Russian Gulch, Van Damme and MacKerricher State Parks

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Hello again family, friends and everyone:

We spent our 4th of July week-end in the Mendocino - Fort Bragg area on California’s Northern Coast. We stayed at Grandma Edna’s home in Willits, CA as she was vacationing in Edmonton, Canada visiting Irwin and other family members. Holly and I had the place to ourselves, thanks for the free lodging Edna, we watered the plants and left the place in good repair.

We loaded our new truck (our old truck was stolen from the local K-Mart Shopping Center and recovered three months later) with our cross-over bikes and headed out to Mendocino County and three California State Parks. Our bikes are designed for moderate mountain terrain and street use.

On our first day out, Saturday, we headed for the Russian Gulch State Park (cost $6 per vehicle for entry and good at all California State Parks for the day), just two miles north of the seaside town of Mendocino.

What a great park this is, we came for the hiking and biking, but, there is also camp grounds, diving, fishing, kayaking and canoeing.

During our hiking and biking we traveled through the Fern Canyon to the 36ft Russian Gulch Waterfalls and enjoyed just being out in nature and all the beauty it offered, very exhilarating. After biking along the bike trail for five miles or so, we came to the hiking trail (no bikes allowed past this point) we secured our bikes for a two mile hike through the Fern Canyon Trail to the Russian Gulch Waterfalls which drops into a rocky fern grotto. WOW!!, such beauty, we could live there!

After spending some tranquil time at the falls and communing with nature, we made our way back to where the bikes were secured. Rode back to the car park area and decided to visit Van Damme State Park, just several miles south on Highway 1. There we would enjoy another Fern Trail, this one crosses Little River dozens of times. The bike trail at Van Damme was several miles into the forest and has an option for an add-on hike and mountain bike ride, however, it was getting somewhat late in the afternoon, some fog and darkness was starting to appear. We were unable to bike further into the forest trail. We headed back to the car park area and desired to enjoy some local seafood.

With our Global Positioning System (GPS) in hand, Jill (what we call our Voice Navigation System) directed us to Silver’s At The Wharf Seafood Restaurant in Noyo Harbor. Here we had a couple glasses of wine and some fantastic clam chowder, half a dozen fresh oysters on the half shell, and fresh crab cakes - yummy! Along with some unparalleled ocean views. It was then back to Willits for a well deserved good nights sleep.

Next day on Sunday, after a nourishing meal at a local breakfast house in Willits (and without our bikes) we headed north on Highway 101, then west to the coast for some spectacular ocean views and made our way south again on Highway 1 to MacKerricher State Park at Cleone.

This time entry to the park was free for the day and I’m not sure if this is every Sunday or just this particular day due to some special 4th of July celebration or other special occasion, I didn’t bother to ask, I was just glad to have saved $6 (yes, I know, typical of my frugality).

I only wish we had our bikes as the bike trail along the Old Haul Road/Ten Mile Coastal Trail has great ocean views and coastal scenery. It’s a car-free paved recreation trail, suitable for all kinds of riders and beach lovers, everybody has a good time. We did discover that with or without the bikes we were in for a wonderful surprise. It’s hikers paradise at thirty-acre Lake Cleone within the park, once a brackish water marsh that received a high-tide dose of salt water. However, the construction of the haul road blocked off the seawater, creating the present day trout stocked, freshwater lake.

A 1.5 mile trail takes you into the woods and around the lake, part boardwalk over a marshy area and part ground trail overgrown with coastal pine, marsh grasses and a variety of other vegetation. This hike was one of the most pleasant hikes we’ve had in a very long time.

As the day came to a close we desired, you guessed it, more seafood! Again Jill lead us to The Cliff House Restaurant just south of the park in Fort Bragg. Here again we enjoyed a couple glasses of wine, more clam chowder, fried calamari, stuffed mushrooms with shrimp and crab meat and dessert - yummy!

Only this time, after dinner and to my great astonishment, I realized I had forgotten my wallet in Willits - more than an hour drive over the coastal mountain range that separates me from my wallet and credit cards - UNBELIEVABLE!! Well, with all the humility that I could muster and with much embarrassment, I explained to the restaurant manager our predicament.

He calmly said that in all his years in the restaurant business and being quite familiar with this SCAM, that Holly and I had the most trustworthy looking faces he had ever seen. With that, we were allowed to leave; if only we would phone in our credit card information on arrival in Willits, which we promptly complied with - thanks David, you're a wonderful and trusting human being and your food was great!! What a way to end a week-end.

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