Sand City Beach is a one-and-a-half-mile stretch of sandy shoreline in Sand City, California, adjacent to Seaside. It's known for its wide beach, calm waters, and scenic views of the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail.

Sand City is blessed with an abundance of, well, sand. But this isn’t your garden-variety beach sand. We’re referring to spectacular dunes formed during the Pleistocene era at the tail end of the last ice age somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000 to 15,000 years ago. These dunes are the highest found on California's Central Coast.

Look above the dunes, and you'll see a sky full of paragliders. The same steady winds that lure hang gliders to Marina State Beach draw paragliders to its sister beach a little south. Sand City is one of the prime spots in the state for paragliding. The winds are perfect, the launch area ideal — and the view is incredible. The Monterey Bay Coastal Recreation Trail runs right through the sand dunes, north to Castroville and south all the way to Pebble Beach.