Apr 11th - Sightseeing Day

We took off today and went sightseeing. We went over to Bodega Bay, up the coast to Jenner and back home through Guerneville, Rio Nido & Forestville.

While out on the “ocean overlook” at Bodega Bay we spotted two whales “blowing” but didn’t actually see the whales. There was a guy out there with his thermos full of coffee, a lawn chair, and very warmly dressed. He had a button on his hat that said “Whale Watcher.” We talked to him some and he said he had seen a pair of whales blow about 30 minutes before we saw ours. The ones we saw were maybe a mile north of where he saw them and he was pretty sure that they were the same ones.

The photo below is looking north along the California coast, while on the ocean outlook.

The next three photos are looking back at Bodega Bay. There is a channel between the buoys that show in the center and bottom photos. The rest of the area is tidal flats. When we went out to the outlook there were LOTS of people out searching for crabs.

There is a campground out on the peninsula in the above photo. I thought it might be cool to move the RV down there for a couple of days. We won't do it because when we leave here we will head north for at least 250 miles and find a place to spend a few days before heading on up to the Portland, Oregon area and the next camp where we will volunteer.
Below is a photo of some of the shoreline at Goat Rock Beach. There were supposed to be sea lions there but we didn’t see any. There was lots of nice sandy beach and we did talk a walk on the beach. I can’t imagine how this P&H crane got there.

From Goat Rock Beach we drove over to Armstrong Woods Redwood Grove. It is the only place in Sonoma county that has old growth redwoods and that is open to the public. (In California the counties are LARGE. There are only 58 counties in the entire state. Sonoma county is almost 1,800 sq miles.) We took a nice hike on the trails to see a couple of the more famous trees. Walking though the timber there is like walking through a fairy land. Below is a photo of me in front of the Parson Jones tree. It is the tallest tree in the Armstrong Woods. It is 310' tall, 13.8 feet in diameter and approximately 1300 years old.

Below is a photo of Kathy in front of the Colonel Armstrong tree. It is 308' tall, 14.6 feet in diameter and approximately 1,400 years old.

The trees are actually larger than they look. We were both over 10 feet in front of the trees for the photos. You are not supposed walk off the pathways so we couldn't actually go back and stand next to the trees.

Below is the route of our day trip. We travelled about 70 miles. We left around 9:30 and got back to the RV around 4:30. The weather was beautiful.