We had dinner one evening and breakfast the following morning at this place.

Heading South on 101 having just left Crescent City. Beautiful redwoods dominated the drive and the angle of the sun penetrating in was marvelous.

We started the day out in Crescent City, waking up at 7:30am. We decided we liked yesterday’s bakery and wanted to have breakfast there. After a good, big breakfast, we hit the road in search of Trinidad Head lighthouse. After a quick hour long drive, we pulled into the small and most charming Trinidad 60 miles south. There are two lighthouses in Trinidad: a memorial lighthouse, located in the center of the town, and another of Trinidad Head, a huge rock (300 feet high) facing the ocean. The memorial lighthouse was immediately visible and pretty nice. There were steps below it leading down to the ocean. We took the steps down and enjoyed watching seals on nearby rocks and just appreciating the scene.

After a short while it was time to trek up the big Trinidad Head rock to see the original lighthouse. After following an uphill path for about 30 minutes, we reached a point from which the lighthouse was visible. The lighthouse has been off limits for years by the CA coast guard. Not sure why. I had to climb a very unstable platform (I highly discourage doing this) and had Tobia hold my feet down as I tried to get more quality shots than just the standard ones you can get from the platform.

Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse. Immediately visible as we drove into Trinidad.

View of Trinidad Bay.

Trinidad Bay from ocean level. Some seals on the rock and 1 swimming.

I had to stand on a weird, unstable platform to get as good a shot of this as possible. Tobia held my legs down I was shaking so badly. Worth the photo.

It was pretty hot and we were a bit winded following the tough climb to Trinidad Head rock.

After our descent from the rock, it was time to head to Shelter Cove. The drive to Garberville (the only town with a road to Shelter Cove) was very quick and again full of redwoods. We ate at a fantastic tree huggery restaurant called Mateel’s. I had a baked tofu sandwich, and Tobia had a chicken quesadilla. We both remarked how fresh, delicious and wholesome the food was. Tobia’s dish came with some fabulous organic flax seed chips that we couldn’t stop pigging out on. I know this all sounds crazy, we couldn’t even grasp how good the food was.

This was where I had the incredibly good Tofu Sandwich in Garberville. Tobia’s dish came with really good organic flax seed chips.

Following this delicious adventure in Garberville, we finally headed off to Shelter Cove. The path to Shelter Cove consists of a long, twisty, climbing and descending road (I had to slip into 1st and 2nd gears so many times just to have enough power to get through), and it was very difficult to pass. Not that I drove fast enough to pass anyone, but many 4×4s simply smoked me along the drive.

We finally descended into Shelter Cove around 3pm to a gorgeous partial view of the airstrip and the ocean. We checked into the hotel where the inn lady told us there wasn’t much to do in town. Kinda surprising, I’ve never had such poor tourist recommendations. Still, we decided to take a walk around Shelter Cove, as I had mapped out distances of about 1.5 – 2 miles across the little cove. We ventured through the lower pacific drive street, where we were able to descend to the headlands and see crashing waves just a few feet away. Kings Range and the Lost Coast were visible both in the North and South directions in Shelter Cove, and they were simply magnificent. It was also very warm in the Cove, the ocean hardly cooling down this area. Right at the beginning of our walk, we saw a small plane take off from the Cove too, which was quite a cool viewing experience.

Shelter Cove- to the North is King’s Range. Right in front of us (no more than 100 feet) was this beautiful view from our room balcony.	Looking south from our balcony.	More of King’s Range to the north.
Rugged rocks, strong waves, I loved the scenery.	Planes at rest in Shelter Cove airstrip. About 10 minutes after this picture on of them left the Cove.	View of King’s Range to the south. It’s really quite an abnormality that Shelter Cove formed right in the middle of King’s Range as it’s terrain is so different.

We continued our walk, noticing dozens of empty land lots for sale. The view is spectacular at Shelter Cove, and I can see that despite its remoteness, people would be lured to this place. I got the sense that Mendocino (though more beautiful) seems like a pampered, too close to real life type place as compared to Shelter Cove. Phones do not work here, the internet exists with very weak on and off signals at a few locations, and they look to the small town of Garberville as “the city”.

Cape Mendocino Lighthouse relocated to Shelter Cove. It has been remodeled and too out of its element in my opinion. It doesn’t have the rugged look it used to have.

(Picture from lighthousefriends.com) This is what the lighthouse looked like back at Cape Mendocino at the Western most point in California.

Around midway through our walk, we saw the old Cape Mendocino lighthouse, migrated here from the Cape itself and restored. It now resides on the south side of the Cove in Mal Coombs Park, an ordinary lighthouse, clearly not in its true home and definitely out of place. Following the lighthouse we descended to a black sand beach, at the Southern corner of which we saw the day’s fishing boats returning full of fish, only to be lugged up a 500 foot or so semi-paved road by a badass tractor up to the Cove. On our way back from the black sands, I noticed a shoe in the water. Figuring it for hopelessly gone, we walked away. As we went up the steps back to the lighthouse, the shoe appeared close enough, and after a few acrobatic skips between rocks to avoid waves, I was able to snag the shoe out of the water and onto land. I was quite pleased with myself, though I figure it was ultimately for nothing.

This is the tractor that was pulling the day’s shipping boats up to the cove from the water.

Walking on upper pacific drive, looking down at the airstrip.

I proudly display the shoe I rescued out of Lost Coast waters.

On our trip back, we walked on upper pacific drive street. We got good looks at the airstrip and also at most of the golf course holes (9 hole golf course in Shelter Cove). We returned to the inn, had some pizza for dinner and I stepped out to our most incredible balcony to look out at the ocean 100 feet away, and capture the day’s events.

Me sitting down to capture the day’s events while appreciating the gorgeous view from our room prior to sunset.

View from our room’s balcony around sunset.

Another beautiful view.

Just after sundown.

Nice Inn. Also restaurant where we ate.

We woke up around 7:30am in Santa Rosa. After a breakfast consisting of food we brought from home and goods available at the inn, we hit the road shortly after 8. We drove for hours through acres and acres of Redwoods up Highway 101 North. Following nearly 3.5 hours of scenic drive through Ukiah, Willits, Leggett, Garberville, and other smaller towns, we arrived at Ferndale around noon time. Ferndale was a charming little town, the site where a large part of the movie “The Majestic” was filmed. It was a Victorian town, nice enough to visit once.

Following a fairly good lunch, Tobia and I set to make our trip out to Cape Mendocino, the Western most point in California. After taking 45 minutes to drive the 17 or so mile Mattole Road drive- full of curves, horrible rough road, and tight climbs and descents- we finally saw a weird, really shallow ocean, with black sand. There was no way to turn off to Sugar Loaf Island, also the location of the former Cape Mendocino Lighthouse (now in Shelter Cove), as well as the Western most point in the state. Instead, we drove up to Mattole bridge, just past the private property, and took a barely visible (and scary) path down to the black sand beach. Amidst horrible conditions of roughly 25 mph winds in our faces, and sand grains chopping us up, we started trekking towards this Western most point and Sugar Loaf Island. Roughly half a mile away, it became nearly impossible to continue, with Tobia out of breath, unable to lift her weight out of the wet sands, and thinking she was about to have a heart attack. I couldn’t leave her behind, so we took some pictures in the fog, and turned around. To be fair, though, I was struggling horrendously myself, figuring I’d make a quick run out there while keeping an eye on Tobia and then come back after setting foot on the Western most point. Tobia was a great sport, supporting my craziness and pushing herself probably harder than I should have let her.

Our first view of the Lost Coast on drive.	First glimpse of Sugar Loaf Rock.	The sky, the sand and the water colors jumped out immediately as weird to me. The water depth was unnaturally shallow.	It was a tough walk on the Black Sands Beach. There were lots of bones of dead animals and other washed up things that didn’t stand a chance.
This was as close as I was able to get to the rock and the Western most point. I ran to get to this point, leaving Tobia behind, but within distance to keep an eye on her. The wind was blowing against me really hard and the sand too soft to make really good strides through.	Winds so strong I couldn’t keep the hood portion of my sweat shirt down. On top of that the sand was hitting me from behind really hard. It was unbearably difficult walk given these conditions.	Again, strange colors and rocks jutting out randomly.	I’m not sure I want to know how this happened.

I have to say that though extremely beautiful, it was the most isolated and desolate place I have ever seen in my life. Colors were just unnatural in terms of sand, water, and sky. It felt like the kind of place where you can die and no one would ever know. In fact, we saw 3 dead birds and a big fish skeleton on our route.

Ultimately, I was pretty disappointed when we got back to the car, not having exactly set foot where I wanted, but got close enough. I had done plenty of research, and road maps (as well as aerial ones) indicated that there was a road that splits away from the main one and that would lead us to the old location of Cape Mendocino Lighthouse. It would also enable us to stand at a high elevation and get some good photos of Sugar Loaf Island. Despite lingering on the road, coming to a complete stop on both directions, we could not find this mystery road, as everything had become private property. There was not even a hint of road. I ultimately sent CA parks an email asking WTF happened.

With a sense of total fatigue and pain in our bodies following the tough trek, we hopped in our car and headed to Crescent City. The drive up to Crescent City was gorgeous on 101 North. There were so many and so beautifully green redwood trees along our path. We passed Eureka (not impressive at all actually), Arcata, Trinidad and Klamath, just to name some of the bigger or more noticeable locations. We reached Crescent City around 5:30pm after a 2 hour drive.
We settled into the hotel and went to grab some dinner. Following dinner we ventured around the town, eventually walking to the lighthouse we intended to see- Battery Point Lighthouse. This lighthouse can only be reached at low tide, when the water level is low enough to cross an otherwise water covered path. As it wasn’t low tide, we went for a walk along a pier to get some nice photos of the lighthouse. The lighthouse is perched on a big rock, looking remote and beautiful high up there. On our way back from the pier, we realized the tide was low and were able to cross the pathway and made it up to the lighthouse. Beautiful place.

View of Crescent City Bay.	Battery Point Lighthouse can only be reached at low tide. The path to it is not visible yet.	Battery Point Lighthouse from the stone boardwalk we were on.
We were able to cross the path to the island and get a close up of Battery Point.	A self portrait just past the rock where Battery Point is perched.	This is what the path looked like (at low tide) to cross to Battery Point.

Following Battery Point Lighthouse, I had recalled nearby another location I wanted to see: Saint George Reef Lighthouse. This weird lighthouse was built on top of a concrete cylinder structure, on top of a small island, 8 miles west of Saint George Point, just a few miles north of Crescent City. Visibility was fairly poor, but we were able to see the lighthouse’s outline through the haze. Unfortunately the only way to reach it is by helicopter and those weren’t available, not to mention not a fun way to reach a lighthouse. We took some faint pictures of the remote lighthouse and finally headed back to the inn, around 8:30pm, to rest after an extremely long day.

Point St. George Lighthouse can be seen faintly here. I wish the visibility was better.

On the way back from Point St. George, great scenery and Battery Point Lighthouse.

A beautiful mural in downtown Crescent City depicting Point St. George Lighthouse. The lighthouse is built on top of a cylindrical concrete structure. Winds and waves get really strong (and high) out there.