rant whine 'splain espouse: Bodega Bay getaway

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Bodega Bay getaway

My darling girlfriend/wife-to-be was good enough to plan a weekend getaway for us last weekend to Bodega Bay and environs.

At the risk of sounding thankless to Velma (which I'm not!), I wrote a somewhat negative review of the place we stayed at, the Bodega Harbor Inn. Not that it'd surprise her, since we agreed that it was a less than stellar accommodation.

That said, I actually had a really fun time the whole weekend (as I usually do when we travel together), went to places I've never been to, took a few photos which I'll post to the photoblog eventually, relaxed and slept a lot, and did some "recreatin' " (if ya know what I mean).

We saw a whale off the coast, standing on a cliff where the wind was whipping so hard you could lean into it. We got the lowdown on Bodega Bay and the other local hamlets from a friendly if talkative woman at the visitors' center. Had a very nice meal at the Blue Water Bistro, watched people making a huge sandcastle, saw dozens of colorful kites on a verrrry windy beach, and had a very quick trip to the UC Davis aquatic research facility that was closing about 10 minutes after we arrived.

On Saturday we drove inland, up the Russian River, to visit Guerneville. It seemed like much less of a cowtown and more of a cool little town once Velma informed me that it's a gay mecca and we finally turned off the main drag (no pun intended) and stumbled across a tiny whole foods grocery located in a house, and a really cool cafe with fantastic food being baked and served up by simply the most masculine gay men I've ever seen. I mean, right outta "Breakback Mountain" territory. We ate lunch there and had so much left over we had it for dinner too!

We took a short but satisfying walk among the redwoods of Armstrong Woods, which was damp and misty and beautiful, the sorrel blanketing nearly every square foot of the ground that wasn't pathway.

Thank you Velma for taking me away! You're the best. I'm gonna keep you ;)