors that have inspired humans for thousands of years. He co-authored the Photographer’s Guide to Joshua Tree Park which can be purchased here.