Sonoma Coast, California - August 22nd to 23rd, 2024

The Sonoma Coast State Park was our next destination. A couple of attractions on the way there added to our enjoyment of the area. The Sonoma Coast is a beautiful stretch of the Pacific coastline in California. We managed to take a lot of in during our short stay.

Thursday was a travel day from Van Damme State Park to Bodega Dunes Campground in Sonoma Coast State Park. It wasn’t a long drive, so we worked in a couple of stops along the way.

Our first stop was Point Arena Lighthouse. It is a short drive off the highway down a narrow road. The coastline there is stunning. We parked just outside the entrance gate to the lighthouse property. You can drive right up to the lighthouse, but we stopped for the view and decided to walk in from there.

After paying our entrance fee along with the price of the tour, we walked along the fence line, enjoying the views of the coast line and the lighthouse. A seal was lying on one of the flat rocks below. Flowers lined the tops of the cliffs.

There was a small museum included with the entrance fee. The original lighthouse was built in 1870, but was damaged in an earthquake in 1906. The spiral staircase was saved along with the framework that housed the 1st Order Fresnel Lens. A new tower was built in 1908 to withstand earthquakes. The Fresnel Lens was replaced with an electronic beacon in 1977. Currently, the lighthouse uses a small LED array.

The tour was climbing up to the top of the lighthouse and enjoying the view while a tour guide talked about the lighthouse. The Point Arena Lighthouse is the tallest, climbable lighthouse on the Pacific coast. The views up and down the coast from the top are wonderful. It was well worth the $10 per person to climb the tower ($5 for entrance fee and $5 for the tower tour).

After our tour, we stopped for lunch at the Rollerville Cafe at the corner of the lighthouse road and Highway 1. Keith had the tempura prawns with fries, while Ann had the Baja fish tacos with a salad. It was all delicious.

Just a couple miles further down the highway is the town of Point Arena. We stopped at the Arena Market and Cafe for groceries. It is a very small grocery store, but, surprisingly, it had a wonderful selection of items.

Our last stop was Fort Ross State Historic Park. Fort Ross was North America’s southernmost Russian settlement. It was founded by the Russian-American Company in 1812. The company established the colony to grow wheat and other crops for Russians living in Alaska. When the settlement was no longer profitable, the Russian-American Company sold Fort Ross to John Sutter in 1841. John Sutter was originally from the German Empire and became a Mexican citizen in order to obtain a Mexican land grant in California. Fort Ross became a California State Park in 1906.

The historic buildings the park are mostly reconstructions, but there is one building original to the Russian colony. In addition to the fort, there is a small museum in the visitor center. We walked through the museum, then walked through the fort on our own. The park was pretty fascinating.

We arrived at Bodega Dunes Campground around dinner time. After eating leftovers for dinner, Ann went for a walk. She followed some trails across the dunes to South Salmon Creek Beach. It was a good thing that she was tracking her walk with AllTrails, because the trails were hard to follow and not well marked.

Getting to the beach was longer and harder than she thought it would be. She was going through soft sand and thought she could cut over to the beach sooner, but ended up going all the way over to the day use parking area. The beach turned out to be nothing special. There were no rock formations, just a sandy beach, ocean, and sky. A fog had rolled in and the sun was setting.

The dunes themselves were more interesting. They were covered in a colorful carpet of plants. It was pretty, even in the low light. A couple of deer were hard to spot in the darkness. They seemed to blend into the scenery pretty well.

Friday, we drove up to Shell Beach, about 7 miles to the north. It is still part of Sonoma Coast State Park. We heard there was good tidal pool viewing there, so we got up early to try to catch part of the low tide. We were up at 7 am and packing up by 8 am. We reached Shell Beach around 8:30 am.

A short but steep trail led down to the beach. There were a handful of other people there wandering around the rocks. A fog was in the air. Seaweed was strewn all over the beach and the rocks. And yes, there were plenty of tidal pools to explore. Starfish, sea anemones, hermit crabs in spiral shells, mussels, barnacles, and small fish that were so well camouflaged that you couldn’t see them unless they moved. Someone else there spotted a sea otter, but lost track of it among the rocks. A few seals were doing their banana imitations on a rock just offshore.

The park staff that checked us in the previous day recommended the Kortum Trail. It runs along the coast, from Wrights Beach in the south to the Russian River in the north, about four miles long. The trail runs right through the parking lot of Shell Beach. From Shell Beach, the trail went 1.5 south to Wrights Beach, while heading north on the trail, it was 2.5 miles to Rock Creek Road and Rock Creek Beach near the Russian River.

By the time we got our fill of the tidal pools, there was still a heavy fog. We decided to hang out in Red Tail in hopes the fog would lift before hiking some of the Kortum Trail. The fog didn’t want to seem to burn off. After eating lunch, we decided we should go on a hike anyway. The fog wasn’t real thick, so there was still some views along the coastline.

We took the Kortum Trail to the south, to Wrights Beach. There is a small campground there next to the beach, up against the cliffs, protected by a few trees. Instead of heading straight back on the trail, we decided to walk the beach. We passed a trail down to the beach that we were hoping we could reach from the end of Wrights Beach. Our gamble worked out and we didn’t have to retrace our steps back along the beach.

Somehow, we turned the three mile trail into a 4.1 mile hike with 354 feet elevation gain which we completed in a little over two hours. We counted it as hike number 51 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2024.

Even in the fog, there were great views of the rock formations up and down the coast. We also encountered interesting plants that we were not familiar with. There were pink lilies, on tall stalks with no leaves. They seemed to be everywhere.

After our hike, we drove into the small town of Bodega Bay for an early dinner. We ended up at the Birds Cafe. Keith had the fish and chips while Ann had two tacos with a salad. One taco was fish, the other was artichoke. Both were lightly fried. It was all tasty. For dessert, we walked next door to the coffee shop and had a soft serve ice cream cone. The soft serve was vanilla bean, made by a local creamery.

A lighthouse, fort, wildlife, tidal pools, dunes, gorgeous coastline, hiking trails, and good food. It’s hard to find anything wrong with that combination. The Sonoma Coast was one of our favorite sections of the Pacific coast so far.

Check out our related video: Sonoma Coast, California

(Ann)