One of the first hikes Katelyn and I took in late December last year was in the area of Bodega Dunes. We had gone to Doran Beach several times, and Rick and I had explored Bodega Head, as documented in this blog. This time we wanted to try something new in that area, so we did a small amount of research and headed out.
One of the first things we learned on this hike is, if you park next to the parking lot for horse trailers, expect to see signs of horses on the trail (if you know what I mean)! The second thing is that "dunes" are made out of SAND. Between those two things, the beginning and end of this hike were more strenuous and unpleasant than expected, but once we were on the beach it was absolutely gorgeous! I had not yet learned to use the website alltrails.com extensively, but if we had done more thorough research we would have seen this quote as part of a review, which says it all: "Trail is for horses and full of sand (dunes, so expected), which means basically walking in a horsey litter box. Decent workout, though." I didn't take many photos of our dunes trail, but you can get a picture of what it was like (thanks to another hiker on all trails for this photo).
As I did more reading, I realized that there were probably much better ways to get to the beach than the route we took, but it was a good workout and we learned about "dune hiking." The all trails map shows a very different route than what we took. As near as I can tell, we started near the campground, then took that first trail at the top of the page over to the beach. We walked along the beach to that first Point in the middle of the map (Mussel Point), then back.
Our first view of the beach, after coming out from "sand climbing," looked like this. As you can see, the day was clear and sunny, but Katelyn was dressed for the cold!
As we arrived on the beach, we looked north and south and decided to head south. This photo looks north, toward what I know now is Salmon Creek. One of the things that struck me is how high the waves were. The beach was practically empty. We saw several people on horseback, but that was about it.
We walked for what seemed like miles, just the two of us and a few birds. Very peaceful.
I am trying to learn more about the wildlife we spot on these hikes, so went and looked up this bird to see what type it is. I've seen these a million times, but thanks to this blog I identified it as a "Whimbrel."
There are many more blogs on the site I found, https://imbirdingrightnow.com/ that I plan to add it to my reading list. For those that are REALLY into birds, they also have a list of resources, which includes this library https://www.macaulaylibrary.org/ . I also found this very extensive list of birds in the area but I needed photos to help with my identification. But at least I know a little more about what the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory does that is a little further down Westshore road!
The rocks around Mussel Point were picturesque, but since the tide was pretty high and we didn't feel like hiking overland, we turned around and headed back.
After completing these first batch of 7 hikes (3 more to be documented in future blogs), Katelyn and I sat down to review them, documenting things like how strenuous they were, convenience of parking and other amenities. Being a data analyst, I used my fitbit to create a table of metrics such as the number of steps, etc. (Look for the analysis in a future blog.) I felt like this analysis didn't fully capture all the aspects of this hike, because it surely felt like more of a workout then some of the others. Then I decided to add "zone minutes" to my table. Yep, that was the metric needed! While the 18,556 steps we walked that day was pretty impressive, it was the 120 minutes that I spent in a heart-pumping activity that really captured how much exercise we got on this hike!
Since I am committed to continuing to learn in retirement, I decided to look up a question I've always had (and which I encountered several times in writing this blog), which is how to handle periods and other forms of punctuation when used with parentheses and quotation marks. Here's what I learned in case you, too, have been confused:
Periods and Parentheses
When a complete, independent sentence is entirely enclosed by parentheses, the period goes inside the closing parenthesis. But, if the parenthetical material is nested inside another sentence, the period should go on the outside.
Periods and Quotation Marks
In the United States, the rule of thumb is that commas and periods always go inside the quotation marks, and colons and semicolons (dashes as well) go outside.
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