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!