Ever since my babysitter let me stay up and watch Halloween on television (mom sure knew how to pick a babysitter), I have loved the films of John Carpenter.

One of Carpenter’s lesser known films was filmed on location in the Northern Bay Area. This is The Fog (1980).

This paranormal ghost thriller was filmed in Marin and Sonoma Counties, north of San Francisco. I wanted to revisit some these beautiful locations and do some Saturday morning sketching so I headed north over the Golden Gate Bridge.

The fictional town of Antonio Bay were really the west Marin towns of Stinson Beach, Olema, Pt. Reyes Station, and Inverness.

My first stop was Stinson Beach, or more accurately just southeast of Stinson Beach on Highway One.

About 50 minutes from leaving my Sunset digs, I was sitting in my sketching chair sketching the town of Stinson Beach.

The scene before me that I was adding to my panoramic sketchbook was the same view used for the title sequence for The Fog.

After finishing my sketch (featured sketch), I drove north on Highway One through Stinson and then skirted the shoreline of Bolinas Lagoon on my way to Olema.

Scenes were filmed in this area at the junction of Highway One and Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. The location featured two generations of scream queens who happen to be mother and daughter: Janet Leigh (Psycho) and Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween). Neither did much screaming in The Fog.

I continued on to Pt. Reyes Station where the “downtown” of Antonio Bay was filmed. The Fog demonstrates the patchwork nature of how location filming is used to create one whole location is is not usually geographically accurate.