Auf der Straße nach Mendocino (On the Road to Mendocino)

 Why a German title?, you might ask. "Mendocino", the German adaptation of the song with the same name by the Sir Douglas Quintet, was a German Schlager (hit song) by Michael Holm back in 1969 and the biggest selling single that year. I was nine years old at that time, right before I started high school (high school in Germany starts with 5th grade). At that time I was still listening dominantly to German pop music, which changed a couple years later when I had learned enough English to at least understand a little bit of all the British pop music that was swapping over to the continent. But in 1969 it was German Schlager for me, and "Mendocino" was a real earworm. Of course I had never heard of a place with that name, had no idea whether a place like that actually existed and had no clue where it would be located.

Fast forward 32 years, when we moved to Santa Rosa in Northern California. On the map I saw that up north along the coast on Highway 1 there was a place called Mendocino. My childhood came back visiting - guess where we took one of our first bigger trips that summer of 2001? 

We fell in love with Mendocino right away when we first saw it sitting on the cliffs. It's a quaint little town, often shrouded in low clouds and coastal fog, with cute little shops - a wonderful independent bookshop, a fantastic optics store where many years ago I bought my binoculars and later our scope, and a delicious chocolate "Haus" among them - and a trail out to the Mendocino Headlands. Mendocino has become our annual Mother's Day trip.

You can drive up Highway 1 to get to Mendocino, but we usually opt to take Highway 128 for the trip to Mendocino (and back along 1), and so we did on this year's Mother's Day as well. After a very good breakfast in Cloverdale, we drove up into the mountains on a very winding road, trundled along the vineyards of Anderson Valley and finally dipped down into the Redwoods.

This is a favorite part of the drive for us. Driving through the forest with those towering trees is truly magnificent. See for yourself:

Of course we stopped several times. It's not just what the forest looks like, but the way it smells. I have always loved the scent of a forest.

It's not only the towering trees that capture my attention, but also what happens beneath them, on the forest floor.

But looking up to the canopy is still my favorite thing to do here.

Shortly after leaving the Redwoods we merged with Highway 1 and drove the last short stretch to Mendocino. The moment we hit the coast we experienced the typical Northern California phenomenon - sunshine everywhere, fog at the coast. In the same old fashion Mendocino appeared overcast and gray. No surprise.

What I like most about this little town beside the wonderful gardens people have here, are the many old towers, most of them watertowers. It's just a couple years ago that Mendocino was in a severe water crisis when much of the drinking water needed had to be trucked in daily. Just imagine that, sitting right next to a huge body of water.

Of course we decided to walk the Point Mendocino Trail out to the headlands. It was windy and chilly, but still we enjoyed it. 

Someone left this bouquet at the bench near the start of the trail. 

When we were in Mendocino last year the Headlands were covered with native lupines, but we were hard pressed to find any this year. Instead, the land was covered with these yellow flowers that I haven't succeeded in identifying.

But we did see some native plants like Checker Bloom (Sidalcea malviflora), Silver Lupine (Lupinus albifrons), Common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica), Douglas Iris (Iris douglasiana), and California Sea Thrift (Armeria maritima californica).

Of course we also saw gulls, but I'm not even attempting to identify this one since I have a hard time in correct gull identification. I leave that to David who travels with birds.

I was never able to find out the story behind the Mendocino Headlands Totem Pole.

The views from anywhere on the Headlands are stunning and even more so when the sun makes an appearance. We didn't have such luck this time.

Afterwards we got our treats at the Chocolate Haus (so so good) and visited the bookshop where I found Rosanna Xia's book "California Against the Sea - Visions for our Vanishing Coastline". Ever since I had heard her talk in a webinar, I wanted to get my hands on this book. Then we slowly drove back via Highway 1, stopping in Gualala at the Seafood Shack for fish and chips as we always do, and just enjoyed this stunning drive, that always takes my breath away, no matter how often I drive here. The sun finally came out as well and let the ocean sparkle.

Here is a very short snippet of the drive, already closer to home just north of Jenner:

If you are interested to read more about Mendocino, you can find posts and photos (some even with sun!) here, here, and here. 

Picnic in the Vineyards

 

Last Friday the Geek and I met with our friends P and B for a lovely picnic in the vineyards. We had thought about that for quite some time and finally we could settle on a date that worked for all of us. We chose to go to Navarro Vineyards in the beautiful Anderson Valley.

Navarro Vineyards is a family owned small winery that has been making wine since 1974. Most of their wines is not available in stores, but can be  purchased directly in their tasting room or through their website. We have been drinking their wines for several years now and we have yet to find a wine of theirs that we don't like. The winery is located in Anderson Valley in Mendocino County, away from the crowded Wine Country hype in Sonoma and Napa Counties. This results in no tasting fee, more affordable wines and less crowds, so reservations are not required. There is ample space to sit and sip some wine or have a decent picnic with a bottle or two of their wine that can be purchased in the tasting room.

We had our picnic right at the edge of the vineyards under the wisteria cover.

Our table was covered with a lot of tasty food that the four of us had brought from home.

I had baked a whole wheat bread, which was delicious with red pepper aioli and smoked ham.

You can see that we had a wonderful time!

Let's see what kind of drinks we can find for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday: a bottle of Rosé of Grenache, a bottle of Pinot Gris, several re-usable bottles of water and grapefruit juice and a glass bottle of Gerolsteiner sparkling water (I simply refuse to buy sparkling water in plastic bottles which leaves only German and French sparkling water). The food we had included meatballs, smoked salmon, several cheeses, bread, red pepper aioli, tuna bowl, chocolate and vanilla pudding, blueberries, peaches and tomatoes from my garden. It was a feast!

Navarro not only has vineyards, but also beautiful gardens with mainly drought-tolerant or native plants. I found some inspiration for my garden. Roses right next to a vineyard is something you see often here.

We stayed in the vineyards for three and a half hours. We decided to drive back along the coast, via Highway 1 - THE ONE, as my husband would say. It certainly is THE ONE for us - one of the most beautiful roads that hugs the California Coast in an often spectacular way.

We stopped at Point Arena Lighthouse, at 115 ft (35 m) the tallest lighthouse on the west coast of the US. It is also the closest location in the lower 48 to Hawai'i at a distance of about 2,350 miles (3780 km) (you always wanted to know that, right?). The first Point Arena Lighthouse was constructed in 1870, but was damaged in the Great Earthquake of April 18, 1906. The current lighthouse that is built to withstand earthquakes began operation on September 15, 1908. It features a 1st Order Fresnel Lens (built in France) that is made up of 258 hand-ground glass prisms. These prisms are all focused toward three sets of double bulls eyes which gave the lighthouse its unique light "signature" of two flashes every six seconds (that was before the installation of an automated aircraft-type beacon on the tower balcony in June 1977). This is probably more information than you ever wanted...

This is a very windy, often cold location, but oh! so beautiful. I never get tired of it, and I have been here many times in the past 22 years. The geology is interesting and just like at Salt Point, I wish I knew more about it. The Coast Buckwheat (Eriogonum latifolium), a California native, is found in abundance here.

This is also close to where the infamous San Andreas Fault (the bad boy of 1906) dips into the ocean.

I leave you with a last picture of the lighthouse and the interesting fence that was built just a few years ago. Before that, there was a white picket fence. For this fence, older growth mica schist hand split flagstone material from the Mojave desert was used. From a distance it looks like wood, but as you apporach it looks more like a thick jagged stone wall.

May a light shine throughout your week.

An Image and Its Story - September 2019

September flew by in a rush. We still have a lot of new textbooks to process in the high school library and have to deal with the "regular" tasks a busy library brings with it. The German School has started again; I have a bigger class than last year, and I enjoy all of my students.

We had some pretty hot days in September when temperatures climbed up to 105° F - too hot for me. Fortunately that happened during my days off and I could spend my time at the coast where it is considerably cooler. I went up to Gualala again, had a lovely long walk along the Gualala Point Bluff Trail followed by a mug of delicious mocha in a little café on the cliffs. On my way back I stopped many times along Highway 1 to take photos and just enjoy the views over the vast ocean and the steep cliffs.

The pampas grass is found everywhere along the coast where it grows on the steep cliffs. It is rather invasive and unfortunately crowds out native species, thus lowering the biodiversity. However, I still like the looks of it in fall when it is tall and shimmers in the sunlight - simply gorgeous when back lit!

This is one of my favorite stretches of Highway 1, between Bodega Bay and Fort Ross. The road - that is not very wide I have to add - hugs the steep hills that fall into the ocean, with sharp bends and curves as well as steep climbs. You can see a small part of it to the left side of the photo. It is a very popular road with tourists which is no surprise, but also brings its own problems - the most apparent one inexperience in driving roads like this, especially in a RV. However, up here north of the Golden Gate we don't get as many tourists as for example in Big Sur further south, and I'm thankful for that. There still is a lot of untouched nature to be found, and every time I drive along here I feel blessed and grateful to live in such a wonderful part of our planet. The cliffs, the rocks, the ocean, the sheer wildness of it all truly appeals to me.

Wine and Waves

It is tradition in our family that on Mother's Day I decide how we will spend the day. We often went to Mendocino, walking the streets of this beautiful coastal town and hiking out on the headlands. But this year I wanted something different. A wine-making friend of ours had told us about a winery in Anderson Valley that makes great Gewürztraminer. This is one of my favorite white wines, but I have seldom found a really good one in the States (the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, by the way, makes excellent Gewürztraminer). I wanted to try this, but since Anderson Valley is a bit to drive to we waited until this special occasion.

Mother's Day was beautiful with warm temperatures and sunny skies. We stopped on the way for breakfast to have some "foundation" before tasting wine. The drive up Anderson Valley is beautiful especially right now when everything is still rather green, but we already saw - with weariness - the first dry spots.

Coming from Sonoma County we were prepared to pay a tasting fee (that is always waived when you buy a bottle) and were pleasantly surprised when we didn't have to pay but got our first tastings right away. I have to say, the Gewürztraminer was delicious and reminded me of the Alsatian ones (which are my favorites). They also had some very decent Riesling (another favorite) including a Late Harvest one which is not my thing at all (way too sweet). These wines have the flavor of home for me.

The winery is beautifully located in the rolling hills among the vineyards. There is ample space to sit outside, have a picnic, drink a bottle of their wine and just enjoy the scenery.

We didn't spent too much time here, though, but bought a few bottles and then went on toward the ocean. I love the Pacific and I especially love driving along our Highway 1 that hugs the rugged coast with repeatedly stunning views of the ocean and the cliffs.

It was a typical Northern California day at the coast - some sun, lots of wind - and of course fog. The marine layer seems to be omnipresent here.

We stopped several times just to enjoy the view, listen to the waves crashing onto the shore and watching the birds and insects humming around the cow parsnip and the purple thistles.

The lighthouse at Point Arena is halfway down the highway - a place where we always stop. This is the tallest lighthouse on the coast and - you always wanted to know this - sitting on a piece of land of the Continental US that is the closest to the Hawai'ian islands.

This is also the location where the infamous San Andreas Fault dips into the ocean.

The coastline is rough here - no soft sandy beaches. The wind has no mercy. Some trees don't make it, but are still beautiful.

Others just find a different way to survive.