After the drama of the wallet fiasco, it has taken me some time to gather myself to report on the rest of my trip.
I had promised a description of where I was staying in Albion. Albion is a town about 6 miles south of Mendocino. It consists of a gas station, a grocery store, a big old trestle bridge, a llama ranch, and the Albion River Inn. The Albion River Inn has the best restaurant on the "Mendocino Riviera," and the cost of my room included breakfast there. Yum Yum. I ate the smoked salmon omelet, with dill and a coulis of tomato and cucumber. Albion is called Albion because this part of Mendocino County used to be called New Albion because Sir Francis Drake allegedly ran aground somewhere between SF Bay and Mendocino. Albion is the ancient
name for England. Albion, California has 525 residents.
My room had the world's most comfortable bed. Also, the bathroom had a shower stall lined with redwood. I had a bottle of Navarro Vineyard wine and a coffee pot with an organic blend of coffee in a vacuum-sealed can, too. The room looked out on the ocean. In the middle of the bay outside my windows there was a fog beacon that made fog-beacon noises ALL NIGHT. That was kind of annoying but I was so tired after the Wallet Drama that it didn't really keep me awake. I liked this place, and would return to it -- it had just enough rooms to feel anonymous (unlike real bed & breakfasts where the proprietors make you uncomfortable) but it also was small
enough and constructed in a way that you had a lot of privacy. I overheard at breakfast that some people had to book months ahead of time to get a room. Lucky me -- I got the single-person's room (no built-in Jacuzzi) which I guess is not in high demand for weekend getaways.
After eating my smoked salmon omelet (this is still Sunday), I drove up the coast to the "Mendocino Coast Botanic Gardens: 47 Acres to the Sea." What a wonderful place! It is wedged between Route 1 and the ocean, and you can wander around 47 acres of ocean bluffs, pine woods, and formal gardens. Every imaginable microenvironment is there. There is also a cemetery for a pioneer family that lived there in the 19th Century and grew potatoes. 40 acres of their land disappeared into the ocean during the 1906 earthquake. I spent 1.5 hours in the gardens and decided that it might be my favorite place of all time. There was a dahlia grove with AMAZING dahlias in bloom, there was a fern valley, there was a rhododendron grove, there was a perennial garden, there were fields of sea figs, cliffs with kelp growing on them, and all kinds of fabulous trees and plans with signs telling you what they are. I found a humongous plant growing in a stream that looked like a begonia gone haywire. Later I found one with a sign under
it, and it's called Dinosaur Food. I took a picture of that. I found a rhododendron variety called, "Kimberly," so I too a picture of that, too. I found a bench made out of a cedar tree, and some wacko purple flowers that I couldn't identify, and acres and acres of small, seaside succulents and Bishop pines. Woo hoo!
Then I hit the road again and headed up the Coast, north of Mendocino and it's ugly sister town, Fort Bragg (where I bought gas). North of Fort Bragg a ways, Route 1 veers off the coast end heads inland to connect with the main fast road, Highway 101. 101 hugs the Eel River north through the redwoods, and only gets back to the coast at Eureka, which is practically in Oregon. The part of the coast between where Route 1 leaves and Route 101 returns at Eureka is largely inaccessible by car, and is called the Lost Coast. The little road across the mountains to 101 is SCARY. It is very high, very steep, very curvy, and very remote. You drive for at least a solid 1.5 hours through absolutely nothing on a creepy two lane road surrounded on all sides by redwoods and other conifers. One side of the road is a mountain going straight up, on the other side is a cliff going straight down. If it weren't for the trees it would be terrifying. Occasionally you drive through a "saddle" in the mountaintops, and the cliff side exchanges places with the mountain-side. There is no wind. It is silent. I got completely disoriented and couldn't tell whether I was facing north or south or what. The road is so curvy that there is never a moment when you are not turning your steering wheel. After an hour all I wanted was to get out of the dratted mountains. I started humming "She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain When She Comes...." I expected to see large lumber jacks, or maybe Paul Bunyan, standing in the road around every corner. (side note, it had been Paul Bunyan Day in Fort Bragg....) The Beverley Hill Billies would probably be right at home up there.
I finally came down the mountains (on a 7 percent grade, the signs told me) and landed in a town called Legget, where California Route 1 ends. The sign says, "Route 1 END". I thought about that
Internet commercial -- "You have reached the end of the Internet. You have seen everything there is to see. Please go back. Now." In Legget there is a giant redwood that you can drive your car through. It is called the Drive-Thru Tree. Apt, that. Over the course of my many trips to California I can now say that I have now driven the entire length of California Route 1. I bought my ticket for the Drive-Thru Tree and asked the lady, "Do I really get to drive through the tree?" She said, "Yup!" It's not so easy to drive through the tree, it turns out, because it's kind of narrow and you have to be careful not to tear your side view mirrors off.
Then I set off north on 101 to see if I could make it to Eureka/Oregon before I had to turn around and head back to SF. More lumberjack/Paul Bunyan country. The Eel River is narrow and mostly dried up and creepy. The place was covered in haze that I later learned was smoke drifting down from the Oregon wildfires. I drove along the Avenue of the Giants and saw lots of redwoods.
I actually got tired of the redwoods -- they're not such interesting trees after all because you can never see more than about .02 percent of any given redwood, i.e., the very bottom of it. And the very bottom of one redwood tree looks very much like the very bottom of the next redwood tree. They grow close together in the bottoms of valleys. This is because they have no taproots and tend to fall over easily if there is any kind of breeze. Pretty dumb engineering for such a big tree. So you can't even glimpse one from afar because there are usually a mountain in the way.
I raced along the Avenue of the Giants at top speed, trying not to slice my side view mirrors off on the corners (the trees are very fat and they grow very close to the road). Everyone is clearly
trying to do the same, i.e., preserve his or her side view mirrors. At a gas station in the tiny hamlet of Cooks Valley I saw a car that had failed in this endeavor. Its side view mirror dangled limply from the passenger side door, the whole side of the car was sheered off, and the driver sat morosely under a madrone tree smoking a cigarette, utterly desolate. Everyone else was inwardly delighted -- hah hah! He didn't make it! He hit a tree! Not very Christian of us.
After 2 hours or so I got to Eureka -- a total waste of a town. The Eel River delta opens out into dairy land with black and white cows. It feels very Pacific northwest. Eureka has allowed its
residents to build malls and industrial plants along the water, so there is really nothing to see there. I stayed for exactly 7 minutes and then turned round. On the way out of town I stopped at the lovely hamlet of Loleta, which I had heard has good cheese, and which was the main reason I had torn through the Avenue of the Giants so fast. There are about 7 buildings in all of Loleta, and I took a picture of all of them. I also bought some cheese at the Loleta Cheese Factory, which is across the abandoned railroad tracks from the Humboldt County Creamery Association. Then I hit the road for the 5 hour drive back to SF on 101.
Five hours later I crossed the Golden Gate and headed straight for the Mel's Diner parking lot in the Marina so that I could empty my Hyundai Elantra of trash before returning it to the Mark Hopkins. In my zeal, I managed to throw out the Loleta cheese as well -- how 'bout that? It was in a brown paper bag just like my banana peels and pistachio shells. All that way for nuthin.' Sigh. I'm quite sure I will NEVER go back to Humboldt County, or Eureka, much less Loleta, so I will never really know if Loleta had good cheese or not.
I will close by noting that this was the first drive back into SF where I was actually sort of pleased to be back there. I had this bizarre feeling of "coming-home" while crossing the bridge. Hmmm......
posted by Anonymous @ 10:46 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home