A loaded milk truck belonging to Straus Family Creamery of Marshall overturned along Highway 1 just north of Nicks Cove today. The Highway Patrol reported the accident happened at 8:50 a.m.

The 270-degree rollover occurred when the long tanker-truck, which was southbound, encountered a northbound vehicle on a tight curve, members of the county fire department and Straus family told me. The truck came to a stop with a pair of its dual rear wheels off the pavement, the firefighter said.

The truck was still upright when the driver got out, but it then rolled over, the firefighter added. No one was hurt in the accident.

The property on which the truck landed is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and a small amount of milk spilled out of the tanker’s hatch.

In a serendipitous irony, however, the spilled milk didn’t go very far, let alone down to Tomales Bay a short distance below the curve.

Straus Creamery uses rice hulls for bedding in the cows’ stalls, and in 2003, a truck heading to the dairy ranch ran off the same curve and spilled a load of hulls. The decision at the time was to leave the hulls on the ground since they weren’t doing any harm.

When milk began leaking from the overturned tanker-truck today, it was immediately absorbed by the old rice hulls. Here a cleanup worker shovels more hulls under the leak.