Trip Report - Ft. Bragg and back with no real plan.

[erste]

so many ships waiting in the bay. this is a shot from the right lane of the bay bridge.

This 1950? GMC suburban in alameda is from the day before this trip, but I think it's the first one I've seen and wanted to share since they're kind of rare now.

Had an in-person job interview in Richmond on Thursday and decided to take thursday and friday off and drive up the coast for the weekend instead of coming back to the city. My gf works in Emeryville, but not since the pandemic. She was able to go into the office though so I dropped her off and then picked her back up and we were on our way at about 3pm.

The drive north wasn't too bad. A little bit of traffic and then I drove the wrong way for a while and headed east, so we had to backtrack.

On track again, and laughing about that, we pointed north on 101 and then NW on 128. We had mapped Navarro River Redwoods SP campground where I've camped before, but we drove right past it in the dark and then didn't want to turn around. It's an okay spot, in the redwoods by a creek, but last time there were tons of mosquitos and there's not much special about it aside from the amazing trees. We camped for the night at Navarro Beach, which is right on the ocean. Empty except for us and a big old sprinter.

When I'm gone I'd like someone to place a bench on an epic overlook like this one. I didn't see the one in this photo until I got the photos off the camera.

From there we headed up the coast to one of my favorite places - the model train museum/skunk train in Ft. Bragg. Last time I just walked up and donated, but this time we bought tickets in the station and then walked over and it was closed up, probably because of covid. Luckily the guys were there and let us look around, showed us the workshop, and dropped so much train and history knowledge on us. One of the things I learned on my last visit with them was that after the big earthquake, a lot of the train bridges collapsed, and the only thing that saved a lot of the towns was being able to get supplies by boat. This time I learned that there was an overnight boat ride that would drop you off in san francisco at 9am. Also learned a lot about gear driven engines, and how their model trains all run off lithium batteries, etc. etc. Love the way these guys share history through model trains.
https://mendorailhistory.org/

Got the idea that we might head over to Willits. There's a curvy section of track that looks like it'd be amazing. I've learned that the curvy lines on maps normally mean there's a huge elevation change.

From there we went to Glass Beach and walked up the trails along the coast. Last time I was at Glass Beach it was so foggy, so this was a treat.

Just north of Ft. Bragg there's a pullout and we stayed there for the night. Another van stayed the night too and there was some friday night activity but otherwise it was a great spot.

Got the binoculars out and my gf had so much fun tracking the whales that were spouting offshore.

I found a new skull for the dash. Probably a deer.

For dinner we made cod, farrow, kale, onion, grilled tomatoes, and the carrot that we found in an abandoned grocery bag in the parking lot of grocery outlet on the drive up.

more to come

[MsTaboo]

Jealous
Last time I did the Cali coast was total fog.
Thanks for the pics
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[fxr]

Did they charge you at Navarro Beach? And thanks for the tip about the train museum, must look in there next time we're passing!
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[jimf909]

Nice report. Thanks.

Glad to see there's still some glass at glass beach. I've heard it's disappearing. I have some glass and worn metal shards I picked up in the 90s. On recent trips I've left it alone.
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- Jim

[Alluvial Van]

Glass beach might be one of the only places it's a positive for people to take souvenirs from the beach...it's literally trash from broken glass bottles from the past. Always found it a little funny it was so popular.

[Zeitgeist 13]

I love that area. Back when my wife and I were still dating, we took a trip down to Mendocino, and have returned several times since just because. It's a wonderful place to explore, though I've heard it's become much more built up over the last thirty years.
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[joetiger]

Great report! Thanks as always for taking us along.

I'd love to visit that train museum. The Caboose, the largest hobby train store in the world (at the time) was in the first neighborhood I lived in here in Denver. They had all different kinds of model setups. In the town, you could even look through the windows in the bar and see little figures shooting pool.
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[shadetreemech]

Cool.

Great report. Nice pics.

Thanks for taking us along.

Dan
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[thatbaldwinlife]

Very cool area, thanks for writing this up!
nate
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[erste]

MsTaboo,
we lucked out on the weather for sure on the first two days. It was amazing.

fxr,
Navarro Beach was 35 bucks (or maybe a bit cheaper since it was off season), self deposit, and a ranger showed up around 10AM to collect.

jimf909,
There's still so much glass. I didn't take any but it looked like there were a few people set up with just that in mind.

Alluvial Van,
yeah, I think it's mostly popular because it's right there at the edge of ft. bragg. Still a beautiful area, glass or not.

Zeit,
There was some drugged out dude who came up to the passenger side window in mendocino and that was not cool. Otherwise it seems like a nice place to live if you can find work.

joe, shadetree, goldtooth, thanks for reading!

We woke up and I was mildly alarmed at this smoke, but it was under control. There's just a lot of trash burning on saturday mornings.

I asked one of my friends what we should do up there and one thing he mentioned was the pygmy forest. We just walked the discovery trail and it was really cool.

My gf had a zoom babyshower at 1PM so we stayed near town so she'd have internet. We got lunch at one of the many fish and chips places in Mendocino. It was pretty good although the grilled cheese was on a hamburger bun.

We parked at starbucks to use the wifi and while she was on her call this cadillac parked across the street so I went to check it out. It's a 1970 and I'm pretty sure the styling went downhill from there. This one is just on the edge, but I liked it.

I saw that there were a lot of campgrounds on 20 on the way to Willits, and Chuck at the train museum said the Jackson State Forest was nice so we headed out that way.

We got a few miles down 20 and I pulled over to find a campground before we lost signal. And most of them were tent sites, but one was down a 3 mile dirt road and would have probably been great except the forecast was for rain and I didn't want to deal with a 3 mile muddy road.
So we decided to head back to the coast and since Sunday it was supposed to rain all day, we'd just take it easy and drive back on 1.

This is where we stayed for the night, on a pullout in Sea Ranch. The whale traffic seemed to die down and we didn't get much of a sunset at all since it was so cloudy off the coast. We cooked dinner in the van and set off the CO alarm which was reallyyyy annoying. It wasn't CO that set it off but all the steam, and since it's right above the stove area (not a good spot) I had to keep it covered for a few minutes. Dinner was something like three cheese tortellini and grilled tomatoes and veggies.
At night it was pretty chilly so I'd been running the espar heater. Last trip it had a lot of issues firing but this trip it was 100% fine, which was nice. No real issues at all on the trip so far actually...

[erste]

Woke up to a cloudy day, but no rain as was forecast, which was nice.

We made the bed and headed south and after a few miles we entered a state park. Pulled over at the one of the turnouts and there was a trash can! So we finally got rid of the trash. There was also a trail so we walked down.

This was one of the most peaceful spots. It was almost silent in the fog, and there was a massive oak tree, right on the edge of the cliff, covered in moss, and at the end of one of the paths was the grave of Andrew Fisk and his daughter, and I don't tend to think that had much to do with it, but it was just so quiet and contemplative. It's not often I've felt that in nature, but it was really comforting.

We stopped for breakfast at another turnout and then kept heading south on hwy 1.

At one point the fuel gauge went from half a tank, to empty. It's pretty consistent until it's about 1/3rd full, so this was surprising. And we didn't have signal and I didn't know exactly how far the next town was, and we'd already gone 296 miles, with the espar heater sucking up fuel all night long for 3 nights, so I was pretty convinced we were about to run out of fuel.

It was uphill for a few miles, and then half the highway was closed because of construction, which was actually a good thing because it meant there'd be a breakdown lane. I did some math on my phone and if we'd averaged 25mpg we'd be fine. 22 and we were probably running out of fuel. I hypermilled and coasted as much as I could up and down that hill and then we pulled into Jenner, and thankfully there was diesel.

And wouldn't you know, it only took 11.3 gallons topped off. So it wasn't even close. Still had like 60 miles, at least. We got 26.9mpg including whatever the espar was using. This was good.

Full tank and no stress, we stopped at Wright's Beach and walked up the coast for while. This is another nice campground on the beach.

Looking North toward the hill we'd just come down:

We stopped a lot and took advantage of what we were expecting was just going to be a rainy drive.

It didn't really start raining until we got to Petaluma. We grabbed mexican food and I got chilaquiles divorciados which is red AND green, and ate it by the river.

On the river I saw my first belted kingfisher (I think).

Had to stop for pie because it was pi day and my gf is totally into pastries, like you wouldn't believe. This wasn't the best pie, but the place in Petaluma had a huge line, so we just got what we could from the grocery store just before the bridge.

Aaaaaaand we're back.

Got on park presidio and this is the first time I've seen a lotus evora and that was the end of the trip.

[thatbaldwinlife]

27mpg! So jealous
nate
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