November 29, 2016 Fort Bragg, California

The sun is still out. It is in the 50’s and beautiful. We went sight seeing.

The bus at Harbor Vista RV park in Fort Bragg. You can see the ocean in front of the bus. We started at Van Damme State Park and saw the Pygmy Forest. They are pretty hard to see , but John has is arm around the some of the pgymy trees. They are only 6-8 feet tall. When I read the description of them I thought it said 6-8 inches. The soil is very acidic and it stunts the trees. They are around 100 years old and are mature trees with mature cones. They only grow this way in a couple places in the world.

Then we hiked the Fern Canyon trail at Van Damme. A lush redwood canyon with ferns and lots of water.

Ferns  grow up the  walls  on both sides of the steep narrow canyon. Rhododendron seeds on a pygmy bush, full sized cypress seeds on a full grown pygmy tree, a saprophytic fungus in Fern canyon and yellow flowers of the headlands.

Van Damme State Park beach is black with little pebbles.   We visited Mendocino which is perched on cliffs above the ocean. There are several state parks on the cliffs right around Mendocino and Fort Bragg.

We hiked Mendocino Headlands state park that surrounds the town on three sides with delightful expanses of land perched atop stunning bluffs. There are spectacular views of views of sea arches and hidden grottos. There is whale watching from all these cliffs at different times of the year.  Looking down 60 feet into a sink hole-which is  a partially collapsed sea cave  at the surging waves and a blowhole in the next photo.

Sculptures on the headlands and a sign for the ‘sin’ hole. John walking on the trail through fields of fall colored ice plant on the headlands.

Flowers seen on the headlands. The waves were huge and mesmerising.

A protected bay off the headlands. More flowers.

John standing of the edge of the cliff watching waves at Russian Gulch State park. In this photo there are people standing on top of the cliff and one of the caves below is the water source for another sinkhole. They have kayak tours of the  caves in the cliffs, but I don’t think I would want to go in these kinds of waves.

Big wave. One of the bridges over the highway along the coast from the headland.

Flowers, a sign about Abalone poaching. Divers hunt for abalone here, they have to pry them off the rocks. They are only allowed to collect in specific areas and can only possess three.  They are trying to protect the abalone from becoming an  endandgered species, deer seen by the light house, flowers and Nit’s Cafe in Fort Bragg. Wild calla lilies growing on the cliff by the Point  Cabrillo Light house.

Point Cabrillo Light house. It operated from 1908 to 1991.  There are three light house keepers houses that they restored and rent out as vacation rentals. The whole headland is a preserve. Our last stop was the world famous Triangle Tattoo studio and museum. Madame Chinchilla and Mr G are world-famous tattoo artists and this one of only a few museums in the wrold dedicated to tattoo history.  They have been in this location for 31 years. We met Madame Chinchilla who is now a sweet lady with long gray hair. There are photos of her in very riskey outfits to show off her tattoos when she was younger. One showed her seated in a chair with her winged glasses doing a  double propeller tattoo on the buns of a young sailer with a big grin on her face. She said those propeller tattoos were popular with the navy boys and they paid the bills for years.

November 26-28, 2016 Redway, Ca to Fort Bragg, California

We went south to Redway, California to visit a college friend of mine.

Still pouring rain. We stayed at Dean Creek Resort because it is at the bottom of the road Kay and David live on.  It is a funky place with mostly full time residents in trailers with tarps over the top. It is in a redwood grove by the Eel river. Our spot had a lake around the door. We would not recommend this park, but it was convenient for this trip.

We drove up a long, narrow, branching dirt road up to their lovely house in the rain and they fed us lunch and dinner and we visited. Driving back down in the dark, rain and fog was challenging. I went to college with Kay and it was fun to see them. The upper part of the Dean Creek resort. Tarps with tires holding them down.

 

Welcome to our trailerhood sign was at the resort, we hiked on the Redwood Grove trail the next day and at a spot in the trail that was washed out was this Keep walking cupcakes sign.  Us Cupcakes had to duck under a fence to get around the washout. This yellow blob is a huge witches butter fungus on a dead branch, below is a camillia blossom near the Redwood Grove estate.  Kay brought left over turkey for sandwiches and a picnic for lunch.

One of many small falls on the trail. Lots of mushrooms. I like the last one - a tiny one growing out of a small fir cone.

Most of the trail was through a very lush forest alternating with big green open fields. In this spot there were signs on the trees, I enlarged them below- Deeper into another part of the the forest. Lots of wildlife. In this shot there are three deer on the left and three wild turkeys on the right. It did not rain and was almost sunny, mostly just brighter. Nice day to be out. We came back to the bus and had left over smoked turkey for dinner.

We left Dean Creek and drove down to Fort Bragg. We drove through Richarsons Grove of redwoods on the way. The width of the road is determined by the placement of the redwoods. Very narrow in places  with no shoulder and if you wander off the road you hit a redwood.  At Willits-Heart of Mendocino county we turned right and took a narrow, winding road down to Fort Bragg.  Our first stop was at Glass Beach- the reason I wanted to come here. The beach was the dump from 1920-1959. Then they cleaned up the trash and turned it into a park. The trash is gone but the glass and bits of ceramic were ground down by the ocean and washed back up as beach glass. Very cool looking. There used to be more and larger pieces but people have carted most of them away. They looked really cool in the sun.

Here is a close up of the rocks, shells and glass in the shade. I have a couple of the larger pieces in my hand to give you some scale.

The beach was very beautiful too. Mostly cliffs and big rocks. Lots of tide pools, but there was not much in them.

This is ice plant growing on the dunes above the cliffs. John found this abalone shell, but would not let me take it for a basket because you are not supposed to take things off this beack.  Ice plant, yellow flowers blowing in the wind, a warning sign that says Dangerous cliffs, stay back, a California poppy and a flowering bush I found in town.

Coast shots, with flowers in the fore ground and in the second one the black dots are birds perching on the cliff.

Sunset with a small hole in the rock below. The baptist church looked nice in the evening light.

Our last stop was the North Coast Brewery where John had a Red Seal and raw oysters.

November 22-25, 2016 Ferndale, California

We moved from Klamath, Ca to FernDale,  Ca. It is still rainy and cool.

We woke up in Klamath with the sky light still leaking. Of course  we are getting like an inch of rain from each storm. John is on the roof looking at the skylight. Then surprisingly the sun came out. What a treat. It was foggy and misty when we left. Just south of us in Klamath we encountered hail in the road, it just missed us at the RV park. We passed the Vampire Penguin shop in Eureka, A weird cloud that looked like a tornado, but not from a tornado looking cloud and to get into Ferndale we needed to cross this tiny, skinny bridge. We were lucky not to meet any traffic.

Coming into Ferndale which is an agricultural area we saw these two huge cut out people. We were treated to sunshine in Ferndale.  John is on the roof caulking the sky light.

Sunset was lovely. Thanksgiving day John smoked a turkey breast for us and we had an intimate feast, just the two of us.  We had sunshine till late afternoon when it started to rain again.

I rode my bike into Ferndale on the holiday, no one around. Beautiful downtown Ferndale. It is cute small victorain town. One of the churches.

I think I always take these photos here. The Gingerbread B and B and the downtown Victorain Inn. But they are the coolest photos.

Fog and trees as we left Klamath, a red maple in Ferndale, calla lily bloom in Ferndale, crab apples and big apples. Darn we will mis the Xmas  Lighted Tractor parade here.

The Ferndale Cemetary and the mural at the museum.  The church by the graveyard is no longer a church but a cool music store.

These cows are across the street from the Fairgrounds were we are now parked. I went to the fence and they were afraid of me, but thought I might have food for them.

We are the only people camped at the RV park tonight! John in his new cagoule to replace his old one that was ripped off out of the car when they took his day pack and my bike pack at Bastendorf campground in Oregon. We are in the process of replacing everything.

It rained and blew all day, but we got about 5 minutes of sunshine in the late afternoon. I rushed out and took a photo of it.