Bodega Dunes Campground
In early May of 2017, we did a camping trip to the Bodega Bay area, specifically to the Sonoma Coast State Beach. We stayed at the Bodega Dunes Campground, which is a fairly small campground off Highway 1. Campsites are assigned on arrival, so we did a drive-around and picked a nice one on the South side of the campground. This page has a nice summary of the Bodega Dunes Campground.
The mosquitoes were plentiful and ravenous. We like to sit outside, but I hate to be snacked on while we’re doing it. So, the screenhouse went up right away. Turned out it was a good thing since we got some rain before we left. Our campsite was pretty well sheltered from the wind, which is always a bonus.
I’d read about Bodega Head on the internet, and everybody seemed to think that was the place to go. Looked great to me, so we walked down there from the campground. If you do this, you should allow an entire morning or afternoon. The walk from the campground is more than and hour, and you’ll want time to stop and enjoy the scenery. The shot below shows Bob, striding purposefully ahead down the trail, while I dawdle and gawk my way after him.
Wildflowers Were Great
We do lots of campground walks, circling around to see what we can see. Sometimes it gets pretty interesting when several people are trying to assemble a large tent that they have no instructions for or even a notion of what it should look like. We passed the tree below several times, and each time I very much admired the intricate tangle of knotted roots that the tree sports.
The afternoon before we left, we’d gone down and walked along the beach. Coming back, we saw a trail off the road to the right. We went down it, and found the horse trail back past the campground and, eventually, to the horse parking lot down below our campsite. We decided to go back via the horse trail, and that wasn’t the smartest thing we ever did. I didn’t think that the uphill half was so bad. Very steep and the kind of chewed-up-by-horses sand that leads to that good old “one step forward, two steps back.” The downhill was bad. It as very steep and the chewed-up-by-horses sand and was way deeper than the uphill. It seemed to me that it was like walking down a steep hill in deep snow, with the lovely addition of horse poo. We make some truly special choices sometimes.
