Monday June 2 – Our plan is to go on a short trip, camp, and try out the setup we’ve created in our new camper – a shakedown cruise, if you will. The usual drill – food, water, electronics, clothing (unlike our recent trip to Zion NP, we took our warm clothes which turned out to be a good thing), sleeping bags, etc.
We always forget something – this time it was peanut butter – but we did remember the coffee!
Our destination was Doran Park near Bodega Bay. Doran Park includes a spit that extends out into Bodega Bay, forming Bodega Bay harbor. Our plan was to camp out on this spit and have views of the harbor and the bay while camping. A side note – most of the filming for Hitchcock’s classic “The Birds” was done in Bodega and Bodega Bay. This factoid is inescapable as one wanders the shops in these two towns; sadly the last big thing there seems to happened in the early 1960’s – apart from the fisheries mostly dying out from overfishing.
Along the way, past Novato, we stopped at the Marin French Cheese factory hoping to find some good deals on ripe Camembert, but not this time. We next stopped at the Bovine Bakery in Pt. Reyes Station and picked up a nice loaf of sesame-sunflower seed wheat bread.
Winding north along Tomales Bay, we first started to notice the wind. As we turned west and got into the “wind tunnel” between Bodega and Bodega Bay – yikes. The good news was the truck still handled OK in the wind and on the winding roads, helping validate All Terrain Campers’ concept of keeping the camper light and strong.
Arriving at the Doran Park kiosk, we discovered, as expected, that there were spots available even though we had no reservation. The ranger (?) gave us a map and let us pick and choose; I worked my will and we wound up on a fully exposed site (no brush or trees) “with great views”. Our first indicator of the fun ahead came as we released the tie downs so that we could pop up the camper top. The wind was pretty strong, and it lifted the top from the side as soon as the clamps came off. Inside, I finished lifting the top and we now had an enclosed space in the blustery winds.
We later checked weather sites and found that we’d experienced 25-30 mph winds with gusts in the 40’s. That is a lot of wind.
We bundled up and went out to hike around the spit, first heading out to the far (west) end of the spit then coming back along the beach. We noticed a couple kitesurfer kites in the air across the spit so we headed back to camp. It turns out they were setting up near our campsite. We sat outside for a few minutes, then retreated into the camper because of the wind and watched them out the windows. At this point, if we had been out with our previous camping setup, we would have headed home. Kitesurfing looks really fun, but also really hard – one has to manage the kite, stand up on the board in the water, sail in some specific direction, etc. These guys varied from really good to still learning, the latter being more entertaining.
After a cold dinner, we read for a while then settled in for the night. I did get up a couple times to silence clamps that were banging in the wind. The wind was coming on broadside to the camper (another feature of our “view site”), so it was like being rocked in the cradle all night. It often amazes me what people can sleep through. Occasionally, in a lull, we could hear the foghorn at the harbor entrance.
Tuesday, June 3. Morning was calm but foggy. We broke camp and set off into Bodega Bay and had breakfast at The Tides. Kind of spendy, but at least it was good. Leaving, I asked our humorless waitress what time the fog would clear – “when it decides to”.
We then decided to head for Point Reyes National Seashore, as we knew there would be some wind-sheltered areas to hike, etc. First we thought we’d go out to the lighthouse, but wondered if we’d see anything in all the fog. Then we decided to head off and hike out to Tomales Point, but on the way we were passing Abbot’s Lagoon and decided – since we’d not been for a long time – to go out there.
Sunblock, a little food and water in the pack and off we went. First we encountered large areas of bush lupine – yellow and very (very!) fragrant. Then, passing a small pond, we saw a young buck deer that let us approach within about 15 feet – we got a good picture of him. Farther along, stopping frequently to enjoy the flowers, we saw an osprey in the air carrying a fish. It stayed close long enough to give us some good views. We saw lots of red wing blackbirds in full breeding plumage, song sparrows, barn swallows and stopped to watch a noisy little bird in the cattails that we never really got a good enough look at to identify. I’m pretty sure it was some variety of wren, probably a marsh wren, judging from it’s actions, sounds and the habitat. It jumped down into the water plants where we could see it making its way in the plants by the plants waving above it – funny.
We made our way out to the open ocean where Carol loves to treasure hunt on the beach. Coming back we noticed an area roped off with a sign – it turned out to be a nesting area for western snowy plovers, which are just about extinct. At the Pt Reyes visitor center, they have a specific count on number of pairs, nests, eggs, hatchlings and number of hatchlings that survived. Another blow from the greatest extincter the planet has ever seen – the plovers are disappearing because of loss of habitat and loss of privacy. Oh, well, it’s survival of the fittest, and what matter if in future the only animals we see are domestics and a few crows and ravens. Your children won’t miss what they never saw.
Heading back we found some interesting thistle plants – the flower spikes grow in spirals – and near the pond where we saw the young buck, Carol spotted a bird walking around on the water plants; I got the ‘nocs on it quickly and it was a sora, probably the second one we’ve ever seen (not that they’re rare, but they are shy). It hung around in the open for just a few more seconds, then disappeared into the underbrush. We sat on a bench at the end of the pond waiting for it to reappear, but no joy.
Back at the truck, we made our way to the vistor’s center. There was a ceanothis bush with at least 3 different kinds of bees buzzing around on it, some of them so loaded with pollen all they could seem to do was lay in the blossoms and wave their legs.
We headed back to camp and discovered the lull in the wind we’d experienced that morning was – over. If anything, it was blowing harder than the day before. I set up and cooked for dinner – we had bread, broccoli and beer – an alliterative dinner that Carol coined “the b-fecta”; clever she is – and we quickly determined that the kitchen setup I’d installed really didn’t work and needs to be reconfigured.
What I had done was to take the boxes I had in the old setup and install them “as is” into the camper, thinking that we’d just to be sure to get out everything we needed before lowering the food prep shelves (which block the boxes from being opened) – this turned out not to be true. Even if one managed to get everything out for one meal, the next (like breakfast the next morning…) required something else. Now I’m going to build the big box I should have built before to convert the smaller boxes into drawers…
Another, even windier night – Carol claimed to have not been able to sleep.
Wednesday, June 4 – We awoke and discovered – no lull in the wind this morning. It seemed to be getting stronger and stronger. We broke camp and headed for home, returning along Tomales Bay and getting some nice pictures in the morning light. We cut across to the 101 over Mount Tamalpias, stopping at one exceptional viewpoint where one could see the SF Bay, the Bay Bridge and the Pacific Ocean at once. Nice. Home and unpacked, I hit the weights and then we napped in our nice warm non-windy back yard.
Next trip – we’re making a Starlight Peak attempt the week after next with our friends from Massachusetts and our nephew Mat.
As for the camper, there are some things to tweak but it looks like it will do nicely what we bought it to do – extend trips in non-ideal weather.