Time To Head Back To LA

It's been a great time in the beach house — the house was great, the views outstanding and both Jenn and I loved being together with Mom, Dad and Sue. It was lots of fun and felt so nice to all be together amongst the wild beauty of the northern California coast. Needless to say, it was a bit emotional saying goodbye.




Okay, we gotta go, peeps! Once on the road, Jenn and I make a beeline back down the coast to Bodega Bay, hoping to pick up some Spud Point Chowder for lunch and our drive through San Fran.

Spuds, unfortunately, is closed so we settle for chowder from Sandpiper, which the guidebook says is EVEN better than Spuds. It's not bad, but it's not Spuds.

All along the coast we are in and out of the mist, but once we start inland, out pops the sun and up goes the temps. It's 24 in Santa Rosa where we merge onto the 101 and begin our push down south, through San Fran and down to LA.

It's fairly straightfoward. We duck around San Fran, across the bay into Oakland and down through San Jose. I consider a pit stop in Cupertino to pay my respects to Steve Jobs, but the detour is longer than we want. I say a silent well wish as we pass by the exit and keep the pedal to the floor. RIP Stevie.

By 4:00 p.m. we are down in Monterey. I really want to do the coastal stretch of road from Monterey down to Hearst Castle, passing by Big Sur. This is another fantastic stretch of road, with high cliffs, rugged shoreline, blue waters, crashing waves. Stunning! Last time, we couldn't do the whole stretch as a section was closed due to a landslide. So, here's our chance to do the whole she-bang... AND camp near Big Sur!

That's the plan anyway. But first, some shots of this drive. It's a photographers dream, especially with the late afternoon light. Monterey and Carmel By The Sea are fogged over, but by the time we get out on the coast road, there's sun and a light, ethereal mist. Beautiful!










Hmm, getting hungry. We're in Big Sur. Where could we stop? How about Nepenthe? The word is the views are pretty great from the restaurant...

Whoa! Who had the vision for this rest stop? Check out the patio view!





It's an amazingly tasty dinner with the sun setting beside us, views of the Big Sur coast and homegrown broccolini.




Not sure exactly what I'm doing here... Kissing the sunset?




Now, if we can just swing a campsite. I'm pumped at the prospect of pitching a tent somewhere along this stretch of road and listening to the crashing waves as we fall asleep.




The universe is watching over us — we're driving now in the dark along the winding roads. Our first campsite option is closed, the second is full. But the third, at Plasket Creek, has one site left — just for us. Woo-hoo!

We set up our tent in the dark and hit the inflatable mattresses, listening to the shoreline and watching the full moon shadows.

The good news about finding a campsite is we can now finish the drive along this stretch of road in the daylight. We are up early and after a quick breakfast, on we go. We gas up in Gorda and then drive more winding cliff side roads which barely seem to be clinging to the hills they are built on. A few more glamour shots...








Crashing waves OVER the road!




Four miles north of Hearst Castle, we encounter an elephant seal colony — another bonus of waiting to do this stretch in the daylight. There are at least a few hundred yearling "pups" and some mighty blubbery juveniles! The sub adults, females, and the massive males won't pull ashore for another month or so. We watch as a few of the juveniles joust with one another knowing their time of being top e-seals will soon be coming to an end!







Next up is the ocean side town of Cayucos which was one of our favorite stops during our first drive through Southern California in the Spring. We are so glad to being coming this way at this time of day because it means...FISH TACOS!!!

SMOKED fish tacos, in fact, from Ruddell's Smokehouse. The very best we've had in California and we get to snorfle them down again.




Yeah, they are as good as we remembered them to be...




And then the big push, 200 miles down into LA. It's hot out, in the 90's. We ride the 101 until Oxnard, then jump onto PCH 1 along the beaches, through Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice Beach and into LA.

We find our hotel by the airport, drop the car and now, we're packing it all up again, ready to board our plane tomorrow. Hopefully, Air Canada won't be on strike (all looks good!)

Misty Monday

We get a good dose of west coast ocean weather on Monday — mist, drizzle and rainy rainy rain. No doom and gloom here though! The cool part is looking out at the sea stacks from the beach house deck and seeing them in all their ghostly glory.











Thanks to the rain we enjoy a quieter day. We light a fire in the fire place, but something is amiss, causing smoke to permeate the big main room. We spend a bit of time with the windows and doors open, trying to air things out.

Susan, Mom, Dad and I drive into town to do a bit of shopping while Jenn stays behind and gets to work on these blogs. We do some exploring, hit the Dolphin gift shop and go into the suerpmarket to stock up on soup and coconut M&M's. Can't get those back at home and they are super tropical yummy!

After lunch, Susan, Jenn and I suit up in our wet gear and take a walk along the Gualala beach. It's really not too bad. The tide is out and we can walk for quite a while along the shore. Susan and I play tag with the big waves and keep on losing, getting wet feet. We see a couple of river muskrats in the Gualala River and catch three big pelicans resting up on the pebbly shore. It's our best close up view of the pellys yet!

Southbound Sunday

With no specific destination in mind (but a few bakery options on hand for whatever route we happened to take!), we set out southbound towards Bodega Bay. Again the fog closed in just outside of town to accompany us. So thick was it that we didn't have to worry too much about Margaret seeing how precipitous the drive is along one of the more sinuous and lofty stretches of Hwy 1!

Through Sea Ranch, Salt Point State Park, Fort Ross State Historic Park the highway rises and twists before dropping down into Jenner. We pulled over to admire the view of the Russian River meeting the Pacific and watch a few kayakers drift along. Suddenly, eagle-eyed Sue noticed what looked to be a pile of driftwood was actually a collection of harbor seals!





After taking turns looking through the binoculars at the seals and getting a wee chill in the fog, the Cafe Aquatica made for the perfect warm-up latte pit stop.



Continuing on, we almost lost Sue to the local surf boys at the Sonoma Coast State Beach.... Actually wait — we almost lost her to the local authorities when she tried to sneak our beach house recycling into the clearly marked "No Household Recycling Please" beach boxes! Can't take the environmental outta the girl it seems!

Keir toured us all through the Alfred Hitchcock filming sites of The Birds around Bodega Bay before we made it to the renowned organic brick-oven bakery - Wild Flour Bakery - in Freestone.








It was a veritable madhouse inside and a line up out the door! Hands were flying to loaves of perfectly shaped sour dough varieties, sticky buns and scones lined up on butcher block counters. Wait — I'm not talking about the Overton hands flying here, either! No squeezing the loaves allowed here!

Thankfully there was a sampling "bar" where the varieties could be tasted free of charge. We elbowed our way out of there with a regular sour dough loaf, a sticky bun and several scones.

Out back of the bakery proved to the perfect picnic spot to enjoy our wares. The Wild Flower Gardens were chock full of lovely looking fruit and veg (no sampling allowed in here though - that said we had to empty out Susan's pockets upon leaving!!).









Here's the happy fam! (Good actors, aren't we?)




We took the incredibly scenic Bohemian Highway (think rolling meadows, followed by hilly vineyards, followed by thick redwood forest) up through the picturesque little town of Occidental, which is described in our book as the "favorite West County town — a haven of artists, back-to-the-landers and counter culturalists."

This time, the fog had cleared and we enjoyed a perfectly sunny drive back along Hwy 1, stopping to savour the rocky coastal views.












In celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving, we made a special dinner — individual mushroom/goat cheese/pine nut phyllo packets, a squash and gruyere tart and steamed lemony broccoli. Note the Bandon-by-the-Sea made cranberry preserve on the phyllo packets! For dessert, Margaret treated us to some homemade rice pudding.








A Thanksgiving feast indeed!

Saturday In Medocino

Today we learned why Gualala is considered to be in "the banana belt" of the North Coast. Leaving the sunny beach house after breakfast, we drove straight into a wall of fog. We could actually see it right offshore looking out the deck. Little did we know it was about 5 miles out of town...waiting to swallow us up!

It made the drive up eerily beautiful as we floated out of the fog and into the sun back and forth for nearly the whole drive. Through Anchor Bay, Point Arena, Manchester (shhh...don't tell Glenn!), Elk and then Mendocino, our destination for the day. It was a fun drive — lots of story telling and laughing.

Wandering the streets of Mendocino never disappoint and everyone stopped in the quaint shops/galleries/museums that were calling to them.











It was the community firefighters open house so the fire trucks did the rounds of the neighbourhood with all the visiting folk and locals waving from the backs of the trucks. Thankfully they set that siren off only a few times! Keir and Jenn were pleased to know they weren't the only ones that confused the siren for a run-for-your-life tsunami alarm!

We timed our picnic just right so as to soak up that warm sun.







On our way back, we ventured up the inland road alongside the Navarro River and through the Navarro Redwood State Park grove. You won't find the gargantuan Redwoods you find further north on the coast, but it is a lovely stand that gives you the sense of just how dense and rain forested it gets — and it's all just a few miles from the coast!

Our final stop for the day was at the Point Arena Lighthouse where we lucked into seeing a group of harbor seals just lounging around (lazy buggers!). By this time the fog had set back in again — we thought for the duration of the day.
















Low and behold though, not 2 miles from the beach house, if the sun didn't reappear. Shining just on our little banana house!

It's Hot Tub Time Machine!

At The Beach House Friday

It is great to be all together in our Gualala Beach House. We had the morning to soak up the gorgeous views and breakfast in the quiet luxury of the home.

Nearby Cook's Beach allowed us to get right down to the water's edge. Brrr...that Pacific is C-O-L-D!














Meeting up with a local on the beach, we get the scoop on a few good places to visit/nosh around the area. Our bright kitchen is a pretty good place too!





Back in town, we checked it all out: the two grocery stores, the Pharmacy (that is also a music store and giftshop), a few little gallery giftshops and then headed inland a touch to check out the Gualala Arts Center.

The Arts Center was getting ready for the big opening of a juried portrait show later that day so we got the official sneak peak (although we were invited back for free apps and wine!).

There was even enough time to venture down to the Gualala Point Regional Park where we walked out to the bluff and were blown away by the gale force winds blustering off the Pacific (alright, maybe "gale force" is a bit extreme... guess we should have heeded the local advice of "walk in the morning to avoid the wind")




Sunset from the Beach House deck!

Gualala Goings

It was easy to find Sue — she was the one hopping off the commuter bus in Petaluma loaded up with I LOVE SAN FRANCISCO bags! As she crossed the road to meet up with us, a woman even rolled down her window to holler out a friendly CA greeting, "Hey lady! Welcome to California!"

Downtown Petaluma is quite adorable with its historic buildings and a multitude of tasty looking eateries. We picked The Wild Goat for dinner and were not disappointed.

Thursday morning was filled with stops to various groceries stores to stock up for the beach house meals. Being that we were so close to Sonoma proper, we thought we'd take Hwy 12 all the way up (stopping for a few wine tastings of course) before meeting up with the Bodega Hwy and then driving Hwy 1 up to the beach house in Gualala.

Although the wineries were not quite the ostentatious properties that line Napa, they weren't quite the small scale gems we have come to love in the Alexander Valley, the Russian River Valley and the Dry Creek region. We stopped in at Arrowood, Landmark, and Benzinger, sampled a few of the wines and then hit the road for the beach house in Gualala.












The weather was gorgeously sunny so the coastal drive was spectacular (Sue may have been holding on to her stomach on a few of the windy roads!). Most of the construction seems to be completed along the sections of the road that previously were washed out (or dropped off) and we only had to stop for a few cows who were thoughtfully "mowing" the side of the Hwy for us.

It was shortly after 5 p.m. when we arrived at the beach house. Roy and Margaret had already arrived and were sunning themselves on the fabulous deck.















What a place to meet up! Look at this beauty view!