Faulty Nuke Plant

My last stop on this adventure I called the Rockstar tour was Bodega Bay in Sonoma.

 Where is it? 40 Miles north of San Francisco. 

Bodega Bay is protected by a granite peninsula called Bodega Head. 500 miles south of Bodega Head lay the Tehachapi Mountains. Why am I telling you this? Because the granite of Bodega Bay is the same granite formation the mountain range is. That is how far the plates have moved. The great earthquake of 1906 moved the plates about 15 feet. The San Andreas Fault runs parallel to the coast and crosses Bodega Bay.  Bodega Head sits on the Pacific Plate while the town itself sits on the North American Plate. The two Plates pass each other at the rate of about two inches a year. The Pacific Plate moves North and the North American Plate moves south.

Legend has it that the bay Sir Francis Drake found and named Nova Albium was Bodega Bay. In 1775 the Spanish first charted the bay. In 1807 Russians aboard an American otter hunting ship rediscovered the bay. In 1809 Russians actually claimed this coastal area of California for Russia burying markers and erecting temporary buildings. By 1870 Bodega Bay was an active harbor.

Both movies The Birds and The Fog were filmed on Bodega Bay and in town. Best of all a portion of the beach scenes in The Goonies was filmed on the beach area of Bodega Bay.

A nuclear power plant was planned and the site on Bodega Head was excavated until someone decided building a nuclear power plant along the San Andreas Fault may not be a good idea. (ya think?) The abandoned area is now called “The Hole in the Head”.

This truly is an amazing area.