Wild Water!

We took a drive to the coast yesterday to check out the high surf at Jenner and Bodega Bay. Jenner is about 30 miles from Santa Rosa, but the road through the Russian River Valley via Guerneville, Rio Nido and Monte Rio is tortuous and has at least 3 stoplights to allow for one-way traffic due to road damage from the floods of December, 2005.

We went to the Sonoma Coast State Beach, more precisely Goat Rock Beach. We'd never been down the long, winding road to Goat Rock and the jetty that leads to the rock and serves as a parking lot. We have been having 50 to 60 mph winds over the last few days and we wanted to see the "surf advisory," the newspeople were yakking about.

There is almost always a surf advisory on the Sonoma Coast. The area is loaded with seals and their natural predators Great White sharks like to hang out and occasionally harass the surfers. Not only the Great Whites are a problem; the area is rife with rip currents that pull unwary waders out to sea and sleeper waves that can do the same.

I've been a visitor to the California coast since childhood and my parents retired to the Central Coast town of Cayucos, CA. I've seen some wild tides on my visits to my parents, but nothing like these waves.

It was scary and amazing.