Sollte ich jemals genug Geld und zZt haben, so wuerde ich mir ein hHus in bodega bay kaufen. Wie kleine Palaeste thronen diese Haeuschen (viel groesser koennen sie nich gebaut werden wegen Absturzgefahr) auf ihren Felsenklippen. Sie ueberblicken menschenleere Straende, eine raue See und einen fantastischen Sonnenuntergang. Ich bin verliebt in diese Umgebug. Wir beschliessen uns aus Gruenden massivem Schlafmangels ein inn Zimmer zu mieten. ZWEI! Betten fuer drei Leute! Wir schwelgen im Luxus... Abendessen besteht aus in der Mikrowelle gekochten Spaghetti... mann gehts uns gut!

Our next stop was at Gleason State Beach and then the sleepy town of Bodega Bay which I have always wanted to see. 

Gleason Beach

Gleason State Beach has a number of houses on the cliff that are in obvious danger of slipping into the ocean.  The couple pictures show the erosion of the cliffs and the homeowners' attempts at preserving what land they have left.  Some homes have already slipped into the ocean and the attempts made by homeowners are continuing to fail.  The soil the homes have been built on is subject to the continued erosion of the Pacific plate as it pushes its way under the Continental plate.  The grinding motion makes the soil so fine, absorbing water, and making it too weak to support the foundation of a house. 

Bodega Bay

There is speculation that Bodega Bay may have been Sir Francis Drake's landing location on the California coast.  Bodega Bay was discovered in 1775 by the Spanish explorer Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra after whom it was named.  Bodega was an active harbor for shipping lumbar until the 1870's when the North Pacific Coast Railroad was built.  One interesting note - Bodega Bay was the setting of the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film, The Birds. 

Unfortunately there was not a number of places to easily pull off but Bodega Bay is quite the sleepy little beach town that is probably bustling with activity during the warmer months.  Since we were visiting on the da of a front, it was still very windy and too chilly to really walk around the shops.  Bodega Bay is a popular tourist destination and has a variety of activities available such as fishing, kayaking, surfing, and I love that most of the beaches in this area are dog friendly! 

About a 25 min. ride takes us from Santa Rosa to Bodega Bay. I saw people fishing there and others walking with their dogs. Some others had just set a table and were doing pic nics, it seemed a cool place to go there with a family or friends to do that.

I really liked to take a walk through one of the 2 marked paths they have, the one that goes by the shore and up in the crevases is perfect to do whale watching, the whales pass by this area specially on mid/end of march, april and may according to a local expert.

There´s this group of senior whale-watchers that use to go there frequently for this activity, we were there also staring for a couple of minutes but unfortunately we could not spot any whale.

If you go here you got to bring warm clothes and a wind breaker because it is very windy.

Today we started off by driving over the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was so fogged that when we got halfway over, we couldn't see anything but the car in front of us!  Jesse and I had never seen it like that while we lived around there, although I've heard it's really common.  Anyway, we didn't bother stopping to walk on the bridge, because you couldn't have seen anything anyway, except the ground under your feet.

We drove up the Marin Headlands instead, all the way up to Hawk Hill.  Even though it was my third time being up there it was just as cool as ever.  In fact, it was totally different because the bridge and city were so foggy!  It looked like a snowy wonderland from up on the hill - basically all the water was covered with cloud, so the city was surrounded by white, and just the tips of the bridge were sticking out.  I felt a little bad for Laura again, because you could hardly see the bridge, but she said she was glad it was so foggy because it looked incredible.  And after a while some of the fog burned off and you could see almost the whole bridge.  We also walked through to the other side to catch our first glimpse of the Pacific coast today - gorgeous of course!

While we were up there, two big ships kept sounding their foghorns.  One was really low and rumbly, and the other had two notes and was a little higher pitched.  After a while, we found ourselves singing along with the back-and-forth song of the foghorns.  :)

We eventually dragged ourselves away from the views to drive to Muir Woods and check out the redwoods.  It was cooler in the forest.  Jesse and I have been amazed that the temperature has been in the 60's since Laura's been here!  Anyway, it was Laura's first time seeing redwoods, and once again I felt disappointed for her because Muir Woods isn't nearly as cool as Big Basin or Yosemite.  Also, Laura and I were both frustrated because the beautiful deep colors you can see with your eyes in the forest NEVER turn out in pictures.  Nevertheless, it is always cool to see redwood trees, and we had a good time.  And we got to laugh, too - we overheard a conversation that cracked us up.  A guy was saying to his family (with a very heavy southern accent), "They come up here, they git born, and then they..." and we didn't hear the rest, but for some reason the 'git born' part made us laugh uproariously and we repeated it regularly throughout the rest of the day.  :)

From there we drove to Muir Beach overlook, which had beautiful views of the coast, and then started the longer drive to Bodega Bay.  Laura slept part of the way.  Most of the drive was not along the coast, but along a little bay with mountains on the other side between it and the coast.  It wound along through a few little towns (one of them, according to a road sign, had a population of 50!) and saw what must have been hundreds of ducks (if not more!) in the bay.  I'm not kidding.  I probably saw more ducks on that one portion of the drive than I've ever seen in my life! 

One of the prettiest parts of the drive was a huge field of yellow flowers!  There was nowhere to pull over though, so Laura and I tried our best to snap pictures out the window of the moving car (with little success).  I don't know what those flowers were, but they were gorgeous!

When we finally got to Bodega Bay (after multitudes of winding curves), we drove on a little further and just past the bay we came upon incredible cliffs at the Pacific's edge.  The waves crashing on the beaches we saw were the biggest ones I've ever seen in real life.  Jesse estimated they were probably between 20-25 feet high, and the spray they created when crashing on the giant rocks sometimes got as high as 70 feet!  Too bad our pictures make everything look small and regular - some things just can't be captured on camera.  So after a while we resigned ourselves to simply watching.

When the sun started to set, we drove back to our hotel for the night and checked in.  We stayed at Inn at the Tides, which was across the street from the bay.  Our room came with a complimentary bottle of California-grown wine!  We had a pretty view, too, although it was nothing compared with the crashing waves we had just seen.

We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant up the road, Brisas del Mar or something like that.  It was funny because it had lots of Mexican foods but almost all of them had fish instead of any other meat.  Laura and I split the Louisiana-style steak and coconut prawns.  The steak was a very thin piece of meat, with more spices spread on it than I have ever tasted.  It was good, but very spice-filled - quite a 'zing'! 

Tomorrow we're headed back to Chico!