A Cabin in the Redwoods

 

When we spent the long Labor Day weekend in Gualala, we stayed in a lovely little cabin in the Redwoods along beautiful Highway 1, right across from the Pacific Ocean.

But before we got there, we met with our very good friends B and P at the Navarro Winery in Anderson Valley for our annual winetasting picnic. We started doing this last year and decided then to let it become a new tradition. B and P - a German-American couple - are very close friends of ours whom we met through our German Stammtisch group (curious what a Stammtisch is? Find out here). We spent four wonderful hours together in the beautiful vineyards of this winery off the beaten path that makes fantastic wine at an affordable price.

This one is for Nicole's Friday Face Off

After that the Geek and I were on our way to Gualala and our little cabin. It is a basic cabin, nothing fancy, and it's right at the Redwoods.

It has a decent sized room with a bathroom and a beautiful deck at the back. The skylight is right above the bed and I enjoyed looking up into the canopy of the trees. 

The room has a cozy little sitting nook where we had our breakfast and enjoyed a glass of wine in the evening while chatting, reading and knitting. The heater was very helpful in the chilly mornings and evenings.

The homemade breakfast was brought to our door every morning. It was delicious.

The Naked Ladies (Amaryllis belladonna, native to South Africa) were in full bloom and the deer weren't shy at all and seemed to hang out on the premises a lot. 

And finally, the view of the ocean. 

On the first morning we went to Gualala Point Regional Park. While Gualala is in Mendocino County, the regional park is still in Sonoma County and we could use our Regional Parks Pass here. The border between the two counties is in the middle of Gualala River which flows into the ocean at Gualala Point.

The first view of the ocean is from near the visitors center.

We decided to first go to the beach. Instead of walking down the paved path, we took the dirt trail through the "tunnels".

I was delighted about the Naked Ladies in the meadow, but not so much about the Pampas Grass (Cortaderia selloana). As the name says, Pampas Grass is native to southern South America and a highly invasive species at our coast. It looks beautiful, but it does a lot of harm to our native plants.

Someone had planted Nasturtium (Tropaeolum) on top of the cliffs and it was hanging down the cliff wall. Nasturtium is native to South and Central America, but as far as I know it is not invasive. It sure looked stunning in this location.

The beach is long and slightly curved with lots of driftwood and, of course, an abundance of gulls.

All this walking, taking photos and beachcombing (I took home some beautiful small driftwood for future art projects) makes hungry, so we decided to eat at our favorite seafood shack in town. Rockfish and chips on one day, a spicy tuna melt on the other. The three hispanic girls who work in this shack (and who might be the owners) are always very nice and pleasant, and their food is excellent. I'm really glad they made it through the pandemic. Other than many shacks I have seen in the States, they try to keep their single-use things at a minimum - the only plastic is the little container for the sauce and they use food grade paper to line the baskets. We have been going here for years and we have never been disappointed. Afterwards it was time for coffee at Trinks on the cliffs with a view of the ocean - Aztec Mocha for the Geek, a regular Mocha for me. Yummy.

My favorite part of Gualala Point, however, is not the beach, but the Bluff Trail. It offers endless views of the ocean along a narrow trail. We had expected foggy and cool days in Gualala as the weather so often is like that at our coast, but we had sunny weather throughout with temperatures in the 60s (a lovely relief to our much warmer inland temperatures). This made walking along the Bluff Trail even more enjoyable.

Of course I was delighted by all the plants we saw along the way as well as the often very gnarled trees. There are "tunnels" here as well - I actually call this trail the Hobbit Trail as I can picture it in Middle Earth.

Beautiful views everywhere...

And to my biggest delight we saw so many Brown Pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis)!

A little fun sidenote: A writing, office and art equipment company in Germany is called Pelikan. It was founded in Hannover in 1838. My first fountain pen I got (in first or second grade) was a Pelikan one and I had it for years. Today I'm writing with a Faber Castell fountain pen, but I still use the Pelikan ink cartridges (thanks, Amazon).

And finally a couple pictures at sunset, again at Gualala Point.

The 366 Project: August

 September already! Can you believe it?

This was August:

These were my thoughts that I wrote down on the last day of August: 

August was a month that flew by too quickly, again. The month brought fresh summer fruit and produce, tons of tomatoes and therefore time in the kitchen making tomato sauce in order to keep the ripe tomato flavor through the winter. It brought gatherings with good friends and fun game nights with my "old" students. Time at the ocean and in the redwoods. And time to read, garden and paint. It was a good month.

August ended on a very high note when the Geek and I spent a long weekend in Gualala (pronounced wa-LA-la) on the coast. We had booked the same cabin where we stayed back in 2019 - it had changed just a tiny bit since then. The furniture in the sitting area was re-arranged since they had added a microwave to each cabin - result of the pandemic, I assume. I did like the sitting nook even better this time.

We did a few outings - down to the beach at Gualala Point Regional Park...

... twice to the hidden Bowling Ball Beach...

... to the Point Arena Stornetta Public Lands...

... and to the Bluff Trail in Gualala Point Regional Park.

We enjoyed beautiful sunsets and evenings with a lot of atmosphere.

I will write more about this long weekend in future posts. For now I wish you a lovely first week of September.

Exploring the Tafoni

 

Our daughter hadn't been here for even 24 hours when we took our first trip to the ocean, the place that she had missed the most. We decided to go to Gerstle Cove in Salt Point State Park, a place that the Geek and I had only discovered last year and we wanted to share it with Kaefer. It was much calmer this time.

First we saw the harbor seals hanging out on the rocks.

There was much more driftwood on the shore than the last time we had been here, a sure sign of a very high surf during our crazy weather in January.

 When we arrived, Kaefer enjoyed just sitting on the shore and looking out over the ocean while we were taking photos of her as the "solitary mermaid" and the reflections in the tide pools.

But then she started to explore the tafoni and was just as mesmerized as we were.

We also enjoyed watching the cormorants sitting on the rocks and not minding the surf at all. However, there were no black oystercatchers this time.

Of course we had to take those family photos.

But mostly we explored the tafoni. I saw a lot of tiny living things on the rocks and just admired the beautiful shapes and forms.

In between we stopped every now and then just to take a picture of our girl.

A few years ago, Kaefer had given me a lensball for Christmas because she knows how much I enjoy photography and thought I would like to play around with it which I have done often. I had brought it with me and wanted to take some pictures of the tafoni with it - and as you can see, I wasn't the only one who did this.

Eventually it got very chilly at the coast and we decided to go for lunch. Of course we wanted fish and chips (another thing she had really missed) and went up to the Seafood Shack in Gualala. This is one of the best places for very fresh and delicious  fish and chips along the Sonoma-Mendocino coast. We had clam chowder in a bread bowl and, of course, rock fish and chips. Lecker, as we say in German.

Fish needs water - we had it in the form of some good local beer, a Scrimshaw (from Fort Bragg further up the coast) and Kaefer opted for some local cider from Sebastopol. You guessed it, this is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth and their T Tuesday.