Jack London, Bodega Bay and the CIA

We have been talking with my parents via Skype, every now and then on this holiday.  This morning we connected and since we didn’t have a definite plan for the day, Dad suggested we go see Jack London’s place.  London is one of his favourite authors, along with Steinbeck.  I have enjoyed reading Steinbeck, especially his collected letters and “Travels with Charlie”, but I never got into London.  It always bothered me, in “Call of the Wild”, that the dogs were mistreated and the main dog was a Saint Bernard, who would never have survived a dog sledding career.  But anyway.

We put the State Historic Park into the GPS (which we still didn’t entirely trust but have learned to love over the last week) and headed out.  This is beautiful country, California.  The hills are steep and golden because of how dry they are and they are dotted with gnarly green trees and cows graze along the ridge lines.  Everywhere you look is another perfect photograph.

We wended our way over to the park and were pleased to find that few cars preceded us and when we got to the parking lot, few cars were there.  Compared to the venues we had been seeing in Napa and the surrounding areas, it was refreshing to think that we would not run into too many people on our ramble.  We got the walking map and headed out toward the ruin of the enormous house Jack had planned for himself.  Now that I have read up on Jack and how he was only 40 when he died, I think of him when I hear those country lyrics “if it weren’t for bad luck, he’d have no luck at all”.

We took the path through the woods instead of the service road.  There was a sign at the start of the trail that said you should keep small children near you, not just because of the poison oak and rattle snakes but for the mountain lions.  I am not confident in my ability to fend of a determined mountain lion but I decided not to let it bother me.  Right away, we heard and then saw a deer off to one side of the path.  Then we spotted its friend and I figured if two deer were wandering around, there probably weren’t any mountain lions about.  As we walked, we saw three more deer!  And lizards and birds.  Except for a few other folks, we had the place to ourselves in the hot sun and dappled shade.

Finally we came out on the service road and went left toward the ruin.  Jack had planned a huge house made out of stone and wooden beams and just as it was nearing completion, it burnt to the ground.  We kept on walking and it was quite steep and hilly to get there.  Dad had mentioned walnut trees but we only saw one along the path.  We had heard it was a big house but it exceeded our expectations.  Huge stone walls still stood, along with  the many fireplaces.  It was heart breaking.

We slowly walked out and back to the parking lot.  I was glad I had gone.  Back in the car, we looked at the map and I said, “we have to drive over to Bodega Bay!”  It was so close and being a fan of “The Birds”, I simply had to go.  Again, we set the GPS and headed out.  I don’t even think it was an hour before we were at the coast and driving up the coast road toward the famous movie site.  I acknowledge it was and is a real place for the people who live there but forever, Bodega Bay will mean “The Birds” to me.

It has been built up since the movie and it is hard to know exactly where the marina was, where the gas pump exploded, and where Tippi Hedron got her boat to go across the bay to Rod Taylor’s house.  We were especially appreciative of the scene, early in the movie, where Tippi is driving with the love birds in the cage in the car and as she rounds all the tight, steep corners, the birds lean one way and then the other.

We got out of the car and were immediately impressed by how cool the coast was, compared with Jack’s place inland.  We put on our jackets and walked along the wharfs and then we spotted a seal family!  It was fun to see the small seal with two larger seals, bobbing up and down in the water off the wharfs.  I am sure the local fishermen don’t agree but we enjoyed seeing them.  Lots of seagulls to remind us of the movie were screeching overhead and trying to cage some scraps of food from the tourists.  We drove around the bay to the other side to see if we could determine where Rod Taylor’s place might have been but it must have been another movie set.  We were told by a local that the school (where the birds attacked all the kids) was in a neighbouring town.  It was interesting that there seemed to be very little touristy stuff surrounding the movie, except at the local gift shop where you could buy some tshirts with the Birds concept on them.

After we had had enough, we turned back to drive down through Sonoma but then we got sidetracked by the fact that the CIA had (fairly) recently opened a second campus in St. Helena.  No, not that CIA – the Culinary Institute of America.  Peter is taking culinary classes and since this trip is a sort of pilgrimage for both of us, we made the detour over there.  The CIA is located in an old winery, which was some sort of co-op originally for making wine in the area, dating from the 1800s.  After the original winery, some monks took it over and revitalized it.  Eventually, they too left and some few years ago, the CIA took over.

They have a diploma type course for about $50,000 and you can also take courses for no credits.  It’s very impressive and they have a big book store where Peter decided not to buy a chef’s jacket for $90, as his plain old cheap one from Algonquin is good enough, thank you very much.

After we had finished inspecting the corkscrew collection, we drove back to Yountville, to see what all the fuss was about with Thomas Keller’s restaurants.  We found that there seemed to be too many food snobs there, crowding around and making like they knew a lot about wine and food.  I think we even spotted Mr. Keller outside Bouchon (at the bakery) but we were a little put off by the pretentiousness of the crowds and so we decided not to be disappointed that we didn’t get to eat at one of his restaurants.