For our 14th wedding anniversary this year, we had some tickets on Alaska Airlines that we needed to use. They would cover a short hop, so we decided to fly to SFO and drive north to Mendocino. Aside—how did fourteen years slip by? We've seen most, if not all, of the Oregon Coast and wanted to experience some of the northern coast of California. I had never been north of Bodega Bay before and Ann had never seen any California coast north of San Francisco.
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| Ann's Artsy Shot from the Airport Tram |
This is not going to be a lengthy travelogue à la what I wrote for
Iceland or
Italy. We spent five days in Mendocino when a long weekend would have sufficed—neither of us wants to wax poetic about the experience. Mendocino is a tiny village, touristy at that, and very expensive. The highlights of the coast, while fantastic, can be taken in in a day or so, and wine country up in the Anderson Valley was too brutally hot even at the start of October to want to spend any extended time there. On this trip, the photographs will tell most of the story.
Now as I write this a month after returning, we have found a reason to return, but only for a quick hit-and-run, and not to Mendocino the village, but Mendocino the county—Pinot Noir. After I retired from the Willamette Valley wine industry, Ann and I found ourselves fatigued by Oregon Pinot. This trip helped reacquaint us with Pinot of a very different sort, and we tasted some wines from producers that we would like to buy for our cellar. I can envision a trip where we phone in our orders and run down in the car for a night or two to pick them up.
Monday September 28
Traveling was a fraught experience. Our airport shuttle was on time, but reeked of cigarette smoke, setting the tone for our day. Our TSA experience was unusual: I went through the scanner once, then they made me do it once again, then they decided to search my luggage, all while Ann was waved through without going through the scanner.
We had booked the last flight of the day to SFO, scheduled to arrive in the Bay Area at 20:30. Between fog-related delays, a late-arriving aircraft, and a 35-minute ground stop on the taxiway, we didn't take off until after we were supposed to have landed. It was that kind of day.
We arrived at the SFO rental car center about 23:00, where we had major drama with Avis. They wanted to charge us more—and did—because we weren't Amazon employees, even though we'd somehow received an Amazon rate through their app. On top of that, they did not want to accept my debit card. The credit card we used to prepay for the car was cancelled on the weekend for fraudulent charges. We went around and around and around with the manager, but ultimately, had to book at the much higher rate to get our trip started.
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| Another Artsy Ann Shot: Golden Gate Bridge at Midnight |
Fuming mad, I set off through a confusing network of local San Francisco streets in the dark. Winding through Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, we finally crossed the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County. We arrived at our hotel in Corte Madera at midnight, tired and irate. The woman at the desk was sympathetic and kind, even offering us her dinner in case we were hungry. We declined: we ate the sandwiches I brought along during the nearly interminable wait in Redmond. Alas, our room reeked like my grandmother's house.
Tuesday September 29
I fell asleep near 01:00 last night and awakened at 07:00, feeling hungover from lack of sleep. Our hotel offered breakfast, so we walked to the separate building, a repurposed sit-down restaurant, to binge on coffee and eat a bite.
After breakfast, we set out for the coast and Point Reyes National Seashore, where, many decades ago now, I saw my first Gray Whale, a mother with a calf, from the cliffs above the lighthouse. I was eager to show Ann this bit of spectacular landscape.
Winding up and through the coastal mountains, I had the sensation of being in an alien place. When I was in Iceland, all the vegetation was familiar: not necessarily the same species as in the US, but recognizable nonetheless. In this part of the world, I recognized few plants aside from California Live Oaks and Coastal Redwoods.
On the drive in to the lighthouse through the wide open landscape and rolling hills, I was concentrating on the twisting road when I saw the familiar white butts of a herd of elk. Elk?!? I had no idea there were elk in this part of the world. By happenstance, we crossed paths with the Drake's Beach herd of Tule Elk that wander the National Seashore at will. We were too late in the year to hear the big bull bugle, but he was keeping a close eye on his 40 or 50 cows and calves. On the way out, we saw a bachelor group of three younger bulls.
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Tule Elk, the Drake's Beach Herd
The Rut Was Over; the Bull Did Not Bugle |
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Three More Tule Bulls
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| Beautiful but Invasive: Ice Plant Everywhere |
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A Black-tailed Buck
I'd Forgotten How Small They Are |
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| Another Buck Gives Me the Staredown |
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| South Beach at Point Reyes |
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| Escaped Kniphofia at South Beach |
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| First Look at Monterey Cypress |
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Leathery Polypody and an Orange Lichen
on a Cliffside |
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| Honeycomb-Like Tafoni in Sandstone |
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| Layers in a Rock Cut |
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| Many Say's Phoebes Hunting Along the Cliffs |
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| Point Reyes Lighthouse |
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Windy at the Lighthouse
Not Iceland Windy, but Windy Nonetheless |
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Immense Power of the Pacific
Pounding a Rock; Cormorants and Pelicans |
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| Coastal Dunes |
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| Cypress Tree Tunnel |
From windy Pt. Reyes, we headed north to Bodega Bay where we bought sandwiches for lunch and cheese and salame for dinner. The sandwiches were the opposite of what we usually find: excellent bread and average fillings. Usually, the bread sucks, but not at the roadside deli in Bodega Bay. We soon found a picturesque pull-out where we could eat lunch overlooking the ocean and take a break from the coastal highway. We had our choice of picturesque spots in the 17-mile-long Sonoma Coast State Park; the places we stopped were entirely random.
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| Our Lunch Stop Vista; Arched Rock in the Distance |
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| Arched Rock; Tons of Brown Pelicans |
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Odd-Looking Gull Seeking a Potential Handout
This is an Olympic Gull, a Western x Glaucous-Winged Hybrid |
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| Typical Western Gull for Comparison |
After lunch, we continued the slow, winding drive north toward Mendocino. Feeling fatigued, we skipped a potential visit to Fort Ross and kept twisting and turning our way slowly towards our B&B. Ann was fading fast and was not particularly happy that I made a seven-minute detour to see the Point Arena lighthouse. Sorry, kinda not sorry. It was one of those situations where it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.
I looked on the internet for alternatives to the grocery store and discovered that the so-called wine bar closed about an hour earlier. Seriously? A wine bar closing before wine o'clock? Ann and I walked the three blocks—Mendocino is tiny—to the grocery store where I set to prowling the surprisingly extensive selection of local Pinots. I had done some homework back in Oregon, so when I saw a producer I recognized, Baxter, and a vineyard I recognized, Oppenlander, I quickly selected that bottle.
On the way back to our room, we walked past the closed wine bar. It didn't look particularly promising, an impression we confirmed when we dropped by the next day and left without tasting.
The 2020 Baxter Pinot Noir Oppenlander we drank on our balcony overlooking the ocean proved to be the very best of all the wines we tasted. This was our first taste of wines with brambly herbaceous flavors and screaming acidity, miles apart from the Willamette Pinots that jaded our palates. The wine was an extraordinary accompaniment to two Point Reyes cheeses: Toma, a tomme, and Quinta, a cedar-wrapped Vacherin Mont d'Or clone.
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| 2020 Baxter Pinot Noir Oppenlander
Best Wine of the Trip |
