Mendocino Coast

When we left Arcata, we headed down the 101 through the Avenue of the Giants. Slow going through this section of old road, it’s narrow, they’ve got trees marked with reflectors so guys like me who tow big trailers through know what not to hit. We turned off the 101 onto the 1 at Leggett. Wow! This road climbs over the coastal range then drops like a rock (20% grades) onto the Mendocino Coast, which is a very rugged area. Much more like Oregon than the California coast we’d encounter further south.

We camped at MacKerricher State Park quite close to Laguna Point, which is a good seal watching area. They pulled a lot of lumber out of here in the early days, using a gravity fed rail road line to move the lumber from the hills above to the coast to be milled and shipped. What remains of a haul road into Fort Bragg to the south now functions as a good coastal bike trail.

We saw our first confirmed Great Egret and Joanie discovered that Green Sea Anemones look a lot like sand covered bumps on a rock when the tides out. She figures its part of their strategy to stay wet until the next tide. In Fort Bragg we visited the North Coast Brewery. This brewery crafts the best group of beers of the four breweries that I sampled on the 450 mile stretch of the coast from Newport Oregon to Ukiah California.

The first winter storm of the year is brewing in the Pacific when we leave MacKerricher. The sky is clear, sun is shining through the trees when we leave camp. Without a radio we'd never know the storm is coming. We do know, though, that this coast is not the place we want to be when one of these storms hit. We pack it up and head for Clear Lake.