Why in the world didn’t we think to go to Bodega Bay before we did? I guess we never really considered it, most likely because it’s on narrow Highway 1 that has a gazillion curves. Driving a 30-foot, 19-ton motor home on windy, narrow roads can get a bit dicey. Bottom line, it was white knuckle driving that kept us away. But then I discovered you could actually get there and avoid all that. It’s practically a straight shot from Santa Rosa.
Before going any farther, here’s a brief history of the area… In 1775, the Peruvian explorer, Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra sailed into a small harbor and immediately named it for himself. In the early 1800s, the Russians established Fort Ross fifteen miles up the coast. They began using the bay as a port, shipping out grain to their holdings in Alaska. Later, lumber was the big-ticket item until the North Pacific Coast Railroad bypassed Bodega, having chosen a route several miles inland. Next PG&E wanted to build a nuclear power plant on Bodega Head. They began digging a very large hole and lo and behold they uncovered a seismic fault, ooops. Now that should have been something they should have suspected. They immediately abandoned the idea and the hole remained and is now called... wait for it...“Hole in the Head.” Today it's full of water and home to birds, which to a whole lot of people is a much better usage. Speaking of birds, Alfred Hitchcock discovered the area in 1963 and made a movie in which a bunch of seagulls attack Tippi Hedren, but that didn’t happen in Bodega Bay; it took place over in Bodega, which is a nearby town with a similar name that just happened to have a large Victorian house that Alfred Hitchock thought would go weil with all those birds.
Now back to our visits… Well, what we found when we finally got there was a very nice, not too fancy RV park with front row seats for watching fishing and pleasure boats sail in and out of the bay. And to top it all off, twenty steps out our front door a fishmonger sold fresh-caught crabs. In addition, there were nice restaurants, a wonderful view, and full hookups…what could be better than that?
I recall one special time when Linda walked next door and bought a live crab. She had a large boiling pot of water waiting for a rather large crustacean of the sea. When she lifted the lid on the pot, the crab got the message and Linda had to struggle to get it into the large pot, but she being an old hand at crab wrestling won out and the end result was delicious.
Maybe what actually kept us away is the fact that Bodega Head, which sits across the bay and in full view of our rig, is on the Pacific Plate, while the village is on the North American Plate. All of this comes to us through the courtesy of the San Andreas Fault, which divides the two. If you didn’t understand the ooops in paragraph two, now you should. To this Native Californian, who knows full well the “big one” is just around the corner, having the mighty San Andreas Fault a few hundred feet away is little unsettling, however, on our several visits we detected not the slightest movement in the plates.
So with all of this information, it’s now up to you. Go there … or not.
Note: The photo is not one of mine. I borrowed it from the net. If you look carefully, you will see the spot where we usually parked out motorhome. Look right of center in the image.
