I was around twenty, working at Harrah's up in Lake Tahoe as a busboy, when I met a girl. She was my age, a sizzling hot redhead, bussing tables along side me.

We were both bored and looking for adventure, so we quit our jobs and headed to the Pacific Ocean. We landed south of Carmel and Monterey, at the beach below Mal Paso Creek bridge. Clint Eastwood had his ranch at the head of the creek, and Bad Crossing was one of his trademarks.

It was totally accessible, we called it Secret Beach, and we spent two weeks there. Sleeping in the sand, bopping into Carmel for supplies when needed.

Over the decades that followed, I revisited that beach, and watched it become locked down. People built big beautiful homes on the rocks that surrounded it. They wanted to treat it as their private beach.

I remember the last visit, we managed to find the trail and hit the sand on a hot Summer day. After a few hours, two buff white guys came walking behind us, and entered the cave at the South end of the beach. That cave was there when the girl and I were, we explored it.

These guys acted really nervous, and I figure they stashed something back in there, spotted us on the beach from their ocean front window, and got paranoid. We split shortly after.

A couple of Summers ago, I was in the Belize area and hung out at the official and famous Secret Beach. I had a great time, but there was nothing secret about it, and there was no cave, and no girl...