Day 100 – Today is a travel day; going to the next campground. It was 44 degrees when we got up, partly cloudy. We packed up, then sat outside looking at the Bay once more. There’s still very few campers here; it’ll be busy again on the weekend.
43 miles
Westside Regional Park, 2400 Westshore Road, Bodega Bay, CA 94923, (707) 875-3540, http://parks.sonomacounty.ca.gov/Visit/Westside-Regional-Park/. Check-in time is 2 p.m. Check-out time is noon. Bodega Bay has several campgrounds. This was the best choice for us. Much less crowded than Doran County Park and located on the more quiet side of the Bay, the campground is small. Camping sites are large enough for an RV and a tow car to park end-to-end, although a really big RV would have a problem if towing a car, too. There are 5 rows of campsites with about 12 sites per row. There are some trees and bushes separating some rows. We had site #47, the last one in the row closest to the Bay. Excellent views of the Bay, of the tides going in and out, of the birds & seals, and of the fishing boats as they travelled out to sea. The west side of the Bay looks out over the town of Bodega Bay. At night the lights from the town and homes twinkle across the Bay. The campground is located very close to hiking opportunities, the Ocean, and the town with shopping and restaurants. But it is quiet on the west side because you are not IN the city. Reservations preferred. Open all year. Westside fills up during the summer for sure and on most weekends. $32 per night + $9.50 online reservation fee + a $7 fee to use the dumping station each time you use it. We would stay there again at the right time of year.
We departed at 12:05 p.m. after dumping, 51 degrees and partly cloudy. The drive south on Highway 1 was windy and narrow in some places but there weren’t lots of cliffs that we were perched precariously on, thank goodness.
I forgot to mention, the other day when we went to the bakery, I saw a huge buffalo! There were lots of farmlands on the rolling hills with cows & horses dotting the green hills. At first I didn’t even realize it was a buffalo, just thought it was one LARGE, bulky cow. I told Rob we should go back and get a picture. When we drove back we were amazed that it was so still, like a statue. It WAS a statue. LOL.
We arrived at Samuel P. Taylor State Park at 1:40 p.m. (56 degrees and completely cloudy). We’d reserved site #52 in advance; it was not our first choice but the ones we wanted were already taken. As with most the State Park campgrounds we’ve encountered in CA, they are older Parks and not built with large RVs in mind. The campground roads are narrow & we could barely get into our site, get the slide-outs out without hitting a tree, and fit the car, too. Still, once in the site, it was quiet and cozy (but it’s only a Tuesday; we’ll see how the weekend goes). There’s a creek that runs through the Park and lots of trees, some of them redwoods. The main reason we picked this campground is that it’s just 6 miles from Point Reyes National Seashore, a destination we’d been looking forward to exploring.
It’s supposed to rain tonight and be very windy tomorrow. We have no hook-ups again, and there is no dump station. We’ll be hunkered down with the kitties, trying to keep warm tonight.