Bodega Head(ache)

My friend Dorothy and I went out with a group women friends for a leisurely afternoon hike out at Bodega Head recently. There were twelve of us starting out and it was a beautiful morning! Ah, a relaxing walk on the beach...what could be better, I mused.

We took a circuitous route from the parking lot, viewed the Marine Research Lab from a distance and then hiked through the sandy trails to the beach, which took about an hour and a half. When we reached the beach, some wanted to continue out to Mussel Point. But Dorothy and I were ready to head back to the car, so we took off on our own. Big mistake!! Since we had been just following the leaders and chatting along the way, we didn't pay too much attention to how we got to where we were.

Anyway, we got so "farblondjhet" (a yiddish word meaning "to wander blindly") for an interminable amount of time... it actually seemed like weeks!  We must have taken a wrong turn from the get-go. Yes, there were signs; but, unfortunately they were lying on the ground so it was hard to determine which way would take us back to the parking lot. So, we kept looking for fresh tracks from whence we came, but then the trails would just...end!

My friend was visiting from Oakland and didn't know Bodega Head from a hole in the head and I have the sense of direction of a lemming. So, since we kept losing it (the trail, I mean... although I was kind of losing it and thinking we'd have to call 911 and have a helicopter come and rescue us from the endless dunes before we either died of starvation or water deprivation), we kept back-tracking over and over and over again. It seemed like for every one step forward, we two-stepped back (and I'm not talking country western dancing here). I was getting so turned around my head was spinning. 

Finally, I got desperate when I saw a semi-paved road in the distance. At that point, the trail be damned! We took off as the crow flies and scampered right through the tall, brambly grasses (which kept impaling my fingers, but at that point I didn't think about my bleeding to death because I was becoming delusional), almost colliding with a herd of rabid deer and a giant, woman-eating jackrabbit! I was also getting paranoid about getting eaten alive by deer tics that I envisioned invading every orifice of my body with Lyme's disease. I didn't mention this to Dorothy because I didn't want to have to carry her on my back if she freaked out about the tic thing. So, on we trekked through the Dune Buries (which was I was afraid would happen to us if we didn't find our way back by nightfall) until we reached the back-road. I was semi-relieved, even though I didn't know where the heck we were, because at that point I figured we could always call a taxi. Again, we headed the wrong way for about 10 minutes and had to double back yet again (talk about wrong-way Corrigan!). 

Then, after wending our way out to the main highway, I saw a "host RV" across the road and high-tailed it over there and begged the woman to give us a ride back to the Bodega Head parking lot, which was still two miles from where we were! She was very sweet, drove us back to the parking lot and we were finally SAVED! Yea! And, as the old adage goes, all's well that ends swell! :-)