queerbychoice | Bodega Bay Photographs

Susan and I are back from our geology class camping trip at Bodega Dunes Campground, on Bodega Bay. I'll divide my photographs into two posts, this one for the first day of class (traveling around Bodega Bay) and the next one for the second day of class (traveling south to Point Reyes).

After having been warned that we would probably have to share our campsite with dozens of other students, we were delighted to find that we actually ended up having campsite 42 (the answer to life, the universe, and everything!) all to ourselves. Our campsite featured its own shortcut path directly to the restroom (which included showers!). This meant that other people tended to want to walk through our campsite. But that was okay, because most of them politely asked permission, and we were happy to have such convenient access to the path ourselves. Here's Susan returning down the path to our campsite.

And here's Susan in the tent, putting on her hiking boots in the morning.

Here are some more views of our campsite, with my car and Susan's camping equipment.

First thing in the morning before the first day of class, we and three other students and the professor all went geocaching together in the sand dunes behind the campsite. I was exhausted by trying to keep up with everyone else - even Susan, who was hobbling because she had tripped on my bedroom carpet a few days earlier and thought she might have broken her toe. But at least I got a nice landscape photograph from it.

This is our classmate Juan, holding up his GPS device and a stuffed monkey with the school logo on it, which the professor had brought along for us to add to the cache we found.

Here we all are with the cache we found. Derek is holding the cache because he was the one who found it. The professor took this picture with my camera and commented that we all had a big green mohawk over our heads.

Then we went to class with our other classmates. The first stop was Goat Rock Beach, so named because supposedly people used to herd goats on top of Goat Rock, which is a sea stack (a big rock formerly attached to shore, now separated due to erosion) slightly offshore.

I photographed Susan on the cliff above Goat Rock Beach.

And a classmate named Lang.

Susan photographed me on the same cliff, along with Derek and some woman we don't remember the name of. You can tell by my hair how windy it was.

The Russian River flows into the ocean here, which is why Goat Rock Beach is bordered on both sides by water.

We drove down from the cliff to the tombolo - a bit of land that has built up between a sea stack and the shore, due to water depositing gravel in an area protected from erosion by the sea stack. This is the tombolo.

And here is Susan on the tombolo.

Then we drove from the tombolo to the beach itself, which was just as freezing as everywhere else.

For lunch we drove to Shell Beach, which was also freezing. We sat in my car while we ate the lunch we'd brought with us, to stay out of the wind. When we finished eating, Susan went out on the beach to begin our assignment, but I stayed in the car for another 15 minutes because it was so much more comfortable in the car. When I finally ventured out into the wind, I wasn't sure at first where Susan had gone. I took this picture while I was looking around for her on top of the cliff.

Then I found the stairs down to the beach. I photographed this lupine on the way down. It was growing right next to the stairs.

But by the time I reached the beach, I could see Susan in the distance.

I ran to meet her and asked what she'd been doing.

She showed me a cave she had found during a previous visit to Shell Beach, and then she posed next to her favorite rock she had found on the current visit to Shell Beach. The rock was serpentine.

Then I took pictures of the ocean.

And Susan took a picture of me.

After class was over, we went geocaching with the professor and a few other students again. The GPS devices led us into a field of poison oak, and we had a terrible time finding the cache, until Susan moved aside some rocks - and there it was! There was also a scenic view from the cache location, so I photographed it.

And there were lots of wild irises all over the field, too. I liked them much better than I liked the poison oak.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wow. Incredible photos. What a beautiful place. Geology is fun.

great photos but I hate, hate, hate camping. All that insects! You look wonderful in the last 4th photo, the middle shot of you in red jacket, like you have a glow around you. You must be happy. :)

What does your shirt say? It has my favorite sort of cat on. Posts like this make me want to take more geology courses in the future, I miss being taught about rocks by knowledgeable people!

My shirt says "Viva el Gato" with a cat stylized to look like the classic Che Guevara image, wiht a star-shaped pattern in the fur on its forehead. Susan gave me that shirt.

See, those pictures of the woods, that "thickness" is what I remember from the drive to and from the ocean alongside the Russian River. Magical and mysterious (not to get too Beatles in my description). It really made me want to move there. And the ocean beaches. I want to go there now!

I wouldn't call anything in these pictures "woods." I think your use of that term really gives away your Southern Californian-ness!

Well, the first two photographs, of which I speak, look like they are in the woods because there are numerous trees next to each other. I'm from Wisconsin, have camped in various spots throughout northern California, Oregon, Virginia, etc., and the first two photographs look like you're off the ocean and in the woods. The road that I went on 20 years ago along the Russian River was in the woods. Real woods, with black bears and such. Perhaps all that's gone now, which would be sad. My use of that term is from the memory of being in the woods all up and down the coast from the Columbia River to Crescent City, inland from the coast, and then driving along that patch of which I spoke. Maybe in those two first photographs the trees stop beyond the sight of the camera, but you can't tell that from those photos.

We did go through real woods (redwood forest) on our way to the campsite, but I wouldn't describe anything in the immediate vicinity of the campsite as woods. Certainly there were trees, enough of them that every campsite had one or two or three big ones. But you could see the sky all over the place between them. To me, real woods is a forest where there are so many tall trees that you can hardly see the sky at all. This campsite was only a "woodland."

Well, sure, and I can see now that you've pointed it out that that's a little wooded area near the ocean, but you really can't tell that by looking at the first two photos, and those were all I was talking about. I thought maybe you had camped inland, in the woods I remember going through, and then went to the beach for geological day excursions. My God!

Sorry to have offended your northern California-ist soul. I'll go hop in my SUV now and go foraging Southern California style (gathering double cheeseburgers from the McDonald's drive through, curly fries from the Jack N the Box drive through, and thick chocolate shakes from the In N Out drive through, and then go sight-seeing, which we call "hiking," on the 90 freeway). :)

Bodega Bay Photographs

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Yes, beautiful

Re: Yes, beautiful

Re: Yes, beautiful

Re: Yes, beautiful

Re: Yes, beautiful