Wednesday

After a yummy breakfast of fruit and yogurt, and scrambled eggs and bacon we hit the road for another day of adventures in northern Sonoma county. First stop: Armstrong State Park. Here we walked around giant redwood trees, 1000-1400 years old. Pretty awesome to be so small among these gigantic trees. The silence in the middle of the woods hurt my ears!

Next, we drove towards the coast and took scenic Highway 1 North to Jenner where we ate a light lunch of veggie sandwiches while gazing out at to where the Russian River meets the Pacific ocean and hoping for the clouds to clear. We then drove south on route 1 for the 10 miles or so to Bodega Bay. Along the way, we went from dizzying cliffs overlooking the Pacific down to sea-level marshes. We parked at numerous scenic overlooks and actually walked out to put a hand into the Pacific ocean itself at Salmon Creek. The air was about 54 degrees, but with the full sun on us, we felt very warm even though we were walking about without big heavy winter coats. Washed up on the shore were piles of some weird sea vegetation that looked like piles of rope from a distance but then looked like long rubber tubes about 12 feet long close up. They felt rubbery and squishy too. Yuck! We also saw seals sunning themselves on the rocks and brave (crazy?) surfers out on the turquoise water.

Bodega is where Hitchcock filmed The Birds, but finding no photo op, we keep going through the town and on to Sebastopol. There we got mesmerized by a fantastic independent bookstore, Copperfield, that we had to buy an extra bag at an exotic Nepalese shop next store in order to take them back on the plane with us.

Back at the B&B, the owner was gracious enough to light a real fire in the big fireplace in the main house, a lovely California style from the 1920s. There we sat by the fire in an atrium-like room under a canopy of redwoods writing out post cards, reading, knitting, drinking wine with some lovely jazzy French and relaxing classical background music. We nibbled on some cheese, bread, and olives, and called it our own little happy hour and wondered when would be a good time to return to this paradise.

Later, we hit the town of Guerneville for a quick dinner of authentic Mexican food compleate with Mexican beers (Cordon Negro, Tecate) then back to sit by the fire in our own room.