On the Road: Trinidad to Mendocino
Posted 04-01-2007 12:07 pm
by Admin Admin
More superlatives on another gorgeous day on the Northern California coast.
Today was another fantastic day. I started off with a walk down the trail to Lost Whale Inn's private beach. The trail is quite steep and the last 50-100 feet are pretty much straight down--they have a rope rigged to assist you in getting up and down. I decided to forego going all the way to the bottom (being, after all, someone who recently sprained her ankle as she was leaving yoga class) and just enjoyed the view of the beach and the sea lions on the rocks nearby. Breakfast at the Lost Whale was absolutely fantastic: fresh homemade cinnamon rolls, spinach frittata (made with spinach from their garden), bacon, apple chicken sausage, a fruit cobbler, fresh squeezed OJ, and of course coffee. I ended up chatting with a very nice woman from Redding who was also traveling by herself and she came with me for a short hike along the Rim Trail in Patrick's Point State Park just up the street from the Lost Whale. The views were fantastic and I wished I had more time, but I had to get back on the road to make it to Mendocino by a reasonable hour...and I had a place I wanted to see along the way that was going to take an unknown amount of time. That place ended up being a highlight of my trip so far, although there are many, many highpoints to choose from. It's Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, about 35-40 miles north of Fort Bragg. I'd read in a guidebook that it was spectacular and it really was. But the road out there is not for the faint of heart--it's an unpaved, one lane road that clings to the cliffside in many places and there are many spots on it where it's not even wide enough to pull over to allow another car to pass. I kept praying I wouldn't meet another car on those stretches as one of us would have to back up and I didn't want it to be me! Luckily, I only met one other car on the road and it was at a spot where we were able to pass each other fairly easily. I was glad to have my 4WD RAV4 as well...not that it was absolutely necessary but I felt more secure on some of the muddy patches. About 4 or 5 miles into it, I finally caught a glimpse of my destination, far below--miles of beach backed by dramatic and seemingly impassable cliffs. It took my breath away, it was so beautiful. After winding my way down the moutainside, I arrived at the beach and got out and walked for a while, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine. I would have liked to have stayed longer but the drive in took a good 30 minutes to cover 6 miles so I needed to be on my way. I put in a CD I hadn't listened to in a while, The Crazy Truth by the (sadly) now-defunct Seattle band, Big Spoon. The bluegrass and folk-tinged rock seemed like a perfect soundtrack to the drive, and it was. Hwy 1 is incredibly twisty and turny as it makes its way down the coast--while it's beautiful and fun to drive, it's also tiring, so I was glad to arrive in Mendocino and check in to the lovely Joshua Grindle Inn.
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