Yet another easy drive week. We stayed 5 nights at the Pomo Campground in Fort Bragg. This area is a very nice place to stay and chill for a while. We met numerous folks who come up here from around Sacramento to get away from the overbearing heat, or as one fellow put it, "...to get your brain cooled and back working". Every night we ended with a sit on the harbor patio, at Heron's, with a couple of glasses of wine. Hard to get too much of that!
Monday we drove north about a half hour to Westport to check out the KOA there. Apparently it is the only KOA in America with it's own private beach. Since we bought the light weight wetsuits we thought it might be a good place to make use of them again. Beauty drive up the coast, the KOA looks pretty good and there is a cool looking pub in Westport to also check out when we get there (the pub also came highly recommended in a later discussion with a young lady in Fort Bragg). On the way back from Westport we stopped at a view point where Kris spotted a whale spewing water. Unfortunately it happened too fast to get a pic, but the coastal views were pretty cool...to the north...
... and to the south...
Tuesday was a lazy check out the shops in Mendocino where we bought a picnic lunch and sat in the park overlooking the ocean shore as we did last year. Much cheaper and probably just as nice as the expensive Mendocino restaurants. It takes about an hour or so to wander around the historic downtown part of Mendocino, mostly enjoying the gardens. Most of the shops are aimed at the higher end tourist market. In the afternoon we took our wetsuits down to the beach at the mouth of the Big River where we enjoyed a dip in the crystal clear waters. Nice sandy beach along the river and VERY COLD water; the 2 mm wetsuits made the water much more enjoyable.
Wednesday morning we did a nice slow walkthru of the Mendocino Botanical Gardens where numerous perennials were in bloom including the somewhat famous Dahlia garden...
The Heather gardens were also in fine form...
The entire garden is a real pleasure of a place to wander around as well as to check out the beautiful plants etc available in their retail area.
We had seen a place down on the harbor whose sign indicated "fish taco" on the menu, so we decided to give it a try. Unfortunately the place turned out to be closed so we moved a bit further down on the harbor where we had an inside table with an excellent harbor view (there were a few seals and numerous pelicans on the scene) and lunched on halibut quesadilla and fish and chips. Very good. After lunch we went a bit further along the harbor and checked out a RV park there as a possibility. Had a nice chat with the folks who owned the park and they told us all about the impact of the Japan tsunami (looks like about $3 million worth of damage to various parts of the harbor). Then we headed back downtown to the weekly Fort Bragg farmer's market to pick up a few locally grown veggies.
Thursday we did the picturesque drive, about 45 miles south along the coast, to Point Arena where we had a dockside lunch in the Chowder House and a wander around the little town. The town appears to have been hit a bit hard during the recession with stores closed and notices of possible partial closures or service cutbacks of the town library and town hall. On the way back north we checked out the Manchester Bay KOA as a future stay possibility. A bit in the boonies but looks like a good place to chill for a couple of days or more. Huge well treed camping area.
Friday was departure from the Pomo Campground day. It is such a beautiful spot it is a shame to leave but time marches on. This was probably one of our shortest day drives of the trip, or any other trip for that matter. We stopped in Fort Bragg to stock up on a few groceries then headed north all of 15 miles to Westport for a couple of days at the KOA we checked out earlier in the week.
Westport is a tiny community overlooking the Pacific. It was once a prominent trading seaport, particularly in the lumber trade. It is now a funky little town with one small community store, a cool little post office with the oldest post boxes you can imagine, and an exquisite hotel/pub called the Westport Hotel and Old Abalone Pub...
After settling in at the KOA, we decided to drive up to the pub. We were expecting an old pub out of the late 1800's with numerous old codgers, loggers and fishermen sitting around spinning their tales of yore... but no, the current owners took over the place about 3 years ago and have refurbished it in the style of the late 1800's but it is a very nice little cafe/restaurant/pub all rolled into one and, we discovered, they bring in a local musician on Friday night. So we munched on the best ever crab cakes, some delicious quite hot chicken wings and had a couple of glasses of very nice wine while we took in the atmosphere and listened to a young man's excellent guitar playing.
Later we returned to the KOA, got a good fire going in the firepit and sat back and relaxed until it was time to pack it in. We went up to the restroom to get ready for bed and on our way back came waaaaay to close to a skunk. Since the restrooms were quite close to the trailer we didn't take a flashlight with us. On the way back, just as we got to the trailer, we noticed a critter near where we had been sitting earlier, about 5 feet away. We think it saw us coming and was starting to move away. We stopped and stood still as it slowly wandered off. Lucky for us, we didn't startle it as we were well within spraying range and that is something nobody needs!
In case you are wondering, according to wikipedia, a skunk can spray "with a high degree of accuracy" as far as 10 feet... we may have dodged a bullet on that one!
The KOA has a private beach which is a pleasure to stroll along. Mostly a really fine grain sand with some great rock outcroppings...
Unfortunately, this time of year, the air temperature is a bit to low for us to go for a swim even with the wetsuits (and it looked like we would take quite a drubbing in the surf). With much heavy fog (really like walking through a mist) the temperature didn't get much above about 12C. In the damp fog it is a tad on the chilly side.
Saturday was a lazy day around the trailer, stroll on the beach and a return to the Abalone pub for some more of those great crab cakes. Afterwards we returned to the trailer and got ready to settle in around the fire with a nice bottle of Mendocino county red wine...
Sunday we headed north, stopping at our old favorite town of Garberville for lunch and a stroll around the main drag before heading for our week ending destination of Fortuna, California about 2-3 hours north of Westport. The drive up the Shoreline Highway to 101 is a very winding, no shoulders type of road through spectacular forest scenery. At one point we had to sit and wait while a tow truck pulled out a late model Mercedes which had managed to spin out and go over the edge backwards. Not such a good looking car now.
To give an idea of the difference going inland one mountain range, the temp when we left Westport was about 12C and in Garberville an hour and a half later it was 29C. We stopped at our usual (every time we've been here) hole in the wall cafe, the Paradise Grill, for another very nice simple lunch. Most stores in Garberville were closed on Sunday but the bead store was open so Kris had a good look around there and we checked out a local bulletin board where once again the agricultural bounty of Mendocino County was highlighted...
... oddly, the back of the card did not include a brownie recipe.
Also on the bulletin board, but not pic worthy, was a notice of a lost kitten... "...nice kitten named Setiva Willow, also responds to willow nilla, willow kitty, kitty witty..."; the poor doped out looking kitten, with at least 4 names, probably ran away seeking a home where it might have a singular name or something.
Later we headed up 101 to Fortuna, checked into the Riverwalk RV Park then headed to Eureka for more beading. Returning to the RV Park we had a nice dinner and watched a pretty cool evening and sunset through the fog and mist...
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