For me, this Northern California Coastal trip was the best vacation I have ever taken in my life. We left home Wednesday, July 4th (2007) and returned 4 days later on Sunday the 8th. I found it most relaxing and miles away from anything I see day to day.

I also enjoy road trips, the ability to see everything around me, to be able to pull off the road if or when I want to. I am able to see, hear and smell the things around me. I am also more in control of things and for me that’s a good feeling.

This trip started out as a talk in the car between Tobia and I about seeing lighthouses. The plan was to visit the real far Northern California lighthouses, see the coast, and end up in Mendocino where we already had a hotel booked for Saturday the 7th.

Some loose ends and this and that type stuff I’d like to talk about here:

• The Western most point in California is in fact Cape Mendocino as I had said. The reason I made a big deal about this was because I had done much research and it became somewhat of an obsession for me to find myself in CA’s Western most point along this trip. After all, it was a West Coast trip. That and also the fact that I expect guys who run a lighthouse to know these types of things, or at least not say incorrect things. A final note about this subject here- I felt bad dragging Tobia through the Lost Coast, a very desolate, depressing and incredibly tough place to walk or drive through. So for me to think that I led her there with all of our struggles, for no good reason, would have made me feel really bad. So the first thing I did when we returned home from the trip was to check the actual longitudinal coordinates for some of the Western most points in California. Cape Mendocino is, in fact, the Western most point, at -124.3520 degrees West. Point Arena (not even 2nd or 3rd Western most point) is merely at -123.7406. I know this is very nerdy, but I feel vindicated and rather smug too. I consider myself a sick and twisted man, but also a Northern California Coastal expert.
• Tobia and I have now driven a large chunk of Highway 1, roughly 475 miles to be more exact. As it is my favorite Highway, I expect to soon drive the final missing leg, the distance from roughly Morro Bay to San Juan Capistrano where Highway 1 ends at the Southern point. Of course, the Northern point is roughly at Leggett where we have already driven. Certain parts we covered during our Morro Bay trip in 2005. Other parts we covered due to our lighthouse tours over the last few months.
• Our next coastal trip will be to see the last 3 lighthouses on my list: Piedras Blancas (in Cambria), Port San Luis (San Luis Obispo) and Point Vicente (West of Long Beach). I will soon begin to plan that trip. I imagine this will happen either in late July (2007) or August.
• I over planned this trip a bit. Things like getting low tide times were completely unnecessary, because all we had to do was wait for that to happen naturally, as it did (without planning or my knowing it would), and we were ultimately able to easily cross the path to Battery Point Lighthouse when the water path cleared. All the planning in the world for that was reduced to seeing people cross at a distance, and we quickly rushed over and crossed the pathway as well. Other things like trying to figure out places to eat in a town were completely unnecessary as we just eyed decent looking restaurants, went over their menu, and decided if we wanted to come in and eat or not. All the extra work of this type of nature was not only indicative of my over planning nature, but completely gratuitous and a waste of time. One last point on this subject- on this trip, even though we made it to remote places, we were still on earth and in CA, and for the most part, important resources were always available. That means bathrooms, food, lodging and just areas to rest and take a load off. Here’s to winging it more next trip!!!
• On that note, some of the most incredible things were activities we ended up winging. Things like walking downtown Crescent City to absorb it, being fortunate enough that low tide was at that time and walking up to the lighthouse. At another instance we came across Point St. George Lighthouse at a distance due to just roaming around.
• I really loved that even though I was 400 miles away from home, it felt like I was thousands. Places like Shelter Cove, Crescent City, Mendocino and the ocean in general just makes me experience a different life and attitude altogether. Life is much slower, calmer and nature oriented. Tobia and I got to be in really good sync with the sun. We typically woke up anywhere between 7 and 7:30am on this trip with very little difficulty. Some towns did not have street lights and we were forced to turn in early and take advantage of sight seeing early in the morning. The ocean and its crashing waves, as well as rocks jutting out in the middle of the ocean create an incredible relaxing and luring scene for me, as I can sit and watch it for hours and let my mind run free. I do some of my best focused thinking too, as a result. The temperature never gets too hot around the coast, and it was a pleasure also to take advantage of this as the Bay Area hit 3 digits for temperature while we were gone.
• California has many faces. I could restrict California to just the North and it still has many faces. There were many vineyards, acres upon acres of redwood trees, rugged coastal terrain, Lost Coast Moutains and trees (straight lines that cut through at a steep angle), flat barren areas, and also miles and miles of grassy hills. This mixture makes for one incredibly beautiful state and a very interesting drive.
• Tobia and I bought 24 cases of grape juice. Yes, we are a bit crazy, but when we love something, we love it obsessively. We figured it is pretty tough to get this stuff and we got a massive discount for buying such bulk. I typically just enjoy drinking water, to a lesser extent tea, and even less than that orange juice. But now I have discovered grape juice and figure to enjoy it for the rest of my life.
• Regrets: sure, I always have some of those. I regret not researching the very difficult to reach and explore Cape Mendocino area. I suspect there are no roads that lead directly to Sugar Loaf Island or the location where Cape Mendocino Island used to rest (before it was moved to Shelter Cove), but could not confirm this one way or another. I have, since visiting there on Thursday the 5th, sent California Parks an email asking how to get there. I also regret that I was unable to push myself to the physical Westernmost point in CA, but rather had to stop about a half a mile shy due to completely intolerable conditions and Tobia’s difficult struggle. On that note, I regret trying to push her so hard to come with me all the way, as it was obviously extremely tough. I touched upon the final regret earlier. I had over planned where such extreme detail was not necessary (except probably in Cape Mendocino’s case), and in fact could have been limiting if we had stuck to what I put together. I’m glad we were able to split from it and still get to everything we wanted to see.

We woke up early in the morning to get a good start out of Shelter Cove. I stepped out to the balcony, first thing in the morning and was blown away by the morning sun shining on the rocks and Lost Coast King’s Range. I took some quick photos before the scene could change.

Early morning view out of our Shelter Cove room.

Early morning view of King’s Range to the north.

We proceeded downstairs for breakfast at a small coffee shop that was part of our inn. Breakfast was good, quick and simple. Before heading out of Shelter Cove, we jotted down a few lots of land as they had great location and likely pretty cheap. I don’t figure we’ll ever even build a vacation home in Shelter Cove due to its remoteness, not quite as spectacular a view as say Mendocino or Albion, and its being totally disconnected from the real world. Nonetheless, I figured it would be interesting to figure out just how much good coastal real estate up there might cost.

Me driving through the Chandelier Tree.

Standing just outside the Drive Thru Tree.

After spending about 40 minutes on the winding Shelter Cove Road, being passed up by about half a dozen speeding trucks, and curving all over the place, we made it into Garberville. Finally reaching “civilization”, we fueled the car and geared up for the next stretch of road- Leggett. Even though Leggett didn’t qualify as a coastal trip, I figured since we were already so close to the Drive Thru Tree Park, we should stop there. The Tree was seriously impressive. It was 6 feet, 9 inches in depth and 6 feet in height. Tobia took some great pictures of me driving through the tree, as well as just pictures of me standing inside the tree. A nice lady volunteered to take some good pictures of us inside the tree.

Just south of where Highway 1 hits the Coast on the north end.

Just north of Fort Bragg.

Following this quick stop, it was time to hit the road towards our favorite place in the world, and next destination- Mendocino! We twisted and turned through route 271 leaving Leggett and heading to the coast. At some point along the trip (no signs) the route became highway 1. Once we hit the coast at the north end of highway 1 at Westport (roughly) the view was, as expected, spectacular. We continued down highway 1 for probably over an hour and a half, even though it wasn’t supposed to take that long. We stopped very many times just to get out and observe the unbelievable ocean views from outside the car. I have discovered that I enjoy public, outdoor, near the coast urination. I can’t quite explain it, but the whole experience just seems so natural to me. The other thing is that when I drive highway 1 I can’t keep my eyes on the road, but rather on the ocean, so for that reason it was a good idea to keep pulling over every so often. It also didn’t hurt that pulling over helped Tobia deal with some of the nausea she tends to experience with my wacky driving near the already difficult-to-traverse coastal highway.

We reached Mendocino just before noon, which meant lunchtime. We were both starving following an early lunch and long drive (we had left Shelter Cove about 4 hours earlier). Lunch was at Moose Café, ever delicious, with excellent service. After lunch, we were determined to finally trek out to Philo, 45 minutes to the southeast, off route 128, to get our favorite grape juice in the world. It was located at Navarro vineyards. We had tried the (white grape) Gewurtzraminer juice on our last visit to Mendocino in April and both totally loved it. There was also the (red grape) Pinot Noir juice that was excellent. Figuring you can barely find this excellent drink anywhere (or at least not at a reasonable price), we would buy some bottles. Initially we planned on a few, that grew to 10, a dozen, and even 20 at some point. When we reached the vineyards we bought two cases, for a total of 24 bottles: 17 white and 7 red. I’m sure we’ll only drink it for special occasions and with friends, and I can’t wait to have some.

Vineyard where we bought 24 bottle of divine grape juice.

We returned to Mendocino just before 3pm with 24 cases of grape juice. After loading up our room with our laptops and divine nectar drinks we headed to our favorite walking area- the Mendocino Headlands Park. We made our usual journey across it, from North to South, seeing beautiful waves (of all colors: blue, teal and green) crash against wild rocks. Around the walking trail were weeds and plants of respectable height, probably about 3 feet, once in a while getting in our way. After about 35 minutes of walking, we reached our favorite spot, a big rock (the source of many of our Mendocino pictures) that’s so close to the shore, but completely surrounded by water, so we call it an island. We parked our rear ends there and watched wild waves crash against it and splash us from time to time. We must have spent close to 2 hours there, relaxing, passing the time.

We took rest onlooking our favorite Island. We sat there for close to 2 hours.

Still relaxing on the rocks looking south.

At 6pm we headed to Café Beaujolais for dinner. It was great, and was followed by some great ice cream next door. Exhausted, we followed the ordeal by walking back to our inn and winding down the rest of the long day. I think fatigue caught up with us after being out on the road, coast and walking so much the previous days.