Day 28: The Home Stretch - July 12

Today's breakfast was probably our least inspired of the trip (the free continental breakfast included bowls of cold cereal and store-bought pastries) in one of the most inspiring settings (on the top floor overlooking the Mendocino headlands and the ocean).  Though the WiFi wasn't working in the guest rooms at Hill House, there was WiFi in the lobby area so we gathered around my laptop in the main lobby to watch Season 1, Episode 4 of Murder She Wrote, in which many scenes were shot right where we were sitting.  Surprisingly little has changed since it was filmed thirty years ago!  And, not surprisingly, it was an episode I'd seen before.

view of our room from the front garden

Cabot Cove (Hill House) Inn

We drove through town on our way out, stopping by Jessica Fletcher's house (called Blair House).  For some reason, Mendocino does not advertise the series the same way that Astoria proudly claims the Goonies, but that didn't stop us from finding her home!

Our route back to Mountain View took us right through Healdsburg, CA in Sonoma County, the perfect bookend to our trip.  The first day took us to lunch at Rachel's favorite Napa Valley restaurant, Farmstead, and our last day took us to her favorite Sonoma County restaurant, Shed.  After a delicious lunch we swung by our other favorite stop in town - the Mustache Cafe - for cupcakes.

While we were polishing off our dessert, Julia's good friend Ari from South Pasadena let us know she and her family were in Petaluma (about 40 minutes away right on our way home) and invited us to meet them for ice cream.  Even though we had just polished off several cupcakes, the girls managed to step up their game for the last day with a stop for frozen yogurt.  It was great to get to see Ari and her mom for a few minutes and catch up, in a pretty unexpected place.  From there we went to pick up Shaggy at the Pooch Hotel.  Even though we were gone 28 days, we only had to board him for the last two, thanks to Jim being home and to our many house/dog sitters: Hannah, Mary, Mary's family, and Elizabeth and her girls.  We are so grateful for their love and care of Shaggy and at the same time very happy to be home with him now.  We are starting a healthy eating regimen tomorrow...right after we finish this dinner of In-n-Out.

Day 27: Glass Beach and Mendocino - July 11

After our campground breakfast of oatmeal and cheese and crackers (and a delicious cinnamon roll from the Frendale Pie Company) in a mist (not quite a drizzle, but not really dry) we broke down the camp and got back in the car.  Just down the road on the Avenue of the Giants, we stopped in Founder’s Grove, home to some of the tallest trees in the world.We forgot to pick up the self-guided trail guide at the beginning of the hike so we just kind of guessed at what the numbered signs along the way might be indicating….until we got to number 10 or 11 and I couldn’t stand not knowing any longer.  So I jogged back to the beginning to get the guide, though it turns out there were only 12 signposts...In the meantime, we had noticed that the trail floor was covered with large swatches of clover.  We got so preoccupied with finding a four-leaf clover (still need to find something lucky for our scavenger hunt) that we spent more time looking down at the ground than we did looking up at the giant trees. When we finally got the information guide, we learned that we were searching through sorrel, a tasty wild edible that looks a lot like clover, but isn’t – and probably doesn’t even mutate to a four-leaf variety, and even if it did, is not a good-luck charm. We did get to see the Dyerville Giant, thought to be the tallest tree in the park before its fall in 1991, and its massive root system.

We continued down the Avenue of the Giants and drove through the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree.  It was damaged by fire which burned out the entire center of the tree so it was hollow all the way up.  Because Redwoods get their water from the outer rings rather than their centers, the tree is still alive. 

We continued on the old 101, hopped on the new 101, and connected to the 1 to get back over to the coast.  We lunched in Fort Bragg at a very strange Wizard-of-Oz-themed restaurant called Egghead’s Restaurant (food delicious, theme odd).  We drove down to the water to visit Glass Beach.  The sand is made up almost entirely of sea glass!  I’d heard about it and knew what I’d be walking into but it is still surprising to be walking on that much glass.  I thought it was super cool until Rachel explained to me that we were essentially on the city dump; there were three water dump sites near Fort Bragg, and this one was until 1967.  The sea glass is still a cool remnant.

From there Julia drove the seven miles to our stop for the night in Mendocino.  We were staying at the Hill House Inn because it was on a Groupon Getaway when I was planning my trip and because it was used as the Cabot Cove Inn in Murder She Wrote!  9 episodes were actually filmed in Mendocino and the rest used exterior shots from around town.  The last time we were in Mendocino was in 2004 for Juliana Van Cleve’s wedding (Julia flower girl and the first wearing of Rachel’s fancy jacket) and the Hill House is where she had her rehearsal dinner.  As is usually the case when we check in to a hotel in that 4 pm time frame, we got a little lazy in the room before we could motivate ourselves to get back out.  We did walk down into town around 5:30 pm and as luck has gone on this trip, we ended up in Mendocino on the one Saturday night when the city does not shut down at 5.  It was opening night of the Mendocino Music Festival so not only were all the shops open until 8 pm, they all had little things to nibble on as you walked through (which was good because the girls were low energy at that point) and many had musicians playing in them.  We poked around art galleries and bookstores before heading to the recommended Frankie’s Pizza and Ice Cream (thanks Juliana!).  After dinner, we took a beautiful long walk through the Mendocino Headlands State Park as the sun was starting to set.  It was simply gorgeous. 

We got back to our hotel and headed to the lobby.  We ran into a nice couple from LA on their way up to Seattle along the coast.  They are huge Galaxy fans and were watching a game on their ipod so we chatted with them a while.  He let us know that season 1, episode 4 of Murder She Wrote significantly features the Hill House Inn so after playing some cards we headed back to our room to watch that on Netflix.  Unfortunately the WiFi in the rooms wasn’t working so we’ll have to save that for another day.

Day 26: Southern Oregon & Northern California – July 10

Pacific Reef hotel’s next-door restaurant, Chowder House, gives a discount for hotel guests so we decided to get breakfast there – based on the name, not necessarily the first place you’d think of to start the day, but it turned out to be a good decision. The food was really great – some of the best food we’ve had on the Oregon coast, great breakfast burritos and only $7 for all-you-can-eat cinnamon French toast! We needed to get a good chunk of driving done, so we listened to This American Life and Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me as we continued down the Oregon Coast and crossed over into Northern California – the real Northern California, not the middle California we live in and just call Northern California. The views of the coast on the southern Oregon coast starting around Gold Beach were really beautiful. It was remarkable how soon after we crossed into California we were suddenly in coastal redwood land.

Over a year ago the girls and I heard a segment on This American Life about the talking Paul Bunyan in the Redwood Forest, but I really had no idea exactly where it was or if we would be able to see him on this trip. Boy was I happy when a huge 50-foot Paul Bunyan came into view. We stopped and had a nice conversation with Paul – he told us all about why his ox, Babe, is blue. It was fun to talk to him after hearing Ira Glass’ experience being inside the talking Paul.

Ferndale

I’ve always wanted to visit Eureka, CA for some reason, but when I learned about the near-by town of Ferndale - an old Victorian town so beautiful that Legoland recreated it in their park - we decided to drive through Eureka's charming old town, and not-so-charming new town, and continue on to Ferndale for lunch. We chose Mario’s Lost Coast Café, a delicious vegetarian café across the street from the Ferndale Pie Company, our second stop. We also went to their grocery store to get dinner food for our campsite.

We drove into the Humboldt Redwood Forest State Park along the Avenue of the Giants, stopped at the Visitors Center, and headed back to our site at the Albee Creek Campground in the middle of the largest continuous old growth forest in the world.  Though the park is full of trees, we reserved a campsite next to a meadow with the advantage of it being popular with wildlife. We were not disappointed, as two deer almost immediately walked up within about 50 feet of the campsite. This being the first time Jim was with us for a camping night on this trip, Julia and I impressed him with our tent-pitching expertise, while Rachel expertly set up the logs for the campfire.

Before it got too dark we went on a hike in search of “Tall Tree” and “Giant Tree”. On a trail where big, tall trees are the norm, it felt like searching for a needle in a haystack to find the one they call “Tall Tree”. Thankfully it was well marked so we knew it when we finally found it. As we were heading back, Julia remarked it was “like we are in a museum of trees,” then paused and said, “what some might call a forest.” I really like thinking about a hike in the forest like walking through a museum of trees.

We walked for a while down a path that wasn’t very well marked thinking we could find a loop route back, but as the evening was really overcast and a little drizzly, we were worried it was going to get dark pretty quickly and so decided to double back. After a bit, Julia and Rachel decided to jog the mile or so back to our campsite, while Jim and I had a nice, brisk walk. Rachel got the fire started and cooked up corn and soup for our dinner. We dug into our pies from the Ferndale Pie Company and made s’mores (including ones with Rolos subbed in for chocolate bars and one with white chocolate peanut butter cups for me) before turning in for bed in our tent next to the deer who lived in the meadow. We were just hoping that the black bears who we were told also like the meadow wouldn't get too close!

Day 25: The Oregon Coast – Newport to Gold Beach – July 9

It was pretty magical to wake up in the Agatha Christie room this morning. Waking up in a new place each day it is easy to forget where you are, so getting to experience it all again when I woke up was fun. I wanted to maximize the short amount of time we had left there, so I read for a few minutes in bed, went up to wake up Julia in Hogwarts upstairs (who wanted to be woken up to go on a run), read a few minutes in the library on the third floor (that had been full of readers when we arrived the night before), and then went for a walk with Rachel on the beach.  We ran into Julia on the way back from her run and all returned to the hotel for breakfast.  We had filled our plates with continental breakfast items before we realized that we were also being brought a hot breakfast of eggs and grilled toast.  Our dinner companions joined us again for breakfast and we got into a more lengthy discussion about their four adopted daughters and the difficulties associated with adopting toddlers.  They now range in age from 17 to 22, but it certainly sounds like a challenge every step of the way. 

Erin and Bonnie recommended we stop at the tide pools at Strawberry Hill, south of Yachats.  On our 25^th day in the Pacific Northwest it was finally drizzling.  We have been spoiled by blue skies the whole way, but today we finally got to use the rain jackets I’ve been lugging around for almost a month. The grey, cloudy skies were scenic in their own way, but not in the way that makes you want to run around on the beach.  We also have quite a bit of distance to cover every day since we are going down three times as fast as we came up, so we did a lot of viewing from the comfort of our car.  Thankfully we decided to brave the drizzle, get out of our car, and go down to the tide pools.  They were absolutely the best tide pools I have ever been to!  You always see sea anemones at every tide pool, but this time the rocks were covered so densely with them you had to look closely to tell they were blankets of anemones and not just rock.  Usually we are thrilled to find a starfish or two, but today sea stars and muscles lined the sides of rocks.  It really felt like we were getting a glimpse into the bottom of a very lively ocean.  We were so busy looking down into the pools at the tons and tons of sea life that it made us laugh when we realized that we hadn’t even noticed the main attraction just a few feet off shore: at least 20 harbor seals were resting on the rocks and swimming in the water. It was an ocean wonderland!

can you see all the muscles?

 

The other place we’ve heard about often are the sand dunes outside of Florence.  We stopped for a lunch in Florence, choosing a place that sounded like just what we needed and had great Yelp reviews: Nature’s Corner Café and Market. It was TERRIBLE.  My soup was actually inedible.  Must have just been an off day, but don’t go there.  A block later we saw that Florence does have a cute downtown center that we had totally missed.  Oh well.  We continued on to the Oregon Sand Dunes National Recreation Area and stopped to run on a sand dune.  We’ve recently run on the sand dunes at Death Valley so were a little jaded but it is always fun to climb up and run down big piles of sand. The girls tried to knock Jim down but were completely unsuccessful. 

After our terrible lunch we needed a sweet treat to make it through the car ride.  (If you’ve been following along, the last thing we actually needed was a sweet treat.) Thankfully every town we go through has a homemade candy store, and Bandon was no exception.  We picked up some sugar sustenance and drove another hour to our stop for the night in Gold Beach.  Along the way the views of the rocky beaches got really beautiful.  We were discussing our dinner spot for the night and looking at our options as we rolled through Gold Beach.  When we checked in to the Pacific Reef hotel we discovered that the family room I had reserved (a great deal btw!) was a huge two room suite with kitchen and living room with DVD players and movies you can borrow for free.  That decided it for us – we ordered great pizza delivered by Sunset Family Pizza and watched Beverly Hills Cop.  Just before closing, we sent Jim out to pick up some Dairy Queen Blizzards for us.  Just because.

Day 24: The Oregon Coast and Julia’s Birthday!! – July 8

Birthdays are usually a big deal in our house – starting off with breakfast in bed and opening presents.  But being on the road, either it is hard to make it feel special or every day feels so special it is hard to differentiate.  We skipped both breakfast in bed and presents today.  Julia started today as she has many other days – exercising.  When we started on this trip she and I both committed to doing a workout every morning and while I have done exactly one workout in the past 24 days, she has almost completed her four-week Nike Training program.  (I blame blogging for my lack of exercise…but I’m really proud of her commitment level.)   After her workout, we had the breakfast buffet at the Hampton and started off down the coast.  The weather along the coast is significantly cooler than the other places we’ve been to date – and it was really nice to be able to pull out our long sleeves and long pants we’ve been hauling around for weeks.  We were running a little later than we had hoped so we were on the fence about stopping at the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, but decided to stop in briefly.  We got lucky that the Wednesday following the fourth of July each year is Seaman’s Day, honoring the Newfoundland dog (Seaman) that accompanied Lewis and Clark on their journey.  So, Fort Clatsop was full of Newfoundlands and their owners.  And not just any Newfoundlands – the first one we met, Buddy, is the actual mascot for the Lewis and Clark College Pioneers – the dog who leads the team out before football games and who was the model for the statue we had already photographed for the scavenger hunt! 

There are nine lighthouses along the Oregon coast on the national registry of historic places and we thought it would be fun to try to see them all on our way down.  The first one is between Seaside and Cannon Beach, visible from Ecola State Park and is known as Terrible Tilly for its location about a mile off shore on Tillamook Rock.  We drove into Ecola State Park and walked out to a spot where we could see the lighthouse.  

Terrible Tilley

Looking down on Cannon Beach

Warnings!

From there we drove to the cute, seaside town of Cannon Beach for lunch at a great placed called Season’s Café and picked up a couple of delicious cupcakes at Simply Cakes by Jae.  We shopped around town getting Julia a book for her birthday at the local bookstore and some candy at Bruce’s Candy Kitchen.  I had pictured spending time on the beach and going to the famous Haystack Rock but it was very windy and cold on the sand so we didn’t spend much time there. 

We continued south down the coast, driving through the little town of Manzanita (in search of a slice of pizza we had read about, but the restaurant was only open for dinner), and then stopped at the Tillamook Cheese factory.  We could have stayed there for hours learning about cheese-making and studying the assembly line process.  It was super interesting trying to figure out what each machine’s role is, and it was also pretty clear that being an assembly line worker must be unbelievably boring and difficult at the same time given the amount of attention they must pay.  We heard to get a milkshake there, but so many flavors looked good that three of us (all but the birthday girl) decided to get junior ice cream cones.  My marionberry pie ice cream was really great!  We didn’t stay long since I was anxious to get to our next location – the surprise hotel for Julia’s birthday.  With so much driving to do, we decided not to take the extra detour to see lighthouse #2 at Cape Meares (and so unfortunately also missed the nearby “octopus tree”).

Years ago I read about a place called the Sylvia Beach Hotel, a B&B for book lovers where each room is designed around a different author, and I knew someday I wanted to surprise Julia with a night in the JK Rowling room.  So when I started planning this trip, being in Nye Beach, OR on July 8^th was one of the parameters I started with.  I was able to reserve the JK Rowling and the Agatha Christie rooms and was so excited to surprise Julia when we arrived.  Though the Agatha Christie was a huge ocean-front room - featuring a large wrap-around private balcony - that could have slept all four of us, we didn’t want to miss the opportunity for Julia and Rachel to spend a night in the Harry Potter-themed room.  The room was complete with (among other things) wands, Hedwig, a sorting hat, a three-headed dog, a four-poster bed, a golden snitch, a Gryffindor scarf, and even Moaning Myrtle behind the toilet!  Julia was just as thrilled as I had hoped. 

 

The Agatha room was also really cool – and had hidden clues to hunts that other guests had left over the years.  Jim and Rachel got started on clue solving and spent the rest of the night following clues, taking a break only for dinner.  The hotel has been there for 28 years and only a few of the authors have changed during that time.  They were able to make room for JK Rowling because, although people thought the Edgar Allen Poe room was very cool, it was too creepy for people to actually stay in.  At 7 pm, they rang a bell announcing dinner was served, and we were sat downstairs at a table with two other guests – a couple from Eugene staying in the Jane Austen room. Bonnie (a college philosophy professor) and Erin (a kindergarten teacher) raise chickens and ducks and love to garden, so had advice to offer on many subjects (from how to handle our squirrel problem to college selection and majors).  After a 2.5 hour dinner, we went back to our rooms to read.  Rachel built a fire in the Agatha Christie room and I feel asleep while she and Jim were still tearing the room apart around me in search of clues.