Fort Bragg wrapup

I realized that I've not described the motor home and campground we were using.  So let me do that.

In the first picture we have our car and the motor home behind it.  Note the tall pines that border the MH.  That's where the squirrel was munching and dropping stuff on the roof.

This is Barb looking out the door.  It has a screen and everything.  The length is 19 long and then there are the pop out pieces that you can see on the rear.  The pop outs are also on both sides.  The pop out gives you about three feet per pop out.  The kitchen and living area expand about 6 feet sideways and the sleeping area, in the back, bumps out about three feet. It's roomy inside.  It's a lot like a boat in that all the upholstery is heavy vinyl.  Some of the cushions are cloth.  With the damp cool weather, it never felt wonderfully comfortable.  It needed more areas to stretch out.  We would fight for the couch, the loser would end up at the kitchen table, which required better posture than I have.

 

Note grill and picnic table and some chairs.  I spent a fair amount of time in the recliners, doing some reading.  There is a corn hole game there, but we didn't use it.  Note the grill, it was just the right size for Barb and me.

 

This picture is looking towards the back of our site.  The bushes in the background are filled with doves.  The quail are all over and I saw them as close as the picnic table in the middle ground.  Over last weekend those two sites were filled with a group of friends.  They brought motorcycles and riding during the day.  At night they would circle the chairs and chat a bit.  We never wandered over to meet them - ever wary of strangers!

The drive back consists of two parts.  One is the windy road between Fort Bragg and Willetts, which is about 25 miles.  Then you have 175 miles on freeway to get back home.  Not too much traffic.  We stopped for a quick bite in Willetts and ate as we drove.

The Fort Bragg area is quite pretty and worth a trip.  There are a lot of parks and beach and cliffs there.  It would have been better without the virus warping the population.

We ran into Mike again, the guy who spent a lot of time in Switzerland before moving back.  He rode up to the coffee shop on Thursday morning as we were heading out.  He was dressed for the mist/rain that greeted us that morning.  The rain didn't last.  We stopped at Safeway for the last time to get some ice as we have a few groceries to take home.  He was cheerful as ever and remembered us. 

One of the fun things we did that worked well was to purchase a Bluetooth speaker.  I have a player that would send music to the speaker and we used that when we were painting or reading for some background music.

So that is all I have to say about the trip.  It was a nice week.  And thanks to Denise and Bruce for lending us the motorhome.

Fort Bragg 7, Wednesday

This is/was our last full day in the area.  It's about 5 pm and we are going to get some Thai food for dinner. 

The camp site is bordered by pine trees that have no branches until they are 50 feet up or so.  The squirrels are gray and one of them is in the tree above the camper and he is busy chewing through pine cones and dropping debris on the top of the camper.  He is quite energetic and they are hitting every few seconds.  It's loud.  I wonder what a rain storm would sound like. 

I mentioned in the last post that we were going to Jug Handle Reserve today.  We'll, we went to the Botanical Gardens first.  They have a lot of property and have covered most of it with flowers and other growing things.  Had to wear a mask for the most part.  But the plants were quite nice.  They had a Dalia garden that was well in bloom.  Lots of pictures there as the flowers are quite colorful and graphic:

They have a lot of trails too that wind from the gift shop out to the headlands and back.  Then a succulent garden and store and nursery.  We spent a couple of hours there.  Then headed back to the camper for a spot of lunch and a rest.  Then we went to Jug Handle.  

We walked the headlands path and then down to the beach.  Sat around there for a bit and then came back for a quiet afternoon.  

They also have a section of the plateaus that produce the stunted trees.  It was about a 2.4 mile hike to get there and we didn't have the energy to look.  Maybe next time. 

There are a lot of critters in the campground.  A mother deer and her twins came by, the doves have been flocking around and filling the bushes and then that squirrel...  He came down in a near tree and squacked at me for a time from about 20 feet.  The rest of his time has been spent in the upper tree areas and dropping his refuse. 

The weather has been pretty much a consistent, cloudy 67 degrees and no rain and the occasional fog that drifts in and out. It's comfortable, though I've not been out of my heavy fleece the entire time we've been here. 

This is the beach from Jug Handle. 

Here is Barb in the dahlias. 

Another shot of the botanical garden areas.  Very nice and worth the price if you get up here. 

I think that is about it.  We will probably not do too much tomorrow.  I'll see If I have the motivation to write up some kind of summary when I get home.  In any case, I hope you all have enjoyed this brief look at this portion of the California coast. 

Fort Bragg 6, Tuesday

There are state parks about every three miles up and down the coast in this area.  Of course I exaggerate, but there are a lot of them and they are close. 

Today we visited two of them.  The first is MacKarritch which is about two miles north of Fort Bragg.  This land was owned by MacKarritch who was Canadian and was in the lumber business.  Redwoods were felled near by and then transported to ships to be sent to San Francisco and other ports for milling and use.  

The park land runs along the ocean and there are a number of black gravel beaches.  We stopped at one and spent some time playing in the tide pools.  The we walked along a nice boardwalk that led to the headlands.  Shall we look at a couple of pictures? 

Black gravel Beach! 

Barb in the tide pool. 

Then we moved south of Fort Bragg and entered Russian Gulch state park.  They had the gall to charge us for the visit, but hey we are on vacation, so no big deal.  It was a modest $7 and that would have gotten us into any other state park today. 

We were hungry at this point and found a nice picnic spot just inside the park with an over look of the gulch.  No Russians in sight... 

This is the picnic area looking southwest to the ocean and points of land beyond it. 

Here is the view going back up the gulch and showing the bridge and beach below it.  We went down to the beach after a hike.  The view from the picnic area was more impressive. 

The picnic area led to the Headlands Trail and with some time to store our food, off we went.  The trail runs on the edge of the cliff and one could easily imagine a shift in the earth and then you were in for a long tumble.  The views were nice however and worth the life's risk:

The trail looped back to the car and was all of a quarter of a mile long.  As I said, we visited the beach next, but not too exciting and then headed out. 

Our next stop was Jughandle State Preserve, about two miles back towards Fort Bragg. This reserve also had some of the plateaued areas as seen in the Pygmy Forest.  Same causes, but they were claiming that this area was only about 300,000 years old versus the 500,000 to a million for the other forest. 

They didn't charge for this, so we are going to go back tomorrow and walk the loop and see the sights. 

We still have not found a good seafood meal, so that is on the docket for tonight.  

There are lot of quail in the campground.  Right now they are in the bushes and on the ground about two camp sites over.  Barb is working the camera.  They do a lot of flying from one spot to another and the wings make snapping sounds as they fly.  Covies of 30 or so.  Neat to see! 

OK, Jughandle tomorrow! 

Fort Bragg 5

I'm at a picnic table, the sun is sinking and a cool breeze has come up. Reminds me of the long road trip on the other blog.  

We went down to the Pygmy Forest today.  It's on the south side of Mendocino by a couple of miles.  It's part of Van Damm Park, but not that you would know it.  You don't go into the park to get to the parking lot for the forest.  You go down to Little Rivers, the next town, and we are talking a minor bump on the road.  Then you look for the airport road and follow that up the hill.  In a couple of miles you'll see the first sign for the Pygmy forest.  Once you get there it's quite interesting.  It is an area that used to be sea floor.  Over the last million years an area has risen and the seas subsided to create a small plateau.  This plateau receives very little run off from the hills around it.  The soils have been leached due to a million years of rain and the lack of run off.  The soil is very acidic, and the ground is quite hard and contains little oxygen.  Anything that grows there will be stunted for those reasons. 

The park has a raised boardwalk made of wood that wonders through this plateau.  There are six signs that describe what you are looking at.  

See the above sign for some explanation of what the area produces.  

Here is a shot of Barb with the boardwalk and the trees all around. 

We also drove through Mendocino a bit.  We didn't stop.  The town is very quiet and the stores that are open have restricted entries and exits and the usual stuff about distancing and masks.  The town is still cute, but we didn't find it compelling enough to get out of the car. 

There is a nice beach just down from town and we stopped there for a bit.  Here is a shot of some of the rocks that are outside of the beach. 

There were a bunch of kyakers going out with their guides from a commercial establishment. 

And at that point we wandered back and down to the Yolo harbor area for lunch.  We were going to have clam chowder, but "It won't be ready for an hour."  So Barb had fish and chips with a diet Coke.  "We're out of diet Coke."  OK, then some lemonade.  I broke my Keto vows and had a Macadamia Nut Porter with my burger (no bun, no fries).  The meat was good and the porter was tasty.  The dark beers are probably what I miss most on this dietary transformation. 

We then wandered back to the camper and relaxed, had a snooze and read.  We are now heating some left overs for dinner.  Of course the lunch place gave me two burgers not the one I ordered.  I may have spoken too quickly and it might have been the mask...  Hard to say. 

It will probably be a quiet evening.  I do have a pinot grigio to try, though I'm not sure it's very cold at this point. 

Mendocino 4

It's Sunday and a lot of the folks in the campground have left.  We had folks both left and right and they are gone.  There are others on our back side and they have two sites with two motor homes and three motorcycles.  They are still here. 

Today we slept in until eight, made some coffee and then wandered out to the succulent gardens.  They had a nice selection of things and Barb bought five plants and some potting soil.  Succulents require some special dirt!  Here is a picture of some of the grounds:

The owner was a friendly gal and we chatted a bit.  Interestingly a lot of the businesses up here are cash only.  Not sure why, maybe don't want to share a couple of percent with the banks.  But we have been to the ATM a couple of times.  Here are a couple more of the interesting plants they have:

Then we went down to the Point Cabrillo light house.  There was a mile walk from the parking lot.  We'd been here before.  We'd had a vacation in Mendocino and came up to see the light house.  Not sure when that was.  Our memories are getting fuzzy.  It's a cute building and they have some houses you can rent if you want to vacation there. 

There are some coves that border the light house and some of the seals or sea lions were playing in the water.  Kind of rare as they seem to just lie on the beach for the most part. 

The ocean beyond the light house has some quasi-islands, probably underwater in high tide.  Here is one view, count the sea lions! 

Then we returned back to Fort Bragg and spent some time on the lookouts by the town.  It was windy with some spray in the air, but you got a different view of what the coast looks like:

We ate our stores for lunch and dinner.  Barb threatens clam chowder for dinner tomorrow.  It was a bit cooler today and we did get some sun as we played a couple of games of backgammon on the picnic table. 

We might go into Mendocino tomorrow.  Any rush of tourist might be lessened by then. 

I think that is about it.  Barb is doing a bit of watercolor painting with some success, but perhaps more questions than answers being produced.  It's all good!

Mendocino 3

Well, it's day three here and we are settling in. We slept well and went off to find the donut shop in town.  We knew where it was, as there are about three streets and some alleys in town, stuff is not hidden. 

The donut shop had a lines running 1/2 a block long and we didn't want to wait with a bunch of possibly sick strangers.  We went down a block and found a coffee shop.  We were third in line and masked up.  Met a couple of locals on the way.  One suggested that "if we stopped voting for Isreal then all the white supremacy would go away."  He had that rough sleeper look as a number of folks in town do.  His comments, repeated a couple of times, were not directed to us or anyone else actually.  He was wondering down the street and letting folks know his bit of wisdom. 

 

We got our coffee and sat at the bench outside the shop.  Then we met Mike who came up on a bike.  He was born in Fort Bragg but was moved by his family to Switzerland for 20 years until he found his way back.  He looked to be about 40 or so.  He mentioned that he had spent some time in Oregon as we were discussing bike safety and the differing attitudes in re safety between USA and Switzerland.  He had the look of  a guy spending a lot of time outdoors and mentioned that he was glamping on some family land about 6 miles south of Fort Bragg.  Sounded like he would ride into town every day, a ride of about 6 miles. 

Mike didn't have anything to say about White Supremacy or the Jewish question.  It did seem that he had a bit of the socialist bent however.  

We went back to the same beaches we were at yesterday.  It being Saturday there were more tourists about.  We wanted to get down to Glass Beach as Barb wanted to pick up some of glass.  The beach is now off limits as apparently too many folks have been carting off the glass!  The access to the back looked like it has been eroded and seemed so steep as to be dangerous. 

The story on the beach is an interesting one.  The site is the old town dump.  And it seems they dumped refuse to old cars at the spot.  then they came to their senses and decided that it's not good to dump in the ocean.  But then the folks started to pick up the glass and basically clean it up.  Well, now that is not so good either.  It seems that a lot of the sea life found the junk and glass bits providing nutritional odds and ends.  So stopping the dumping actually caused problems with the sea life!  Who would have guessed and that cleaning it up was not a good thing either! 

Here is a picture of Barb on her chair, don't ask why her pockets are bulging! 

We grilled a couple of steaks last night over a smokey Joe webber grill.  The steaks came out just a touch overdone, but quite serviceable.  We ate on the picnic table and augmented with sautéed mushrooms.  

The weather has been between the mid 50s to the high 60s.  We are wearing fleece jackets and shorts, which is enough to keep us comfortable.  We are getting intermitten sun and I'm getting time in the lounge chair to keep my legs brown. 

We also got a blue tooth speaker at the local Radio Shack.  We been playing some oldies all afternoon.  It seems to be improving the mood as Barb has been painting and I've been reading for the most part. 

Some sea life we found, photographed and then replaced in the sea. 

Above is what the sand looks like in parts.  Note all the bits of glass with the odd sand and rock. 

I think that is it for the moment.  We might venture to the beach for the sunset tonight. 

Tomorrow we may look at the pygmy forest, which is an area with some stunted trees and trails to hike.  

Stay tuned! 

Mendocino Part two

We went to bed pretty early, sinuses aflame. The bed had a soft top and seems to be cupcake shaped. I felt as though I was rolling off all night.

But we slept in for the first time in awhile. The camp ground was quiet enough for that. Made some coffee and took some pills to loosen the sinus cavities. There is the on going debate of this is sinus problems or the deadly virus! If it is the virus, I can live with some sinus issues for a short time. 

We went down to glass beach about 830.  We have been here before, but we remember nothing. I don't think it's changed that much.

We played in the tide pools for a bit. It was cloudy and cool. The light was nice. 

It looks like you will get some pictures! The proof version of the software would just crash. 

Here is barb hanging out. We saw some star fish and other critters. The tide was very low, I'll try to get some huh tide shots too. 

It's a pretty area, for example

lots of sand and fun rocks. The beach is not very far from the headlands. 

We then went into town and got some lunch stuff. Barb needed a charger cable and we were going to get a Bluetooth speaker. I have a lot of music on a player, but no way to play except on earphones. A speaker would allow a little more sociability. Oh well an adventure for later. 

We've retired back to the camper and we snacked and are now napping and relaxing. 

I was interested in some of the local cheeses. I didn't know that cheese could good for 60 bucks a pound... 

OK more later. 

Mendocino Part 1

We are on the road, so don't loot the house please!  Friends have offered their RV for a week and we are up at the POMO campground which is a couple of miles south of Fort Bragg. 

I'm not sure I'll have a lot of earth moving news to report, but Barb just asked if "Was that an earthquake?"  "No, just an RV backing up."  

It is just less than four hours to get up here from Pleasanton.  The traffic was light with it being Thursday and all the virus going around.  Technically I think we have to self quarantine  when we get back.  No one will report us, yes?  Actually everyone up here is masking and we will probably interact with less people here than at home on the pickleball court. 

The towns along the coast do not extend much past the water,.  We are probably one half mile from it now.  The town of Fort Bragg extends about four blocks inland from the highway, which is usually the closest thing to the water.   

Lots of stores and shops here are shuttered.  I'm sure the flu didn't help the economics and tourists are a large source of income.   Add in the seasonality of it all and I'd guess some businesses just slipped away.

We had some food from Safeway for a late lunch.  Chicken off the rotissery, some Genoa salami, fruit and a pork bun for Barb washed down with some diet coke.  

We've both had some sinus issues and headaches the last couple of days, so a siesta seems in order. The last 30 miles getting here is a twisty road - - not much snoozing at the wheel for the stretch from Willett to Fort Bragg. 

OK, we are here and settled in a bit.  I'll publish and leave you all hanging for the excitement of tomorrow's post!