Down the CA 1

As much as we would have loved to continue exploring forever-- we definitely had enough supplies to keep going for another month at least—it was time to turn around and start heading south again. The rest of Northern Cali and the Pacific Northwest were going to have to wait for another trip. The northern end of the CA 1 starts just a little south of the Avenue of the Giants, so we picked it up there and for the next two days we drove down the winding, craggy roads of Cali’s foggy northern coasts.

This is an interesting section of country. There are all of these little coastal towns separated by large sections of coast. There is definitely something California about them all, and yet they vary in flavor. Some look like time is passing them by, others are deliberately quaint, and in many areas you can feel that there’s quite a bit of money floating around. At one point, the money quite literally passed us by when a pack of wild Lamborghinis wooshed by us, one right after the next. Clearly these long, curving stretches of road are the best place to really drive your luxury sports car. I will have to make a mental note of this for my future sports car driving days.

Mendocino is kind of a perfect example of this north coast flavor. It’s basically California’s answer to Cape Cod. It feels very similar in that it seems like the type of place that retirees with a lot of money go to spend their golden years and where couples go to spend a romantic weekend at a B&B. The difference is that in addition to all the antique shops and gourmet food stores, there are also a bunch of new age stores and quite a few of the homes showcase the residents’ eccentric spirits.

Even the more industrial Fort Bragg a little further up the road demonstrates that independent California-ness. We were looking for a place to get lunch and Yelp lead us to a little place called Cafe One. It was in every way a roadside diner, but a little quirkier and all the old-school greasy spoon comfort food was organic and relatively healthy.

Ok, Maybe Greg's Hawaiian waffle doesn't exactly qualify as health food.

Family friends also told us that there are some beautiful kayaking spots in Fort Bragg, but the weather kept us from the water – which turned out to be a theme for the entire trip. I really wanted to kayak, but it always seemed too cloudy to give up the time and the money. Instead, we focused our energies on chasing tasty treats along the coast.

Max and Nicole told us about an amazing spot for oysters called Hog Island Oyster Co. Basically, it’s a little shack on a cove with picnic tables. You bring your wine –although they do also have a little bar – and whatever other food you might want to eat. They have and a very basic oyster bar and they’ll tell you all about every kind on offer that day.

Once you make your selection, they hand you a lunch tray with a big pile of ice, your oysters, a shucking tool and a glove, and some lemon and hot sauce. You take your tray over to a picnic table and enjoy your oysters in this rustic setting, while the oyster fishermen are hauling in the oyster beds just a few feet away. The oysters couldn’t be fresher and the area is so beautiful – and it got even more beautiful as the fog lifted around us.

It was such a fun and different culinary experience. One note, however, for the benefit of future foodie travelers – the tiny kumamoto oysters are the most delicious, but the little suckers are also the most difficult to open. Greg learned this lesson the hard way and cut his hand while valiantly shucking one for me. In the future, we will leave the shucking of this particular variety to the professionals.

After our little oyster brunch, we jutted inland to continue the foodie scavenger hunt in Point Reyes Station, home of Cowgirl Creamery. We did a little cheese tasting and settled on their delicious Red Hawk washed-rind triple cream and some artisanal soppresatta.

We picked up bread at the Bovine Bakery around the corner and packed up our goodies to go. Later that evening, we opened a bottle of wine and spread out our treats on a picnic table in Half Moon Bay and enjoyed a beautiful sunset.

Here is Greg's slideshow from this section of the trip:

And if you still want more, here a link to the rest of my flickr album.

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The Redwoods: Grizzly Creek State Park, Cheatham Grove, and the Ave of the Giants

No crazy adventures found us in the redwood groves of Humboldt County; nonetheless, we fell completely under their spell. This was Greg’s favorite part of the trip, hands down. It’s not so easy for me to pick a favorite, since I loved everyplace, but there is something particularly magical about a redwood grove. Individually, the giant sequoias we saw in the national parks were more impressive, however, as whole the redwood groves were much more lush and lovely. There is a lot more undergrowth in these groves, which gives them a beautiful fairyland feel.

It is probably this aspect that made the groves of this area the location of choice for the Endor scenes in the Return of the Jedi. This chase scene was filmed in Cheatham Grove, not too far from where we camped at Grizzy Creek State Park.

While we were hiking around this grove, a group of boys were filming themselves reenacting scenes from the movie, and I’ll bet their shots came out pretty good because it still looks very much as it appears in the film. Here's Greg's slideshow from Cheatham Grove:

There is also something very timeless about this place, or maybe it’s part of the appeal of camping in general. During one of our nights in Grizzy Creek, we overheard a group of teenagers singing along to oldies. As I listened to them belt out and butcher La Bamba and Twist & Shout, I couldn’t help but think that this is scene that could have occurred anytime in the last 40 years. And it probably has played out in the exact same way over and over again: Loud teenagers get away for a camping trip so that they can drink beers that were probably bought by someone’s sibling, away from their parents for a night, while all the adults in the campground simultaneously roll their eyes and think about the not so distant time they were doing the exact same thing. There is something profound and comforting about that kind of continuity.

Despite the fact that this was a Star Wars location site, it is still somewhat off the beaten path and it felt worlds away from the packed crowds of Yosemite. After all of those hoards and masses, we were happy to wind away down two-lane Highway 36 for a couple of hours in search of this campground, but you can definitely get your redwood fix without going so far out the way. There is a 31- mile detour off of the 101 that follows the old highway route, known as the Avenue of the Giants. There are plenty of kitschy tourist traps along this route, but there are also some very cute towns and loads of unspoiled redwood groves right alongside the road.

We didn’t make it that far up into Northern California; we only saw a little of the very southern portion of Humboldt County, which isn’t even as far north as you can go. California is BIG. Think about the fact that while San Fran is considered to be a part of Northern Cali, but it’s only about 2/3 of the way up the state. We were about 5 hours north of SF and there’s still another entire chunk of state above that. I think this section of the state is often overlooked, and Greg and I were even guilty of that. I don’t think Northern California was really at the top of our list of spots to visit, but by the time we left Greg was ready to buy a vacation home there. Well, we don’t have that kind of money, but I’d love to go back to further explore the northern end of the Golden State.

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The Bay Area - Friends, Food, and Wine

We spent a couple of days in the Bay Area, but they were all about spending time with people, so there isn’t much to say on the tourist front. However, the timing lined up pretty perfectly so that we got to join in two birthday celebrations – one with friends in Oakland and one with family in Santa Rosa

Our hosts in SF, Max and Nicole are always ready with great food recommendations. This time we enjoyed fantastic seafood at the Woodhouse Fish CO. and a delicious brunch at the Elite Café. Well, actually, I had a great brunch at Elite. While I was swooning over my decadent shrimp and grits while conversing with our friends, Greg was still feeling the effects of the party the night before. Oops.

There are a lot of wine lovers in Greg’s family, and several of them are in the Bay Area. Greg’s sister and her husband, Rich, are in Santa Rosa and they know the area very well – and lucky for us, Rich is always ready with recommendations. This time he steered us towards Mazzocco Winery in the Dry Creek Valley. He did not steer us wrong, as they had some decadently rich and delicious Zinfandels.

Sadly, one winery and lunch was all we had time for on this day before we had to hit the road again. We had a long drive ahead of us to get to redwoods in Northern California.

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Yosemite

In Yosemite, we joined a family for a couple of days. A super nice family – Dad, Mom, and 2 awesome little girls.

How does one just come to join a previously completely unknown family? It was all thanks to Yosemite’s crazy lottery system.

You see, getting reservations for a campsite within Yosemite’s Valley Floor is a lot like getting reservations for the French Laundry. People make their reservations months in advance – usually about six months – and within a finite period of time. Slots opens online and they’re gone minutes later. One large family that holds a reunion there every summer told us that they conduct a strategic multipronged attack. They coordinate as many family members as possible in different households to go online the day their desired dates opens up, in hopes that they will get enough slots to fit the extended family.

Greg and I didn’t know when we’d be going on our road trip, so we couldn’t really plan for it all. Thus, we definitely did not have a reservation. Yosemite has a system for non-planners like us . . . but they don’t make it easy. They have a lottery system that involves putting your name on a list early in the morning – and people line up for this prior to opening as if it were a rock concert. Then at exactly 3 pm, they start calling off names until all the sites that have become available during that day are gone. If you’re not there when your name is called, you loose your spot. We saw one very angry Frenchman who arrived 2 minutes after his name was called and lost his spot and had to go back to the end of the line. If you want to stay more than one night, you have to get up early the next day and do it all over again.

Greg and I arrived at exactly 3 p.m. and somehow we got the very last spot available that day. While we were standing in line, the gentleman behind me told me he had his family with him and if I managed to get a spot, would I mind terribly sharing with them? These sites are so close together anyways that it’s not like we’d be giving up any real privacy, so I agreed and thus we became site-mates. The next day, they in turn helped us out by sharing the spot they scored. And so it turned out, that we got a new family for two days. We’d go on our explorations during the day, and then we’d come back and have dinner and hang out by the campfire with the fam in the evening. We ended up having a really wonderful time with them all due to this happy accident.

Yosemite really is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. It is truly awe-inspiring. There are also a billion other people wanting to see it at any given time during the summer. It’s a lot like the Disney World of natural wonders -- Lines EVERYWHERE. I never knew it was possible to get claustrophobic outside; but then you come back to how spectacularly beautiful it is and you have admit it’s worth it.

Given our limited time – especially with all the restrictions on us due to having to be in place for the lottery and having moving sites during the day – we tried the best we could to pack in our time. As soon was we got our tent set-up on the first afternoon, we took off for a hike. We decided to tackle Vernal Falls. This is also the first leg of one of the main routes to Half Dome.

It is a 3-mile hike round-trip, which isn’t so bad, except that it is really steep. Essentially, you’re climbing a stone staircase carved into the side of the mountain, next to a waterfall, with hundreds of other people. Just before you get to the top of the falls, the staircase becomes extremely narrow and all that stands between you and the sheer drop down into the craggy falls is a metal rail that looked extremely rickety, if you ask me.

My fear of heights nearly paralyzed me again. But I had come all that way! Moreover, I was already upset at myself for letting myself be defeated the day before at Moro Rock. I was determined it wasn’t going to happen again. Plus, just as I was debating the situation at the base of that last bit of stone staircase, a mentally “handi-capable” woman was making her way back down. This steeled my resolve. I was inspired. If she could do it, surely I could get over a little fear of heights. Slowly but surely, I made it up to the top, and the view was definitely worth it.

Plus, there is a beautiful little lagoon at the top that completely invites you to loll about.

The only problem with going up, is that you have to come back down. It took me about half an hour to get back down that little section of staircase. Greg kindly kept offering to help, and I’d snap back to please not break my concentration. I allowed everyone else to pass me and basically climbed down mountain climber style – hugging the cliff all the way down. I did not trust that rail.

Some of our friends in San Francisco make it seem like climbing Half Dome is a normal, everyday occurrence. I think that might be one I’ll have to pass on. This challenge was enough for me, but well worth it. I felt like I’d redeemed myself a little bit from the day before.

The rest of our time in Yosemite we spent exploring the Valley Floor. We rented bikes and pleasantly looped the sites, stopping for mini-hikes, wading in lagoons, and spotting the wildlife.

On our final night there, we had another bear encounter. We were sitting around with the fam after dinner by the campfire chatting. We had not yet piled everything back into the bear box because we were still having s’mores. The picnic table with all our food and leftover trash was about ten feet behind us. Out of nowhere, we heard a little rustle by the table. The bear had made it almost all the way up to the table silent and undetected. The campground was full of people and there were even a couple of big dogs at the site next to us. No one had caught him! This bear was practiced.

Greg bravely yelled “Bear” at the bear -- in case he had any doubts as to what he was – and he turned in his tracks. The bear was so stealthy that I only caught the slightest glimpse of him. However, the way Greg describes it, he was much like a cartoon bandit focused on his goal: “Sweet, sweet garbage! Sweet, sweet garbage!” When he got caught he shrugged, said to himself, “Shucks! Foiled Again!” and skulked away. It was exactly like a Yogi Bear cartoon.

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* This Lonely Planet guide was extremely helpful in planning our stays in the parks.

Sequoia and Kings Canyon

So once we dumped the van, we rented a crossover vehicle, overstuffed it with way too many supplies, and finally hit the road. The first leg of our ride wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. We soon discovered that our rental’s A.C. was broken. We did eventually get this fixed a couple of days later, however, for the time being we found ourselves driving through Bakersfield in 100 degree heat. Nevertheless, when we finally got to the winding mountain roads on the way into Sequoia and Kings Canyon, I was incredibly happy we’d made the switch. I’m sure Greg was even happier since he was the one doing most of the driving – even if the steering wheel was staring to fuse to hands from the heat.

Luckily, the heat didn’t follow us into the parks. We lucked out with some lovely cool summer days and we took full advantage of them. We attacked those parks with a vengeance. I would recommend spending at least 2 to 3 complete days in the Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. We staid two nights, but we basically had one day there, and I have to say that we did a damn good job of covering all the major sites. We drove all around the spectacular national monument, we saw all the famous giant sequoia trees, climbed up to pretty waterfalls, drove through the giant fallen logs, and had a couple of mini-adventures.

We went on a beautiful hike in Zumwalt Meadow in Kings Canyon. This is a lovely little loop that takes you by a river with swimmers wading through the cool water, pretty meadows with tall grasses, wooded areas, and rocky hills to climb up on.

As we were walking along the path next to the river, we each were each snapping away on our cameras, in our own little words. Greg was a little farther ahead than me on the path, and then I heard rustling on the path beyond him.

Bear!

Greg just kept on walking, still in his little trance.

Bear!

Now for it to make sense why my dear husband would just keep walking straight towards the bear that was right on the path despite my yelling out “Bear!” repeatedly, I have to disclose the slightly nauseating detail that my nickname for Greg is Bear. So when he finally heard me, his reaction to my yelling ‘Bear’ was basically, “Yes, I’m listening. What?”

No, BEAR, Bear!


Luckily I got his attention when I did, because moments after he heard the little black bear that had been pawing away at log, seemingly by herself, was joined by her two cubs. Everyone will tell you that you really don’t have to worry too much about black bears. They’ll try to steel your food, but other than that, if you don’t mess with them they generally won’t mess with you -- EXCEPT when you’re dealing with a mom and her cubs. That’s when you have to be really careful.

My Greg would not be deterred, however. He continued on his path, albeit more carefully; and now, he had a mission. He had to get the shot! And by God, he did.

Meanwhile, I stepped behind a tree, and then proceeded to take video. This is after they'd moved away a bit:

Later on that day, the thrills continued. Sort of. Our final stop before heading back to our campsite for the night was Moro Rock. When you start out, it looks innocent enough; but then the stairway that leads you up the sides of the monolith gets really narrow and steep. It got the better of me. My fear of heights took over and I couldn’t go any farther. Greg had to scale the final heights on his own while I sat down and clung to side of the rock. I HATE when vertigo takes over and I can’t get it under control. Utter and complete defeat!


It seems a little odd, now that I think about it, that when faced with a mother bear, that could actually hurt me, I feel pretty comfortable by just putting a tree between us. Clearly, were the bear to get mad, that tree isn’t going to do a damn thing. However, when on a path tread by millions of people every year, a little height takes me down. Stupid irrational physiological response.

Greg mocking me with his fearlessness.

For a few more pics, here's Greg's Slideshow:

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For park info and maps see http://www.nps.gov/seki/planyourvisit/maps.htm