THE FURNACE, CAMPGROUNDS, OCEAN, FORESTS, & A WINERY….OH MY.
Day 78 – Beginning of Week 12. The rain continued thru the night. Rob got up at 5:30 a.m. to deal with the furnace problem at home – yes, that’s right, it stopped working again yesterday afternoon. With the time difference between the east & west coasts, he needed to get in contact with the energy company early. At least we don’t have to drive an hour round-trip to get a signal! They’ll be coming out to the house again today, a technician & someone to evaluate us for new equipment. We have oil right now. Do we stay with that, or maybe switch to propane? It’d stopped raining & was 40 degrees when I got up at 7:30.
We left around 10 a.m., drove to the Honda dealership in Ukiah for brake fluid, then hopped on the 101 north to Willits. Took Route 20 west on the beautiful, winding road which eventually dumped us out overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Fort Bragg at coastal Highway 1. We were testing two roads to find the best one to take to the coast when driving the RV. We’ll be in need of a dump station & will be leaving our current campground tomorrow. Time to do a scouting trip. Route 20 was gorgeous, travelling most of the way through the redwood forest. It was well-maintained but very curvy. Miles & miles of a winding road can be pretty stressful when driving a large vehicle that’s towing another one. This was not a picture-taking trip since we plan to stay in this area along the Ocean for a couple of weeks.
We drove north through Fort Bragg, a big city that even had a Starbuck’s – we haven’t seen one of those in a while! Plenty of independent RV parks, State Parks, etc. to check out. So many Inns and B&Bs and Lodges – obviously a big tourist draw, but not cheesy. No shacks selling Bigfoot souvenirs, LOL.
Above Fort Bragg, out of the busy-city environment, we made our first campground stop at:
MacKerricher State Park. This was a beautiful Park, quite large, running from Highway 1 to the Ocean and north along the coast. There are four campgrounds within. The group campground, the south beach campground, and the tent campground were closed for the season. (The forest ranger later told us it’d been so busy over the Thanksgiving holiday that they had to re-open one of the campgrounds to accommodate all the people, and it was being re-closed at noon today.) The remaining open campground had just 17 campsites. We drove through & found several sites we liked, saw a couple of deer grazing at the campsites. Surprisingly, they weren’t very crowded; guess everyone had gone back home after the holiday weekend. No reservations, first-come first-served, we hoped the sites that would fit our RV & car would still be available when we came back on Wednesday. We drove through the Day Use Area & also checked out the Park somewhat. Incredible. The coast here at this Park has big & small sea stacks & crashing waves, just beautiful. There are bike paths throughout the Park & along the Ocean. The hiking & biking here would be excellent, let alone kayaking on all the rivers that flow in this area. We were happy to have found something we liked, right off the bat. YES, we’ll be staying here.
There’s plenty to do along this stretch of the coast, enough to keep us busy for two weeks (allowing for a couple of rainy, stay-at-home days). We’ll stay at more than one campground during this timeframe because the area we’ll be covering is enough to warrant moving and changing campgrounds once or twice. We found that the State Parks here along the coast are more expensive than what we were paying further north. All that we visited today were $40 per night, minus $2 senior discount. No hook-ups at any of them; a dump station at most, water spigots at all of them. The private/independent campgrounds with full hook-ups were more expensive, of course, but not extremely higher in price. We drove by several that we didn’t stop at, either the sites looked too open, crowded together, & resembled a parking lot, or they were full with seasonal & permanent vehicles. All that we drove by appeared to be open this time of year & most appeared to be fairly full. We did stop at one that was recommended to us by the couple who’d parked just in front of us at Richardson Grove RV Park:
Pomo RV Park & Campground. The campsites were amazingly private & nicely spaced from each other, especially for an independent park. They were located just below Fort Bragg, across from the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens – full hook-ups & $49 per night, minus 10% Good Sam Club discount. Off Highway 1 a little bit & below the hustle bustle of the city of Fort Bragg. (707) 964-3373. Laundry facilities. Clean & quiet. Check-in 2 p.m.; check-out noon. YES, this is a private campground we could stay at for more than a night or two.
We had a quick snack at Taco Bell to tide us over, continued south on Highway 1. Mendocino was a pretty town, trendy with all the small shops & places to eat or stay, large & expensive homes on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We’d been to both Mendocino & Fort Bragg 35 years ago when they weren’t so large & populated. Several rivers flow to the Ocean from the east hills. Many looked like good kayaking spots. Beautiful scenery.
We stopped at a State Park below Mendocino and checked it out:
Van Damme State Park & Beach. This Park is on a beautiful River and just across the Highway from the Ocean. There are hikes which attract many tourists to the pygmy forest & to the fern forest, therefore this campground could be crowded at times due to people at the Day Use areas. One campground within the Park was open with 13 campsites, & no one except the campground host was camping there. There were several campsites we could fit into & the campground was nice. YES, if the campground wasn’t already crowded when we got there.
Below Mendocino & Albion we turned off Highway 1 on the other end of the loop drive and went east at Route 128 to Route 253, a cut-thru back to Highway 101. Route 128 was lovely, initially travelling thru coastal redwood forests, then changing to winery country. We stopped about 15 miles in at a State Park that was open & checked it out.
Hendy Woods State Park. The entrance to this Park is long, therefore it’s located far from the highway. We drove through the campground which was open; part of it was closed for the season. A beautiful, quiet, and peaceful play to stay. Plenty of large campsites in a wonderful redwood forest. YES, we’ll be staying here. Just can’t get enough of the redwood trees!
Beyond the Park we left the woods behind & found ourselves going by continuous wineries, most offering wine tastings. We were thirsty, wouldn’t you be, LOL? No, really, our intention had already been to stop at one of these wineries, Lula. In New York, we belonged to a wine club, Naked Wines, for several years. I found when trying their wines, we consistently ordered wine from a particular winemaker, Matt Parish. Soon his wines were pretty-much the only ones I ordered. We quit the wine club when Rob retired because we’d be on the road & wouldn’t be able to receive shipments. Me, ever the planner – I’d stocked up on bottles of wine before we left, hee hee.
When browsing online recently, I discovered that Matt Parish had been hired to take over as the winemaker for a small production, ultra-premium label located in Mendocino County’s famed Anderson Valley. The current, long-time winemaker was ill. I also discovered that this winery, Lula Cellars, just happened to be on Route 128 on the way home from our loop drive. What a coincidence, ho ho.
Yep, 1 ½ hours later, we’d found the wines to be very good, especially the Pinot Noirs. As the salesman & part owner plied me with wine, it tasted better & better the more expensive the bottles became. He offered us a fabulous deal on a case, but Rob, ever the wise one, talked me into buying just one bottle to try at another time to see if it was indeed that good. The man said he’d still give us the same deal on a case if we came back when we were staying at Hendy Woods State Park.
After leaving the winery, we continued on Route 128 & found that even though it’s a longer drive & the Route 253 section is hilly & winding, it’ll be better to take this route to the coast when we are travelling in the RV tomorrow. During the whole loop drive, we made plenty of other stops: We stopped or drove by the entrances to check the status at Russian Gulch State Park, Navarro River Redwoods State Park, Paul Dimmick State Recreation Area, & Mendocino Headlands State Park. None had campgrounds available this time of year, but we’ll go back to check them out more when we’re in the area for a longer period of time.
When we got back to Ukiah, we stopped for dinner at a wonderful restaurant in the old-town, historic section. It was called Patrona and we had a perfect meal. They had signature cocktails; I had one with vodka, rosemary, & lime and Rob had a fabulous margarita with spicy tequila, lime, & pomegranite. We had an appetizer of 3 potato-cheese croquettes with chipotle crema. We had the homemade focaccia bread. Rob & I split two dinners: the daily special of Ravioli stuffed with butternut squash & ricotta cheese in the chipotle cream sauce & the Seafood Pasta with shrimp, rock cod & scallops with fettucini & lemon cream sauce. OMG, so good. If you’re ever in Ukiah, look this place up – Patrona.
Back to the RV at 6:30 p.m. The girls did great. They were glad to see us; we promised to stay home most of tomorrow. The high today was 60 degrees & it was sunny. 51 degrees when arrived at the RV tonight.