Cross Country Drive: January 2009

Elizabeth and I opted to travel to Humboldt and Mendocino Counties in Far, Far Norther California this weekend, instead of Tahoe.

This was a part of California I've been meaning to visit for some time. Yosemite is also on the list, as are many, many other places.

I contacted a couple in Eureka through Couchsurfing.com and they agreed to host us for a weekend.

I include the map with the driving route because I want to show just how big Norther California is. SF is just the start of northern California. NorCal goes for several hundred more miles further north. And we still had another county that actually borders Oregon that we didn't get near, Del Norte.

We departed late morning on Saturday for the 5 hour drive, stopping at an IHOP in Marin and a couple of grander sites in the mountains, closer to the coast.

We stopped at Riverbend Yineyards in Myers Flats, CA. We had a 'flight' of their white and red wines (a free 1/2 oz tasting of each wine) and picked up two bottles of red wine, one we shared with our Couchsurfing hosts, the other we left with our hosts.

Eureka was a quiet town, even considering it was a small town on a weekend night. It WAS one of the biggest towns in the area, but the nightlife was very understated.

On Sunday we explored the small town of Arcata, the shorline and the Redwood Forests of Redwood National Park. This was WAY better than Muir Woods.

On Sunday night we did another walk on the town, had dinner at a brew-pub and almost went into a live show of some kind, but Elizabeth left her ID at that IHOP in Marin. :-( No Entry for us that night.

On Monday we started back to San Francisco. The only important item on the agenda was the County and town of Mendocino.

Once you get off the main highway, the road to the coast is VERY twisty and hazardous. The road hugs the craziest terrain and the 15 MPH signs are no joke in certain spots.

We saw more hairpin turns in one road that you could see in all of NH, for example.

The last thing we did (aside from stopping at that IHOP to get Elizabeths wallet and ID) was drive through Anderson Valley, south of Mendocino.

At some point, we started seeing vineyard after vineyard after vineyard lining route 128.

They all had signs advertising tasting rooms. Since it was past 4 PM and these places typically shut down around 4:30 or 5, we stopped sooner rather than later at Handley Vineyards. We scored a wine glass for Elizabeths collection and I scored a bottle of champagne that we opened soime weeks later on Valentines day.