Llywindatravels 2025

Mendocino to LA, via the Monterey Aquarium

We left our wonderful house in Little River, CA (thank you Eckhart, Birdie, Jenna and VRBO) to head south for LA and then Barcelona. Down by a couple of boxes, the car was still packed to the doors. I gave up on the bird feeder–after the raccoon visit it was held together with fishing line. I’m not sure how items expand to fill a Prius. We were like clowns in a VW bug.

Our first stop was the Centrella Inn in Pacific Grove (Monterey). The Centrella is a fabulous Victorian house B&B. I lay in bed admiring the complex light fixture with its pipes, glass shades and ornamental brass details. When I mentioned it at breakfast I was told that they are original to the house, early dual fuel lighting—the shades that curve upward were gaslights and the shades that curve down were electric. Can you imagine the work involved in installing these?

My chat with a woman at the desk led us to exchange stories of beach combing. She recommends the beach at the end of Tioga in Sand City. I wish I had time to stop in.
Our goal in stopping overnight in Monterey was to visit its world famous aquarium. It’s $39.50 for a regular admission ($34.50 for seniors over 65…), but lives up to its reputation.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

886 Cannery Row Monterey, CA 93940

Profile

Guide books recommend planning at least three hours for a visit. We had to leave at noon or risk sitting all evening in LA traffic so we found a compromise. We only visited exhibits with live creatures, skipping all the video and photographic material (Sorry, exhibit developers). We may have seen all of them. We couldn’t spend time on the outdoor terrace where you can observe whatever is passing, including sea otters. I did pet an abalone at the touch tank, watch the keepers feed and do some training with the sea otters. It is a very wonderful place. Tore ourselves away at noon and headed for LA.

Sea otter.

I was about to pat the abalone.

The aquarium also has a wide variety of seabirds. The tall bird center is an avocet.

Mendocino area highlight reel

Best trail: Anyplace on the California Coastal Trail

Best day hike: Pygmy Woods/Upper Fern Canyon loop, Van Damme State Park

Best guidebook: The hiker’s hip pocket guide to the Mendocino Coast, by Bob Lorentzen

Best coffee shop: Moody’s, Lansing St., Mendocino

Best beach for collecting abalone: Van Damme State Beach, Little River; Mendocino Headlands, Mendocino

Best beach for collecting driftwood: Navarro Beach, south end.

Best beer tasting: North Coast Brewing Co. taproom, Ft. Bragg

Best wine tasting: A Taste of Redwood Valley (June and October)

We didn’t eat out very much, but had a nice dinner at Mendo Bistro, Main St., Ft. Bragg.

Best fish: Whole salmon caught the previous night, purchased Noyo Harbor, Ft. Bragg

Best pizza: Piaci’s, Redwood Ave., Ft. Bragg

Best barbecue: The Q, S. Main St., Ft. Bragg

Best bread: Ft. Bragg bakery (There is no bakery storefront–the bread is available at the grocery stores and farmers markets.)

Farmer’s Market: Wednesday 3-5 pm, Ft. Bragg; Friday noon-2 pm, Mendocino. Expensive but local and freshly picked. Try the strawberries.

Best fruit: Organic apple farm, just outside the entrance to Hendy Woods State Park

Best pick-your-own fruit: Himalayan raspberries and/or California huckleberries, anywhere along the California Coastal Trail, or try the east side of the main street through Leggett, CA.

Best summer music festival: Mendocino Music Festival (July)

Best botanical garden: Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, Ft. Bragg

Best garage sale: Pack Rat Sale, benefit for Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens (July)

Best benefits: Art in the Garden (first weekend in August), Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens

also, Bob Fest, benefit for Mendocino Environmental Center (August).

Best bird watching: Audubon society walks through the Botanical Garden on the third Wednesday of each month at 8 am.

And Away We Go

Mendocino has been a blissful environment, yet tomorrow we leave. Yesterday, I put some of my beachcombing shells back in the water.

In addition to packing, we spent our last day beachcombing on one of the best beaches yet, the Mendocino Headlands. I found a lot of abalone pieces, but left them in place for the next person.

This final beach had the biggest, strangest tide pools, including several giant chitons.

Giant chitons curl up when you pick them up.

Under water they stretch out.

Sea stars, sea urchins, hermit crabs….

It was a wonderful afternoon.

Jonathan appeared as a ghost.

Amazing that we had never been to this beach before. It was a great end to this visit of exploration. We’re on to Barcelona on Friday.

The World Beyond the Trees

All summer we’ve walked on the California Coastal Trail (CCT) and related paths that run along the coast. At Jughandle State Park, I followed a trail away from the bluffs toward a cluster of pine trees where I thought there might be some woodpeckers,

but the trail was actually a deer track and gradually narrowed to nothing. I was only about 75 ft. from the trail and I thought I’d cut across to the path. I had to circle around large patches of blackberries and poison oak and I ended up circling under pine trees where the deer trails picked up again.

I realized that the animal trails didn’t cross the trails for people nearly as frequently as I thought. I did see a hairy woodpecker, but then I wasn’t sure how to get back to the trail. There were spaces around the base of pine trees, I could see that deer lay there sometimes, but every path ran parallel to the CCT and didn’t connect. I saw movement on the other side of a large pine tree near me—I could see antlers through the branches. It was an 8 point buck, its antlers still velvety, not much more than 50 feet off the visitor trail. It browsed its way off before I could do anything but look. After that, it took me about 15 minutes to find my way back to the visitor trail, across a lot of prickly bushes.

I felt that I had visited a parallel set of trails in the land of the deer. They can be standing in a field and be nearly invisible. Here and there are places where the paths of people and animals cross, and if you look you can see the doorways to their world.

The day we saw the bobcat was similar. Around the bend in a broad trail a strange-looking animal came trotting toward us, turning uphill from the main trail toward a house higher up. It was bigger than a dog, but I didn’t recognize it. Just then a woman came around the corner, pale-faced. “Did you see it? The bobcat?” I nodded. Its path had overlapped with ours for only a few seconds.

Now I see that there is another world beyond the trees. We think we are entering the natural world by walking on paths, but the world of animals is just beyond what we can see. We can glimpse that other world if we try; sometimes the animals forget to hide.

The trails may be faint,

but most are quite clear once you are on them.

Sometimes you are invited to step off the path,

by a bent branch or a bright fern.

Sometimes, openings into the trees are mysterious.

Eventually, you find your way back to the path that leads home. 8.15.15 fishing Russian gulch N.15sm

and you run into some of the neighbors.

The Relentless Beachcomber

Not many people have the chance to go beach combing as often as they would like, we usually do this occasionally while on a short vacation. I’ve now had three months when I can go beach combing almost as often as I like. I can collect anything I find, with the understanding that at the end of our stay it will all be returned to the ocean. Not entirely, I’m keeping the tiny bottle I purchased at a flea market that I have been filling with tiny pieces of glass that we collect from the beach.

I will surely keep an abalone shell even if I have to send it to myself at the storage unit. I will have fun during our last week here putting abalone and sea glass bits back into the water.

We’ve branched out (ha ha) into driftwood lately–many beaches don’t have much abalone or glass. Here are some of the pieces that I haven’t incorporated into hangings or windchimes.

I have pieces hung around the house.

Birdfeeder on a bad day

We’ve been having a great time watching the birds on the bird feeder and successfully shooed away the squirrels. We met our match today….

Here’s the raccoon that visited yesterday, shook the feeder and ate what fell out.

Here’s the bird feeder this morning….

Empty. And there was no seed left on the deck.

He also drank all the sugar water out of the hummingbird feeder. I guess I’ll be bringing these in at night now.

More of Everything

This week I finished making the appointments that I will need during our brief stay in the Chicago area in mid-November.

We’ve also dug deeply into our “Hikers Hip Pocket Guide to the Mendocino Coast,” a wonderful book, and found paths that we had not yet visited and small beaches to visit (see Jonathan’s Facebook page for more photos).

Beachcombing was excellent, as well. I found another abalone shell entangled in a bank of seaweed, a bright orange corner sticking out of a tangled mass. I pulled the seaweed away from the shell in a mighty tug—and found that under the seaweed were a whole bunch of bugs. Ick!!! I rinsed it out with seawater and carried home my prize.

The deposits inside the shell washed out very well.

Wednesday was the monthly bird walk hosted by the Mendocino branch of the Audubon Society. Great company and lots of birds, even on an overcast/foggy day at the Botanical Garden.

Mendocino Coast Audubon Society:

Wednesday afternoon we went looking for the pileated woodpecker on a path between Hwy 1 and McKerricher state park that is marked by a pale green house that is called the “turquoise house”. We saw a couple of wingbeats, but didn’t get a good look.

Jonathan woke me up at 7 am to look at the raccoon on the deck, raising hell with the bird feeders. (He was a very chubby raccoon). He managed to tear apart and eat much of the najjar seed that I had dangling from a branch in a sock-like holder. Yesterday was the first time that the “right” birds visited it–goldfinches that held on to the sock with their feet while pulling out seeds. Now it’s history. The raccoon also managed to dump birdseed out of the “squirrel-protected” feeder onto the deck and settle down for a browse. He left in what Jonathan described as slow-motion. This is definitely in the cute….but…. category.

Thursday we explored for tidepools near Virgin Creek beach north of Ft. Bragg before Jonathan visited the dentist.

On our way home we made a detour to the Caspar Cemetery. This is one of the most beautiful cemetery sites I’ve ever seen. It is a small plot, a bit more than 1/4 acre with tombstones that go back to 1860. The cemetery is completely surrounded by thick forest and is quiet and peaceful–also a good place to look for birds. We saw forest edge birds, chickadees, brown creeper, and perhaps nuthatch. There are crossbills that visit this spot because some of the trees around the cemetery are Sitka spruce. According to Tim, our Audubon group leader, this is one of the southernmost occurrences of Sitka spruce and it’s seeds are preferred food of the crossbills. We didn’t see them, but the place was very much worth a visit.

Mendocino/Cabot Cove?

We walked along the beach and took photos of the town.

Tonight we watched the intro to an episode of “Murder, She Wrote”, now that we know it was filmed in Mendocino, not a town in Maine. Many of the buildings look the same now as they did when the series was playing, 1984-1996.

We found a nice bench on Main Street.

For a real change of pace, I made dinner tonight, a variation on a Peruvian recipe called “pastel de acelgas”. Chard pie sounds so much less appetizing, but it was delicious.

Bird surprise 8.13.15

We are having fun with birds. Not only did we see a new bird on the beach, and a bobcat, but when we came home Jonathan was watching the bird feeder and said,

“Get your binoculars, there’s a new bird out here.”

It was a family of red crossbills, male, female and 3 chicks. These are the weirdest birds. The tips of their beaks cross, and overall their beaks are bigger than you’d think for the size of the birds.

Despite the photo, I got a good look at them–very cool.

Beaches

We visited two state beaches over the past couple of days. Manchester State Beach is very, very long and sandy, though the path to the beach is not too clear:

We sat on a big log and ate lunch, and browsed through the driftwood for interesting pieces.

We watched the sunset from the Mendocino headlands. It was clear to the horizon with whales spouting.

Spent much of the next day at Greenwood State Beach, a peaceful beach in Elk, CA. On our way down to the water I saw an animal cross the path. It looked odd, like a brownish dog, but funny-looking. I pointed it out to Jonathan and then it was gone up a side path. Just then, a woman came by and said “Did you see it? The wild cat?” It seems we saw a bobcat. It was bigger than I expected.

Beautiful view of the water from the picnic tables.

The beach has a lot of driftwood and even some tiny pieces of beach glass. There is a stream that empties into the water here, and a lagoon behind the sand bar. We saw a least sandpiper. (They are tiny.)

Profile

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: