Mendocino Coast Getaway

After 2 years in a row renting a house at the Sea Ranch for our vacation, Kirby and I decided to try somewhere different this year. I spent many, many hours online looking at all the different possible places we could rent (believe it or not, I actually made a spreadsheet where I rated all of the houses I found on proximity to the water, views, general look of the house, price, etc) so I do believe that I found the best place possible! It's called Seahorse Cottage and is located in Albion (just a little bit south of the better known town of Mendocino). Here's a link to Seahorse's website The owners are very nice and have the place all set up for doggies (dog run with a dog door, furniture covers, some organic dog biscuits waiting for us on our arrival, a list of nice places to go walking, etc)

Thurs 9/24 (Arrival)

I didn't stop to get any pictures, but the road to get over to that part of the coast was quite pretty--it goes through part of the Anderson Valley wine growing area, and then some beautiful redwood forests.

We got up there a little before 4 on Thursday. There was a good bit of fog and I was really hoping it wouldn't last for the whole trip! The whole reason I go on vacation this time of year is that it's usually late enough that you miss the fog but early enough that you don't have too much chance of rain.

Here's a picture of the outside of the house:

And here's a picture of the living room looking through to the view outside (this picture was actually taken later on in the trip when it wasn't quite as foggy):

The main view from the house is of the Albion River Bridge. It's unique since it's the last remaining wooden bridge along Highway 1 (I wonder if earthquakes have taken out the rest and they rebuilt them from something sturdier?) You can't tell from the picture, but there's water beyond the bridge. (This is the first time I've ever managed to capture a nice foggy shot of something...usually the fog looks so neat when you see it but the picture never turns out!)

Kirby and I spent the afternoon trying to get the hang of the dog door, but I guess sometimes you can't teach an old dog new tricks! He was able to get out the door (if I pushed it open for him and gave him a little shove) but then he got really confused and had a hard time finding the door to come back in--he just recently went mostly (or all?) blind in one eye so that's really messed up his coordination and probably wasn't helping things.

Friday 9/25 (Hanging around in the fog)

Friday was a bit on the dreary side, and Kirby was still adjusting to being in a strange house, so I decided we'd spend the day mostly hanging out around the house rather than trying to go anywhere. The courtyard at the front of the house was warmer and not as foggy as the back deck, so we spent most of the day out there--I relaxed and worked on the family tree project and read some books, and Kirby napped. I absolutely loved the courtyard--it made me miss the cute courtyard I had at my old house in Martinez--I would so love to have an area like this at my house now! Here are a few pictures:

There was also a very popular hummingbird feeder in the courtyard. It was really hilarious watching the tiny little hummingbirds fight each other and try to chase each other out of the yard. They make quite a bit of noise too! I managed to get a bunch of great pictures of this guy (or gal?) enjoying the feeder (but I don't want to bore everyone with a million hummingbird pics, so here's one of the better ones):

Later in the afternoon we did venture out to a beach that was just a few miles away--it was still a bit foggy but I figured it would be good to get out for a bit of a walk. I remember taking a few pictures there, but somehow they mysteriously disappeared from my camera! It was foggy so they weren't that spectacular--I guess I should be glad those were the pictures that went missing!

Saturday 9/26 (Lighthouses and Gardens)

Finally--no fog! We woke up to a nice clear day and Kirby seemed a bit more comfortable in his new surroundings, so I decided we'd go out and do some sightseeing.

First I took some non-foggy pictures of the view from the back deck of the house. Here are two of the Albion River Bridge:

And if you look the other way from the back deck, you can see another part of the ocean:

I really wanted to see the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens (which is the first botanical garden I've ever run across that allows dogs...I guess the other ones don't want any leg-lifting on their prized plant collections!) And there was a nursery in Fort Bragg that I wanted to check out as well--I've drooled over their website on a few occasions.

As we were driving up towards Fort Bragg, Kirby started to get all antsy and was crying, so I figured maybe he needed a pit stop (he drinks gallons of water, so he needs lots of pit stops!) Just then we happened to be passing a road that said it went to the Point Cabrillo lighthouse. That hadn't been on my original list of things to see, but I figured we might as well check it out. Turns out it was really nice--there was about a 1/2 mile hike from the parking lot to the lighthouse. Here's a shot of the lighthouse when we were about halfway there:

Here's a head-on picture looking toward the water:

And here's a closer picture taken while we rested on some picnic benches and looked at the ocean. Kirby definitely needed a break--he doesn't have quite the stamina he used to so he seemed a bit tired at the end of the 1/2 mile and we still had to go back that same 1/2 mile to get back to the car.

We made it back to the car (much slower than we hiked out). I felt a little bad for Kirby because the sun was out and it was definitely on the warm side (warm for the coast...nothing compared to the heat we get at our house sometimes!)

Next stop was our original destination of the botanical gardens. Given how tired Kirby was from the lighthouse walk, I decided to just explore a small part of the gardens so I'm sure there's some interesting stuff in the back along the ocean that we missed. The gardens were very nice, and they had some interesting sculptures scattered here and there throughout the plantings. Here are a few of them:

Next we headed up to Hortus Botanicus (the nursery I had drooled over). I guess they don't normally allow dogs, but there was nobody else there so the owner said it was OK if Kirby came in with me. They have some really neat plants there, but since I knew I had to fit Kirby and our luggage in the car for the drive home, I only got a few small plants.

I had originally planned to hit Mendocino for a late lunch and some shopping (it's got a reputation for being nice and dog friendly town). There were two restaurants that I'd found in my dog friendly book that I liked the sound of...unfortunately it turns out one of them no longer allows dogs, and the other one wasn't open for lunch. Kirby was tired and not really in the mood for shopping so we headed back to the house to relax.

That afternoon/evening there was a festival down at the bottom of the hill near the bridge--the signs I saw for it talked a lot about seafood and I wasn't sure what sort of vegetarian food they might have so we didn't go down there (plus Kirby was very tired!), but we were able to hear the music from the house so we hung out on the back deck and enjoyed the concert. The sunset was very pretty that night so I got a few shots of it:

This one I was just trying to get some pics of Kirby looking out over the edge of the deck, but I ended up catching a nice shot of the bridge & sunset in the background through the clear deck barrier.

Sunday 9/26 (Back to Mendocino)

We had breakfast in the courtyard--I caught Kirby napping with his head almost in his water dish and thought he looked really cute!

Our first stop for the day was Glass Beach in Fort Bragg (this had originally been planned for the day before, but I forgot to take the directions with me when we left!) Apparently it used to be a garbage dump back before they realized that things like that were bad for the environment. The dump itself is long gone, but a lot of ocean-polished glass remains behind. The ocean views were really gorgeous here so Kirby and I took a bit of a walk around.

Next up was Mendocino (again). We spent a little time walking around the Mendocino Headlands park that borders the city. Here's a neat shot of the beach that's at one end of the park:

And here's a picture of the town itself as seen from the Headlands. The town was really beautiful, lots of interesting old buildings.

Here was one of my favorites--the Mendocino Presbyterian church. Very Cape Cod, not what you'd expect in California!

It was sunny and a bit warm again and I could tell Kirby was tired and not really feeling like being dragged around shopping, so we hit the road.

Next up was a bit of a longer drive, down to Point Arena. I had really enjoyed seeing the Pt. Cabrillo lighthouse so I thought we'd check out another one. Also, they rent out the old lighthouse keepers' houses for vacation rentals and they had been one of the places that I'd originally considered, so I wanted to see what the houses and the area looked like.

It was a beautiful day for driving down the coast (except for driving through the town of Manchester which reeked of "eau de cow patty"). I was less than impressed with the lighthouse--I really thought the Pt. Cabrillo lighthouse was much prettier. And the vacation rental houses were definitely nothing to write home about--I'm glad I didn't stay there. They looked a little run down, plus with all the people coming to tour the lighthouse there wasn't that much privacy. And when you caught the breeze just right, you could still smell the Manchester cows. So we didn't stay very long before heading back.

We headed back to the house after that for a late lunch and an afternoon of relaxation. After a couple hours, Kirby was very droopy and didn't look like he was feeling well, so as much as I hated to end our vacation early, I decided to pack up and head back home--I figured he'd probably be more comfortable back at our house (plus if he still wasn't feeling well in the morning, we'd be 10 minutes from his vet instead of 4 hrs!)

It ended up being good that we came back anyway--there had been a huge heatwave (100+ pretty much the whole time we were gone) and even though I'd watered my potted plants really well before I left, some of them were not looking at all happy by the time I got home Sunday night so if I hadn't been back until Monday afternoon instead I might have lost a few! But so far all the wilted plants seem to be recovering, and Kirby is feeling better, so we have a happy ending to a very fun vacation!