Again, rewind mode.
I found a very nice spot here in Bellingham at a dock facing the Bellingham Bay. I am sitting at an old picnic table typing away. It is bliss, sunshine, water, ships, the smell of the harbor (a little garbage smell too 🙁 ), no noise, except for the crying of seagulls; my kind of place.

Good place to write

I started writing this post a week ago and had to stop because the computer ran out of battery juice. Now I am sitting indoors, watching the rain.

Before I left San Francisco I had planned on driving up highway one along the Pacific Coast and then turn inland to Sonoma county. As so often, things don’t always turn out as planned. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The day I left SF was a work day for me and I knew I wouldn’t make it too far in half a day. My departure was further delayed because I had a lovely lunch with my friend Priscilla and her daughter Evyn. I might have been procrastinating as well. After spending time with friends it is always a little difficult to get going again. Priscilla mentioned several spots along the coast that I should see and also pointed out that highway one was very curvy just north of the city, never mind the occasional rock slide. Given the time of day and this bit of information, I decided to drive north on US 101 instead. I would back track along the coast the next day or so. Good decision, only 30 miles north of the city I started to feel sleepy. I cannot imagine how I would have managed in that condition on a windy road. One good thing about leaving San Francisco was that I would finally get back to nice warm temperatures, at least for a little while. Wearing a wool sweater at the end of July is just not my idea of summer attire.
I spent the night at a campground in Healsburg. Unfortunately, the traffic noise was a bit much and the next day I moved on to Cloverdale, just up the road.
Cloverdale is located in the northern part of Sonoma County, wine country. The campground is beautifully located on top of a hill overlooking vineyards and fields. I posted a photo in one of my previous posts.
Coverdale is a lovely big small town.

Cloverdale - Friday night

On Friday evening one block of downtown was closed off for an evening farmers market with a playground for the kids, just a handful of local vendors and restaurants. People gathered at the plaza for live music and dancing; a mini version of concerts in Central Park, NYC with picnic and all. Here you are even allowed to drink alcohol on the street, progress! Never mind that you can buy wine all along the west coast, (California, Oregon & Washington) in the supermarket. Don’t remember if that was also the case in some of the other states I visited.
It must have been a Saturday when I decided to drive back to the coast. After getting stuck in traffic at the last weekend outing I avoid driving in popular areas on Sundays. I checked with the campground manager on some local roads before I headed out. It still surprises my how little local people often know about nearby roads, especially when you deal with travelers all the time.
This coastal trip promised to be a nice one, nothing but blue sky all around. There are not many roads that lead to the coast and I picked the smaller of the two in the area.

Skaggs Springs Road

When you look at a road map you see the big fat lines for the interstates, red, black and gray lines for other highways. I prefer the black ones. You can be quite sure not to run into too much, if any traffic, and they usually run through untouched areas. Red roads can be a mixed bag, hwy 58 and 46 in southern California were awful, but hwy 26 in Oregon is beautiful, both traffic and scenery wise. Gray roads are dirt roads and require a special mind set and often a robust vehicle. Enough about lines on the map.
So I took the Skaggs Springs Road just south of Cloverdale which first lead through vineyards (beautiful)

Vineyard and Lake Sonoma

and past Lake Sonoma (gorgeous) before it made its way through my beloved golden rolling hills (do I need to say more?) and then through some forests (great pine smell, narrow & windy) before ending at the Pacific (once again jaw dropping).

Pacific coast - wow

The sun stayed with me throughout the day and I did not encounter one traffic jam.
The coastline was not always visible from the highway and there was lots private property and no “beach” access. Some of the trails leading to the water are well hidden and if a car wouldn’t have been parked at the side of the road I would have never known that there was one. I must have spent more than 2 hours taking pictures of the coast and walking through tall sticky grass. The grass looks beautiful and soft from a distance, beautiful gold color against the blue of the sky, but when you are standing waist high in the middle of it with no clear path out of it, it is a very different story.

Salt Point State Park

It is scratchy and has these very annoying seeds that just stick to you. In some areas the grass was tall enough that I hadn’t seen the buck until it jumped out of the grass some 50 yards ahead of me.
When you take a closer look at the rocks that make up the Pacific coast it is amazing that the coast has not been completely washed away. The sandstone is so soft that it just crumbles under the lightest touch.

Fisk Mill Cove

Some of the iron containing rocks “grew” in layers which can easily be dismantled by bare hands. I only did this with pieces of rock that had fallen to the beach. Not to worry, hwy 1 is still safe.
The coast became rockier the further south I traveled. Big rocks and arches stand of the coast in the ocean. Every time a rounded a corner I thought I saw something new and had to take a photo. At home I quickly noticed that I over shot, the same rocks from slightly different angles, oh well.

Arched Rock Beach

It is an amazing site and a drive that should be on everyone’s bucket list. North south works for me the best. I cannot recommend driving hwy 1 up or down in a RV or similar. Yes, it can be done; I saw plenty of them, however, some of the turns are mighty tight and you are just not as flexible as you are in a car and you have to focus on the road much more leaving little time to look at the scenery. Even driving in my big truck, without the camper, was at times cumbersome. All I have to say is – convertible 🙂

Wright Beach

From time to time I scan through all the photos I took at this trip and I have two reactions; oh my God, I have to edit all these photos and I can’t believe I have seen all these places: sandhills and hot springs in Texas, VLA in New Mexico, great waterfalls in Alabama, awesome canyons in Oregon and so much more. FYI, I will write about all this in more detail in future blogs.
I finished writing this sitting in Carol’s backyard eight days after I started it. Sometimes it just takes a while, no wonder I am so far behind with my posts. One more trip to the coast, a quick one, and we are moving to the northern California mountains and closer to present time.