Mendocino Trip

Due to the fact that the trip was relatively spontaneous and didn't involve much planning ahead, we couldn't find an affordable room with access to bathing facilities in Mendocino town itself. Instead, we stayed at the Colonial Inn in Fort Bragg, a very nice old Victorian Bed and Breakfast. Its a grand building just a few blocks from "the strip", but we didn't get any pictures of it.

Fort Bragg has lots of neat old houses in it, and we were constantly exclaiming over details we could incorporate into our Archer House...

The whole Mendocino coast is absolutely lush in its plant life. Flowers are everywhere, and everything is green. The Botanical Gardens are fabulous and definitely worth a trip. For you botanically minded folks, please help us identify the plant below. Notice that the white and blue flowers are parts of the same plant. Click on the picture for a close-up.

The last time Eric had ridden on the Skunk train he was only 7 or 8, so he had to go again. The trip is lots of fun, and if you check the schedule you can be sure and get the steam engine.

Mendocino town is a wonderful place to wander around looking at nature and art, and then eating great food. We had one of the top 3 seafood meals of our lives this vacation at 955 Ukiah Street. Herbed sea bass baked in parchment, perfectly succulent, firm yet melt in your mouth texture, clear but warm flavors of the fish and the herbs....yummmmm.....

The headlands are windy but beatiful, with great views of the coast and back towards town.

The benches are sort of the wrong size, however.

As we continued our way down the coast, we went for a hike up Fern Canyon through the redwoods, then up several geologic steps to the nutrient poor pygmy forest.

 

We also stopped at Fort Ross, where we spoke at length to one of the living history docents there, and then we got to fire the cannon :-)
We spent the last night of the trip at the St Orres Hotel in Gualala. A very beautiful building with lots of cabins around in the meadows. We stayed in the Wildflower Cabin, which had a screened porch shower, complete with banana slug in the morning.