Bodacious Bodega Bay

The population of California is nearly 40 million people, with about 8 million of them in the nine counties that comprise the San Francisco Bay Area.

Those kinds of numbers suggest getting away from crowds will require either a long drive or getting away from prime coastal scenery.

What I’ve found, however, is if you’re willing to wake up early it’s pretty easy to experience some of the most scenic nearby destinations without battling crowds, even on weekends.

It’s an approach that served us well on a recent weekend trip to Bodega Bay.

Our previous trips to Bodega have come along the way to someplace else, like Point Arena or Salt Point State Park.

This time we decided to make Bodega our destination.

More specifically, we wanted to go out to the end of Bodega Head, a four-mile-long promontory that separates Bodega Bay from the open ocean.

The western edge of the head is a rugged, granitic coast that’s actually part of the same geologic province as the Sierra Nevada.

Previously occupied by the Coastal Miwok people, it’s also known for whale watching and as Great White Shark feeding grounds.

When we rolled into the parking lot on a cool, breezy spring morning there were several people on an overlook whale watching with guidance from volunteers from an environmental non-profit.

Whale watching seemed great, but our plan involved a little more movement by hiking the Bodega Head Trail.

It’s an easy, 1.7 mile loop we hiked in a counter-clockwise direction, starting with the sections along the coast and ending with the bayside segments.

The coastal segments offered stunning views and cold wind coming off the Pacific. We enjoyed watching and listening to the surf crash onto the rocks and fishing boats heading to and from sea.

On the back end of our loop we had great views of Bodega Bay and the Doran Regional Park.

By the time we returned to the truck the parking lot was filling up. But we’d arrived early so we had a good spot with the truck positioned so we could sit on the tailgate and watch the water.

It made for a near-perfect setup to drink some hot tea and watch for whales, of which we saw several.

After whale watching we had one more stop to make at Fishetarian, one of our favorite places on the North Coast.

It’s a small restaurant located along Highway 1 and Bodega Bay with lots of outdoor seating and a menu that includes locally caught BBQ oysters.

If you like eating shellfish, it’s a great way to wrap up a morning of coastal hiking.

The oysters were so good we were still craving shellfish afterward, so we stopped along the way back for some mussels to cook and serve with ramen for dinner.