The California coast has got to be God's gift to humanity. I've fallen in love and decided that I'm going to retire somewhere along the Northern California coast.
Lindsey and I left Monday morning around 10:30am or so, I really can't remember exactly. We pulled into Salt Point about 2:30pm. It was really windy, and kinda cold, and to be honest I was a little bit worried. I'd asked Lindsey to grab a jacket with a hood on it before we left home, but she insisted before we left that she'd be fine. She was so funny after we arrived when she asked if she could use MY hooded jacket. She bundled up in my jacket (I had my sweatshirt, which was just fine for me), and we pitched our tent and set up camp.
This was about the time I discovered that the inflatable mattress I'd brought had leak. Hmmmm. No way I was going to steal Lindsey's mattress from her, so I improvised. I laid the deflated plastic mattress out as a mat on the tent floor, and laid the extra sleeping bag we'd brought on top of that as a cushion. I actually slept pretty good. My back didn't hurt a bit in the morning.
After we set up camp, we wandered around the rocks down at the coast for a bit, where Lindsey took tons of pictures. After, we made dinner (Spaghetti-Oh's and olives - doesn't get much better than that), then settled down on a rock next to our campsite to watch the sunset.
Lindsey had talked about getting up real early at least one day, watching the sunrise, etc. Uh huh. Tuesday we both slept in until about 9:00am. The wind had died down, and the day was just stunning. After breakfast, we headed out on a drive up the coast. We went into Gualala, walked out to the beach, got lunch and ate at a picnic table by the shore.
Then we drove up to Point Arena, checked out the town and the wharf. I think I've fallen in love with that town. Granted, I saw it for, oh... 20 minutes? But what I saw, I loved. A wonderful little downtown area with lots of shops and stores. It even had a movie theater ! I loved the wharf, too. It's a real working wharf; not a foo-foo, boutique wharf. The scent of fish and diesel fuel is unmistakable. Several real fishing boats were moored offshore a ways. It was just, in my opinion, idyllic.
When we got back to camp, we discovered some critters liked our food as much as we did. The box was torn open; an entire loaf of bread was gone (never even found the wrapper), the hot dog buns were destroyed, and they even opened a box of nutri-grain breakfast bars and took three bars! We think it was raccoons, blue jays, and a couple of the biggest black crows I've ever seen. All in all, no big loss, but kinda funny to see all the plastic wrap in little shreds all over the campsite.
Turns out Lindsey is a great fire-starter. She got a heck of a fire going that first night, which was a life-saver because it was so COLD! She kept chuckling about "this is an indian fire, not a white man fire". Indian fires are nice, small ones you can get close to and warm up all over, as opposed to huge, roaring white-man fires that burn your face but leave your back frozen.
We saw several deer, a couple of raccoons, and more birds than you can shake stick at.
Wednesday morning we packed up, had breakfast at a really nice restaurant in Jenner called the Mystic Isle Cafe, and headed back to the heat that is Citrus Heights in the summer.
Lindsey and I had some great conversations and a wonderful time. I'm looking forward to my next trip, this time with Cameron.
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