Bodega Bay – Sandcastles and Kites

Posted by Karen on 24-Apr-2009

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A while back, I’d heard about the Castles & Kites Celebration in Bodega Bay, so I booked a campsite on the beach at Doran Regional Park for this weekend.  I invited Tersha and Vic and they came up with Brianna and their new tent trailer, which was really great because it was so windy I don’t think my tent would have stood upright.  Friday night was spent cozily out of the wind inside the trailer playing cards and hanging out.  Early Saturday morning I took a walk along the beach and enjoyed photographing some sand textures.  On the harbor side I met some guys digging for clams and they showed me how to spot where the clams were buried–look for a little hole and them stomp and watch for the water to spurt out; very neat.  We then all headed back down the beach to watch people fly kites and build sandcastles.  We set up our chairs near the roped off area used by the pros and watched them launch some huge kites.  Another gentleman we met had plenty of kites and explained the difference between sport kites and beer kites to us.  Sport kites require constant handling, while beer kites just need to be launched and then you have a beer while it flies.. LOL!  We took a little drive over to the other side of the bay, but it was really too windy to enjoy much time outside, so back to the calm of the trailer for dinner and some relaxation. Sunday was an enjoyable drive home along Highway 1.

GPS Stats: • Odometer: 3.80 miles • Total Time: 6:04 • Moving Time: 1:41 • Moving Average: 2.2 mph • Overall Average: 0.6 mph

Mather Field Geocaching

Posted by Karen on 10-Mar-2007

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Today was a little bit of solo geocaching around Mather Field. Mather is an old Air Force military base that closed down during the early 1990s.  It is slowly being converted over to civilian use, but there still are many abandoned military buildings still there waiting to be torn down.  It’s intersted to Mather, since I lived there as a child in the 1970s… some things seem familiar, but most doesn’t anymore.

Road Trip — Coleman National Fish Hatchery

Posted by Karen on 05-Aug-2006

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Today Lisa and I headed north to start a week-long road trip to Oregon to see what there was to see.  After driving Interstate 5 for a couple of hours, we sidetracked off the main road to check out the Coleman National Fish Hatchery, which is the largest Chinook salmon hatchery in the lower United States.  The fish weren’t spawning on this day, but I bet it’s something to see when they are.  The salmon travel from the Pacific Ocean up the Sacramento River to here.  There were numerous fingerlings in the raceways and when the time is right, they will make the trip to the ocean and only a small percentage of them will survive.  There was absolutely nobody in sight, so we walked around and toured the hatchery on our own.  We had lunch and the nice picnic tables area and watched the various types of birds running around.