Bodega Bay

On Saturday, Andrew and I drove out to Bodega Bay, a small coastal town about an hour and a half’s drive from Sacramento. We met Beth and Nate and the babies near the harbor, and had lunch at a crab shack overlooking the boats. It’s Dungeness crab season here, with signs all over the harbor advertising fresh crab for sale directly from the local fishermen. We sat outside in the sun—it was a lovely day, in the 60s—and had crab sandwiches, nothing but fresh crab and a little dressing on good rolls.

After lunch, we headed to a nearby beach, nestled below a dramatic rocky coastline, with waves crashing over rocks in the surf. The beach was full of crab claws and mussel shells and saltwater-smoothed rocks and seaweed, but the babies seemed most interested in running at top speed toward the water, with Beth and Nate doing their best to keep their little shoes dry (they had less luck with their own shoes).

Before Andrew and I left later that afternoon, we saw a crowd of people gathered on top of a rocky bluff, so we climbed up to see what they were looking at. They were whale-watching—it was the last of the whales’ southward migration. When we went to Mendocino last year during the Whale Festival, we didn’t see one whale all weekend—but this time we spotted one within minutes. We couldn’t see a dramatic tail, but we did see a curved smooth back arching out of the water for a moment. My first whale.

That night, we had dinner in Sebastopol, at a wonderful little place called the Starlight Wine Bar & Restaurant. Most of the tables are inside an old Pullman Steamliner train car, with the original fixtures intact, including paintings of pastoral wine country scenes running the entire length of the car, above the windows. The chef had worked in New Orleans years ago, and a lot of the menu was so inspired; I had a delicious gumbo, and Andrew had a burger with creole aioli. Sebastopol is in apple country, so we shared a small round apple pie with cinnamon ice cream for dessert. As we ate, we engaged in one of our favorite conversational pastimes: Where would you rather live? The scenarios always involve two fabulous far-off places, and we debate the places’ merits and draws, how long we’d want to stay, logistics. Sometimes, such a discussion is painful. But it’s not so bad after spending a day at a place like Bodega Bay.

It’s the off-season around here, so we took advantage of ridiculously low hotel rates and spent the night near Santa Rosa. In the morning, we drove north to Guerneville, a town in the Russian River Valley, and had breakfast at the Coffee Bazaar, a cute coffee shop. Then we added to our list of redwood forest visits by exploring the Armstrong Redwoods State Park, whose large redwood grove includes trees as old as 1400 years. I absolutely love walking through redwoods; they’re so soulful, so mysterious and stately, and when I close my eyes it’s easy to imagine the silence of the forest being not much different from how it was when the trees were young. While the Americas were being discovered, while Shakespeare was writing his plays, those trees were growing. It’s an incredible feeling to be that close to something that’s been alive through all of it.


As we left the redwoods and drove on to Napa and the Super Bowl, we mused over whether, once we’re gone, we’ll be glad we lived for a while on the West Coast. We both agreed that yes, we will be glad. Chances are good that we would have visited the big California cities and parts of wine country at some point in our lives even without living here, but exploring places like Sebastopol and Bodega Bay are luxuries for those of us with time—and many weekends—to spare. And they’re places I’m glad we’ve gotten to see.