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.