Majestic Views, Giant Redwoods,

Gardens, Wineries, and More

Story and photos By Bob Lindsey

When we told our friends we were going to Northern California for beautiful lush valleys and 10,000-foot mountains, they immediately assumed it must be the wine country. Napa Valley and Sonoma they asked? No, we have been there on previous San Francisco area visits.

This time we drove about 100 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, taking U.S. 101 past the exits to Napa and Sonoma until we reached State Highway 128 at Cloverdale at the southern border of Mendocino County. From Cloverdale, we began an hour and a half drive through Anderson Valley—another wine country.

We didn’t know much about this newer wine country that got its start in the early 1980s, but were glad to learn. After stopping off at Maple Creek Winery/Artevino, where we met Portuguese native Tom Rodrigues, (see Pat Lindsey’s story on this website) we then trekked slowly to the west through Anderson Valley, passing more small wineries, before we drove through a forest of massive redwoods that were so tall and dense that you couldn’t drive without turning on your headlights.

Our last destination of our first day was the Mendocino Coast, where we spent three nights at two memorable award-winning inns (see sidebar story on this website). The County of Mendocino has several regions and runs from the mountains on the west to the Pacific Ocean and north and south along U.S. 100 and is the largest county in California, about the size of Delaware.

The Village of Mendocino on U.S. 1 is a quaint town of shops, homes, a few restaurants, and three markets great for buying picnic items. The town looks like a movie set. Actually, several movies have been filmed there, including East of Eden, The Summer of ‘42, and The Majestic. This is a delightful place to spend an afternoon walking through town, having a meal, and strolling to the cliffs for great views of the Pacific Ocean. It has a wide range of accommodations, no chain restaurants, but also some of the finest inns not just in California, but in the nation.

We learned a lot from the innkeepers. We knew about the 47-acre Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, with its scenic views of the Pacific, and the famous Skunk Train, having read about them in advance, but written descriptions of them couldn’t begin to capture the magnificent beauty of this part of California.

The residents of Mendocino often call October the second spring, as fall colors blend nicely with the more colorful spring-like flowers for a rush of assorted colors. You can experience a lot of that color on the four miles of trails at Mendocino Botanical Gardens and Nursery on U.S. 1. Our membership card to the Missouri Botanical Gardens gave us free admission into the beautiful garden by the sea.

The weather could not have been more perfect as we walked about half of the trails through gardens of dahlias, fuschsias, roses, succulents, begonias, heaths, heathers, a variety of perennials, and a vegetable garden. When we came to a stretch of tall pines, we knew the ocean was just ahead. Unlike the Missouri Botanical Garden, leashed pets are allowed to accompany their owners on the trails. www.gardenbythesea.org

The Skunk Train depot on the western part of the railroad line is in Fort Bragg. It got its name from the rail cars that were powered by gasoline and recycled motor oil, giving it a pungent odor that had the old-timers saying you could smell the train coming way before it arrived. We took the one-hour, 7-mile round trip that started in town, but soon traveled past scenic meadows, then through the redwood forest. The Skunk Train also offers a four-hour round trip from Willits eastward to Fort Bragg that travels through even more majestic forests and over trestles and mountain waters.

Thanks to information we got from the proprietor of the Little River Inn, we learned about the great California state parks with trails right up to the ocean and others going through the backwoods. We visited three of them for a total daily fee of $7 and found some outstanding photo ops. Another free park is Mendocino Headlands State Park with fantastic panoramic views and open trails along the Pacific Ocean.   Our big find of the trip, however, was Hendy Woods State Park, which we visited on our way back to the Bay area.

Hendy State Park is one of the best places to get up close and touch the gigantic trunks of redwoods that are more than 1,000 years old. We enjoyed taking photos of each other inside the hollowed part of tree trunks known as goose pens. Some of the redwoods were so tall that it was impossible to see their tops. We would rate this as a must stop in southern Mendocino County.

We spent our last night near the San Francisco Airport so we could have an easy getaway the next morning on our nonstop Southwest flight to St. Louis. We left with fond memories of our four-day visit to Mendocino County, a part of California we never knew before. (www.mendocino.com)

(Editor’s note: The Mendocino coast is not near the November fire storms that have devastated two huge areas of California. The Mendocino Coast is about 150 miles west of   Paradise, CA, which is in central California.)

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