Back to Mendocino, This Time on Foot

Since my August trip to mountain bike the very awesome trails around Mendocino, I have really wanted to show Marketa some of the easy trails in the area. There are enough beginner's trails for at least three days of riding just south and north of town, as well as some sand for fat biking, and that was our plan until a few days before the departure. A weather forecast called for couple of strong systems moving through Northern California over the Thanksgiving Holidays. Knowing how bad these rain storms could be on the coast (drove through one in December 2012 on our way to Seattle), we decided to leave the bikes at home and packed trail running gear instead.

As we drove through the Anderson Valley where the vineyards shone bright yellow and red, illuminated by the low autumn sun, we recalled how in the past years, we would leave the turkey in the oven to its own slow protein denaturation process and go for a run or bike ride. This year, we decided to leave all things "Thanksgiving" behind and have a vacation.

 

While the Anderson Valley is most visited by wine connoisseurs, we found Henry Woods redwoods and the adjacent apple farm to satisfy our needs: an hour walk, three bags of apples and couple of bottles of fresh apple juice.

After we checked into our cabin on the coast in Little River, we started our two day feast of seafood at a great place called Wild Fish.  Oysters, local catch, Hush Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc, North Coast brewery beer, much better than wrestling with the bird at home!

Next morning, the promised rain arrived but we were prepared and went for a trail run at the Van Damme state park. A flat trail (open to bikes, too) first followed the river through a fern canyon, then crossed the river and pitched steeply up and climbed to a plateau where the Pygmy forest area is.

If you go east from the rugged coast, through the redwood groves and up these step-wise plateaus, you will go essentially through a staircase of ecosystems, ending with blooming rhododendrons. As we turned around and entered a singletrack looping back to the canyon, the rain almost stopped and we enjoyed the narrow, loamy and rooty trail.

In the late afternoon, we went to check out Glass Beach in Fort Bragg. A place of an old landfill, the ocean has rounded broken glass into sparkly pebbles. I expected the whole beach to be made of glass, so the occasional layer of glass in the sand was bit of a disappointment.

Apparently the ruby red glass is very rare - some 50-ies car tail lights, I guess.

The pile of Dungeness crab and fish and chips accompanied again with local wine and a sampler of six North Coast brews did not disappoint. Run beautiful trails, eat great seafood, drink beer, sleep at the sounds of crashing waves - I liked this vacation agenda.

Saturday morning looked almost sunny, of course until we left the car at the trail head at the Russian Gulch state park. This being the day of our drive home, we thought that fast hiking would be enough of an activity. Again, the trail heads east from the beach through another fern canyon (seems that each eastward pointing trail here is named Fern Canyon Trail) until it split into a loop around a waterfall.

On the last leg of this six mile hike, the rain intensified into a downpour and my reasoning that it was "just two miles" to go and not worth to pull out my waterproof pants from the backpack, left me soaked through from waist down, despite making a fast pace. My jeans being my only non-running pants, I brought that Mendo rain water with me all the way to drought suffering Pleasanton. When did that last happen to me in California?

Cabrillo Light Station, Russian Gulch State Park