The Birds...

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R: We arrived in to Bodega Bay quite late at night and just as another Pacific storm was coming in. It's most famous as the setting for Alfred Hitchcocks film "The Birds" - a film based on killer sea gulls attacking the local residents. Cate being from the seaside has a slight fondness for sea gulls, personally, I hate the things. Now I feel a bit ratified.

Bodega bay is a sweet little place, more a line of shops and services along the sea front. It's a sheltered bay (but didn't feel so sheltered with the storm coming in) and a headland which is on a different tectonic plate. It was a stormy night, made worse by the sheriff turning up over and over again to deal with a child custody issue at the hotel, and the calls of a wet cat who seemed to want to be anywhere but where it was outside the door. When we woke up the power had gone off across the coast due to the wind. While Cate went to church in Bodega, I had an early morning walk across the headland, battling with wind and rain, but it was a fresh experience to say the least.

We headed off to Point Reyes national park, which is an area of land on the Pacific plate (as opposed to the North American plate) which moves 2 inches up the coast of the USA every year due to tectonic movement. The scenery was pretty dramatic, but we were fought back into our Jeep (did I mention we were driving a Jeep?) by hail and rain on a few occasions. We found a colony of Harbour Seals which were all jostling for space on the beach, but didn't seal the grey whales, which are supposed to be migrating south past Point Reyes at the moment, but I don't blame them for not wanting to come out of the water in those conditions. Seals are daft creatures...

We found an old ranch to explore, and a mule deer conservation area before returning back to Bodega Bay and the power was On. It was time for Fish and Chips, or prawns and rice for Cate. The next night was a bit quieter.

I'd recommend Bodega bay, although we found only small nods to Hitchcock (somewhere there is a Perspex screen you can take your photo with with images of the birds on it), however what we are craving now is some civilisation.

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