MacKerricher State Park!
December 27, 2008
Full title: MacKerricher State Park… now, with rain!
As I type this I’m sitting in the back of a car, covered in blankets (me… not the car), and clothed in warm fuzzy fleece pants and a giant fleece zip-up. Outside I’m surrounded by a whole lot of trees, a whole lot of mud, and a whole lot of rain.
So where are we? Fort Bragg, California! That’s right, Eric and I decided a while back that a mini-trip up the coast before Christmas was just what we needed. Eric just finished his fall quarter at UCLA (and got a 4.0!) and it was high-time I used some of my 100-odd vacation hours.
Saturday morning we headed out from San Francisco and took HWY 1 up the coast all the way up to Fort Bragg. Here’s a list of what we planned on doing:
- A long run (this is my doing. I’m training for a marathon which means every weekend I’m doing a progressively longer long run. This weekend I was scheduled to do a run somewhere between 110 – 120 minutes [or 1hr50min to 2hrs]. Eric was, you can imagine, was not too excited about this one.)
- Cycling (We brought our road bikes and hoped to spend a day biking either North up to the Lost Coast area and beyond or back South through Mendocino. We had to get cycling shoe wind cover bootie thingies because it’s too friggin cold right now to be riding without them. For those non-riders out there, the wind goes through the shoes and makes your feet go numb… which really gets in the way of the whole being-able-to-pedal thing.)
- Hiking (There are some beautiful redwood forests around here – even, I’ve discovered, a virgin redwood grove [“virgin” because the grove has never been logged which, I’m told, is a feat in itself in these parts since North coast redwoods were heavily logged to support the building of San Francisco…twice [once during the Gold Rush and again after the big fire (which I think was during the big earthquake… both of which I’m too comfortable right now to turn around and fact check)]])
it’s clear I like parentheses
- Exploring (The lost coast area is so called because during the building of all the highways and what not up and down California, the builders decided that that area was too rugged to lay down roads. So, instead of HWY 1 hugging the coastline, they decided to hook it up with the more inland 101. This means there’s a big chunk of the coast that isn’t easily accessible. So, it’s lost! In order to get out there you basically have to 4WD it over tight, unpaved, currently super muddy, roads. Which is all another way of saying this is an area Eric has decided he absolutely must see in his new luxury vehicle (aka a Subaru Outback).
- Eat (I’m all about nature stuff – trail running, exploring, hugging redwoods, you name it, I’m there – but what I really love about going to new places is the chance to try brand new restaurants! And what is better than running for two hours and then going somewhere for a delicious breakfast filled with the sweet tastes and aromas of maple syrup (real only!), hot chocolate (not that water instant pack crap), salty things (like sausage!), and the like?
Answer: Nothing. There is simply nothing better.
So it’s Monday night and I’ll let you know what we’ve done so far:
- On the drive up we stopped in Mendocino for a bit of walking and eating. The town is super cute but holy gods! I’ve never smelled so much pot in my life. Actually there’s a funny story here. We were walking down the main street (called, conveniently, “Main st.”) and passed by a beat up truck and a bunch of 1/2 punk 1/2 hippy people. Right as we walked by I smelt the pot. And, without thinking, I blurted out “Gosh, it smells like pot everywhere we go in this town!” At which point they turned to me and one guy, who, Eric tells me, was at that time holding said pot, and said, “Not everywhere!”
You know me, always making friends!
Anyways, other than smelling a lot of pot (used by young and old alike), we got truffles from the local chocolate shop (didn’t really do it for me but Eric seemed to enjoy eating both of ours!), checked out some truly gorgeous views of the sunset over the rocky beach, looked in lots of super neat artsy expensive shops, fantasized about owning things from said super neat artsy expensive stores (note: this part may have been done more by me than Eric), ate dinner at a really good pub with surprisingly delicious food, and got a book filled with information about outdoorsy things to do in the area.
After that we drove the rest of the way up to MacKerricher State Park, which is where we’re car camping.
Alright that’s enough for this post! I’ll explain the rest of our trip in my next entry.
All the pictures can be found here