Mendocino California  July 10-14, 2014

We left Monterey headed north for Mendocino.  We had a little excitement when trying to pull off the site.  When Dale pulled off the trailer brakes locked right up and the wheels wouldn’t turn.  Tried again, same thing.  He got out and looked at the wheels, axles, etc and didn’t see anything wrong.  Then he checked the emergency cable on the hitch.  Somehow when turning to pull out of the site the cable got caught on something and pulled out, immediately locking up the wheels.  When it was rehooked up everything went fine.  At least we know the emergency cable works and will do its job if really needed.

We drove north through Oakland instead of San Fransisco.  We drove over the Oakland Bay Bridge,  a toll bridge.  They charged us $20 toll to go just a couple miles over the bridge.  Prices are high in California. 

We drove north on US 101, then had to cut over to the coast to Mendocino on Hwy 20.  It was a very steep and twisty road, and it took about an hour to go the 30 miles or so.  The bad news is we have to go out the same way.

We pulled into the campground,  Caspar Beach RV Park.  It was the most crowded campground with the closest distance between sites that we have ever been in.  Our site was between a big 5^th wheel (that we later found out had knowingly set up about 1 ½ ft into our site so they would have more room) and an old rental trailer with a bass boat and an old dented Lincoln Navigator SUV.  Dale came around the drive as wide as possible and attempted to pull in but couldn’t make the angle without hitting the corner of the rental trailer.  He then backed up and came around again and eventually backed in, but a couple of campers had to move their trucks.  It was an extremely crowded campground, and also turned out to be noisy and busy, people and vehicles coming and going all the time.  The next day Dale went up on the roof to see if pulling wide around the drive near our site through low hanging trees damaged anything on the roof.  Sure enough,  the trees had caught on the TV antenna Wingman and tore the whole antenna loose.  Over the next couple days that we were there he took pictures, called a couple Camping World stores for repair estimates, talked to the campground maintenance man and manager (who agreed it was their fault for not trimming the trees back) and by the time we left Monday morning we had a check for the amount of the repair estimate from the Camping World near Portland OR, the closest one on our route.

Part of Damaged antennae

       

The  northern California coast proved to be very cloudy, cool, and misty at least part if not all of most days we were here.  On Friday July 11 we went into Mendocino,  a little town that was used as Cabot Cove in the filming of the old TV show “Murder She Wrote”.  We walked through the Farmers Market, and around town to the little shops.  Katy found a toy store and bought a couple games to use in her classroom next fall.  We also got coffee at a little shop, The Goodlife Café and Bakery. 

Cute cottage in Mendocino

The Mendocino Coast



They put sweaters on a lot of the trees in Mendocino
 

Because the weather is so cool and cloudy we decided to cancel our reservations at Trinidad, out next scheduled stop up the coast and go to Arcata CA instead, a little farther inland.  Made reservations at the Mad River Rapids RV Park.  It has great ratings and hopefully will be much nicer that Caspar Beach. 

Saturday we went into Fort Bragg.  We had homemade ice cream at Cowlick’s.  It was very good.  Also did a little sightseeing and found a bike trail that goes along the ocean shore for about 5 miles.  Sunday we rented a bike for Katy at a motel along the shore and rode along the coast.  It was a beautiful ride, even had some sun along the way. 

Katy & I along bike trail

Beautiful coast view from bike trail

More Pacific Coast from bike trail

   

We then went down to Glass Beach.  It is a large area of beach that is made up almost 100% of sea glass,  broken bits of glass that over the years have been polished smooth, with no sharp edges.  We had to climb down a little ways to the beach, but it was worth it.  We spent about a half hour collecting glass of all colors,  mostly green though.  After all the exercise today we ate dinner at a BBQ place called Q’s.  Very good pulled pork and beef brisket.  We even got some to go so we won’t have to cook tomorrow night.

Our last morning in Mendocino.   We drove out the twisty turny road to Willets and headed north on 101 toward Arcata.  We saw some smoke in the mountains and then saw a helicopter come down with a big bucket and scoop up river water and head towards the smoke.  Looking forward to next stop in Arcata and hopefully more sun.