THAR SHE BLOWS!
Day 94 – Cold this morning, 32 degrees, still quite hazy out. We hung around the RV waiting for it to get warm enough to either bike or kayak. After lunch it still wasn’t comfortable & the wind was increasing, so we took a drive – there’s a heater in the car.
We drove to the section of the County Park that had the totem poles we’d heard about. Got the story (and pictures) on those, then headed up the coast to Point Arena.
We really like this sleepy little beach town, in fact all the towns around here are small & folksy. We’d stopped in Point Arena previously to get a sandwich on our way south. We’d wanted to spend more time there. The town looks like time stood still and left it alone as a remote surfing & fishing destination. Buildings remain virtually unchanged but well-preserved. There is a great pier where the locals gather. Lots of fishing; lots of surfing. The cliffs are stunning; they are light-colored, yellow-white, and you can see history in the layers of rock. We looked for whales but didn’t see any. It was murky out again and that didn’t help. Looking east to the hills and mountains, it’s now overcast there, too, like the smoke is spreading inland.
We went farther north to visit the Point Arena Lighthouse. It’s the furthest point west in the continental U.S., and it’s the tallest lighthouse, too. Very beautiful. The road goes out to the end of one of the bluffs, and the lighthouse is there watching over the Ocean. Tours are available daily, but we wanted to go as far as we could west on one of the cliffs in the hopes of seeing some whales. We set up our chairs and ahoy, matey – there they were. As we suspected, they had to come fairly close in to the land mass when going south to Baja for the winter mating season. We sat out on the cliff until the sun had started to sink into the smoke haze & it got difficult to see anything at that distance.
In Maine, near our land, we visit West Quoddy Head Lighthouse. Coincidentally, it is the eastern-most point in the continental U.S. & we’ve seen whales from there. Anyway, back to the RV, we made a big batch of shrimp scampi & had some of our garlic-cheese bread. Good day. We’ll probably leave tomorrow unless by some off-chance the sun can shine freely & it would be over 55 degrees for kayaking.