Monday 8/21/17
After an
excellent breakfast in the hotel, it was back on the road. I wasn’t going very far. Just three miles south of town is Van Damme
State Park. There’s a loop trail I
wanted to hit. You can either pay the
entrance fee for the main entrance, or get into the park from a side trail
outside along Airport Road.
The side trail
comes in through a place called the Pygmy Forest. It’s a grove of stunted trees. Between the lack of drainage and the harsh
soil, trees have a difficult time here.
The ones that do survive have trouble accessing proper nutrients
from the soil. This their stunted
growth.
There’s a fire
road that takes you back to the Fern Canyon loop trail. Sure, it doesn’t have the walls of ferns like
the previous fern canyon, but the trail was clear of fallen trees. With the two loops and the access road, I’m
putting this in the books as five miles.
An hour into the
hike we hit peak eclipse in the greater Mencodino area. It was gray and overcast. All I noticed was the light getting a little
dim. Oh well. I was enjoying the forest and only met a handful of other hikers while there.
Back on Hwy 1
south and passing through Manchester. I
don’t even want to think about the landscaping that went into doing this.
Manchester is
also the turnoff point for the Point Arena Light Station. Naturally, I went to
check it out. It’s the highest light on
the west coast that allows tours. I was surprised to see no lens atop the
tower. It was removed a few years ago
and replace with a smaller light attached to the outside of the structure. The new light is cylindrical and about the
size of a breadbox. Isaac our guide claims
the light reached fourteen miles on a clear night, Considering the coast here, that’s probably a
good thing.
Lunch was a place
called Cove Azul in Gualala. The
sandwich was nothing special. It came
with a small salad, As they say in the
culinary world, presentation is everything.
I should have taken a picture.(Sorry Connie) Using the usual salad items, the presentation was simply elegant. I told Scott, my waiter. He said he made it himself. He’s an artist and he thanked me for noticing.
One more stop at a
place called Black Point Beach.
My goal for the
night was an Air BnB in Point Reyes Station. My guidebook has numerous
interesting trails here. So, I stopped into the visitor center and snagged a map
for the morning before backtracking to the house.
Gilbert and Elizabeth are the home's owners. Oddly enough I never met Gilbert, but had a nice conversation with Elizabeth. The house was built to be a Bed and Breakfast. There were a few owners in between and when they bought the place there were the three rooms with their own bathroom and numbers still on the doors. I was downstairs. The room was the size of a large motel room and spotless. There was a second room downstairs as well. In addition to the two bedrooms there's also a small TV room with a couple of chairs. It was the perfect place to settle in with the tablet to type up notes from the day.
A couple of days before I arrived, they emailed me the front door code, the wifi password and house rules. The main level was open for everyone. If I had wanted to cook dinner I could have. I was just grateful for the use of the laundry room.
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