Sideways

Point Arena porch; say goodbye to Mendocino

Sunday, August 21, 2011: Today we left Mendocino and turned east towards the heart of Sonoma, a sort of sharp left turn.  We had three options to accomplish this: Backtrack north to connect with the 128 which runs SE down the scenic Navarro River valley into Sonoma; drive a narrow two-lane rural route called Mountain Valley Rd east to the 128; or go south on the Shoreline Hwy, Rte 1, as far as Jenner, then turn east along a few highways and byways progressively going NE.  Since I’m not inclined to ever drive the somewhat harrowing Rte 1 ever again, we chose the last option. 

Coastal view in Sonoma; mind the guard rails

Blooming  trees, Healdsburg

It was Mendocino fog and gloom as per every morning during our stay, a brisk 56 or so, as we headed south to Point Arena (named by Captain Vancouver on his coastal travels), Gualala, the Mendo/Sonoma border, Timber Cove, Fort Ross and Jenner, which sits at the mouth of the Russian River; an exceptionally “focussed” drive with very clear views to the Pacific many, many, many meters below, and speedsters on our tail.  From Jenner we had carefully mapped out our route on Hwy 116 through Duncans Mills, Monte Rio and Guerneville, then along the Russian River up to Healdsburg—but we made a wrong turn at Guerneville and ended up way south in Forestville, Graton, etc.  Along the way we connected to Hwy 12 and ended up in Santa Rosa.  The clouds parted, the sun came out in full force, and it finally felt like California in August.  After a short pit stop at the Whole Foods in Santa Rosa (which sells "two for $6" as opposed to YVR's "two for $5" lunch to go, and along one whole wall had booze and food including, I kid you not, a Tap Room) for lunch, onto Hwy 101 north to Healdsburg.

Healdsburg is a tiny touristy town, a foodie destination (Charlie Trotter has an outpost here and one restaurant, Cyrus, has two Michelin stars; folks sometimes pop up from SFO for a nosh), corporate/chain free (in the centre), and a wine epicentre.  But we just came based on the premise that after ten days on the Pacific we wanted to guarantee ourselves some sunshine.  Healdsburg has delivered big time.

We are staying at a little place ten minutes walk from the town square called the Modern Cottages.  They are situated in a gated compound of about an acre with pretty gardens, a pool, and each self contained cottage with its own deck.  We are in the smallest and least expensive, but at 400 square feet with a peaked roof and small porch it feels roomy and comfortable.  It’s called the Charles (each cottage is named after a renowned 20^th century designer) and includes a few authentic pieces including, in ours, two Eames plywood chairs along with an Eames coffee table (not alas their surfboard table, the be all and end all of coffee tables), a George Nelson bench—a piece I’ve always coveted, and a Bertoia chair.  Our deck faces west, perfect under the shade of two fruit trees in the afternoon sun, by a trickling "sculptural" fountain and just beyond the compound lies a steelhead stream with a shoreline path, ideal for the pooch.

Entrance to the Charles, Healdsburg Modern Cottages

Shadows of leaves shade Mr. T in the new den

We spent about two hours prowling around the antique and antiquey shops, galleries, and myriad wine tasting bars, but most of it was a tad twee.  $6 for the Sunday NYT, that was a score though.  I took a swim as a late afternoon wake-up, but the air temperature pool was like soup.

fountain in the garden

An early dinner tonight at BarnDiva, silly name I know, but an interesting reinvented barn space, the owners of which also run a gallery next door and the Cottages.  I think overpriced for what it was (even the SF couple next to us said so much) but lovely.  I started with an arugula salad with strawberries which had been compressed with lemon verbena, SS two delectable scallops caramelized with a basil oil puree and  a  corn/fruit salsa.  For mains SS had a homemade fromage blanc pasta, I had a halibut with fava beans on a tomato puree with roasted garlic and dotted with baby blooms from the bachelor buttons in the garden.  I passed on dessert but SS had a warm peach crumble with vanilla ice cream.  Pooch had dehydrated raw, baby carrots and rice cake.  Yum!

seared scallops etc.

halibut (note tiny radish on top; I felt like I'd committed infanticide)

dessert--wait a second, I want to get a picture of that!

Sideways: Many wonderful scenes, TH Church plays the wine naïf perfectly ("tastes good to me" as well as the long tasting sequence followed by PG asking "Are you chewing gum?"), Paul Giamatti is superbly over-important (She: What’s your novel called? He: The Day after Yesterday She: So, Today? He: grimace...)  But ultimately, like so many Hollywood movies, people actually offering benefits to society (PG as a teacher, Morgan Freeman in TBList as a mechanic, on  an endless list) are seen as lives unfulfilled.  Why is it that someone in a Hollywood movie can’t be good at something that serves a benefit to others and still be satisfied doing it?  Heck, the NYT today ran a cover story on a maitre'd--it's possible!  Mark Zuckerberg’s comment, post-Social Network, that the writer/director/producers couldn’t wrap their head around the “idea that someone might build something because they like building things” as opposed to celebrity, status or money is well put and really at the nub of what I call the Hollywood hoodwink.  Mike Rowe, host of Discovery’s Dirty Jobs, has a great piece on this theme at TED talks; link here for ten minutes well worth your time.  

Charles and Ray Eames did many creative and socially relevant projects in their lives--although neon lips on the mantelpiece wasn't among them...

Easy Living

Saturday, August 20, 2011: Wake up, eat, walk, eat, walk, eat, watch a movie.  Some life.  The “poor man’s sentinel” gave us an important warning first thing though: Donkeys in the adjacent field had wandered over the hill and were leaning against the wire fence outside the west deck hopeful for, I guess, an apple or carrot.  It was as you can imagine a virtual tsunami alarm. (NB: They returned at 8:25 p.m. but the Toninator was snoring, too relaxed to notice.  Some "alarm dog"!)

Who farms donkeys?

It was another cool Pacific air fog hanging low morning.  We drove into Point Arena, about nine miles south, stopping first at the lighthouse.  It was $7.50 per to go in, with nothing to see but fog, so instead we walked the perimeter.  Mr. T was in heaven, running free in the pasture, inquisitive at the cliff edges, doing spins in the tall grasses.  The Stornetta Public Lands, about 1,000 acres, surround the lighthouse area.  They were sold from the original family owners to the state in 2004.  Great walking.

the "sardines" are sea lions; easy living indeed!

trees at Point Arena lighthouse; which way do you think the wind blows?

rocks at Point Arena

Enough with the rocks already!

For lunch we went into Point Arena proper.  It’s the smallest of the towns along the Mendocino coast but it has a lot: A movie theatre with “big screen” movies, restaurants, a gas station with service (we paid $4.15 a gallon, still cheaper than BC), an actual honest to God bakery run by a baker, a drug store (had one of those swivel racks selling $40 watches, when's the last time you've seen that in a drugstore?), and of course a bar (but with live music of all things).  It had the ring of authenticity you hope for in small town America but rarely run across.  We had a great lunch (fresh paninis and carrot juice) then went across the street to the bakery where we proceeded to pay more for sweets than the lunch tab.  

unidentified flora

After Point Arena we went back home, unpacked our finds, then down to Irish Beach for a long walk in the surf.  There was more of the usual, sticks, digs, “tag” with the waves, rolls in the dunes.  If this isn’t heaven what is?  At home SS cooked up the remainder of our groceries: Fresh corn on the cob, a frittata, tiny baby potatoes in butter and rosemary, and salad with the last of our spectacular heirloom tomatoes.  It never went above 66 today, we have had none of that luxurious heat we had inland, and the fog comes and goes as if John Carpenter had sent it in himself (The Fog is, after all, what torments a northern California fishing town...).  Tomorrow inland.

"For rent" in Point Arena.  Not so easy living...

Easy Living is a movie that, unfortunately, Preston Sturges didn’t direct, just wrote, but Jean Arthur is still hilarious and the theme that all sorts of good things can come out of nowhere has got to be somehow somewhere penetrating the tiny little brain of Mr. T as he lives through a canine fantasy of epic proportions.

On the Beach

Irish on Irish Beach

Friday, August 19, 2011: We are staying in a community, if you could call it that, called Irish Beach (which is essentially about three dozen homes with nary a service for miles).  There is access to a private beach, which runs for miles, so that’s where we spent our morning.  It was mild but foggy, a grey mist rolling in off the Pacific; hard to believe it’s August.  Our walk, replete with many “good digs” and sticks in the surf and sniffs amongst the kelp cheered up the dog who was, yesterday, after a “car day” a little Pokemon.

good digs (or, as Pop says, diggy dig digs)

Neither of us has ever been to an “Irish” beach, although we’ve both been to English and Welsh beaches.  I think it’s safe to say that this morning, given the mist and the roar of the “North Sea” it would have been a safe bet to put Rosy Ryan Shaughnessy riding horseback with her English officer in a remake of Ryan’s Daughter (god forbid) and no viewer would have been the wiser.

rock with flora

this property is condemned

It's "yes Drill Sergeant"  Do you hear me?

Late in the morning we drove the half hour or so into Mendocino.  It was a little less twee and refined than, say, Cannon Beach.  Not that we were expecting one or the other, but Murder She Wrote had led us to believe in something probably a little different than an actual functioning town.  There was a farmer’s market with some great produce, albeit pricey (two peaches, $3).  We had lunch in the pub which was reconfigured from a rectory dating to 1860-something, afterward strolled around town where chatty locals gave us an earful on CA politics (taxes, grow ops and economic opportunity--sounds like home), then drove down to Big River, a state park just south of town.  We had a pleasant walk along the river, watching kayakers and a large group remember Matt Coleman, a local murdered a few days ago while doing land management.

Big River State Park

member of the grass family

member of the aster family

After that, as it was getting on, we returned home.  Although a “local” day we still put 100 kms on the car.  It certainly ain’t a locavore locale.  SS made BBQ burgers with a very good salad and we watched a DVD.  The mist never burnt off today and although it had warmed nicely by seven it was getting chilly.  We did some much needed laundry (shameless shill: I accidentally washed and, yes, dried my glasses, which came out Cascade glass clean.  Thank you Porsche for a product much more substantial than my flashy IC Berlins.)

On the Beach: SS tells an anecdote where Ava Gardner, when asked about what she thought of Melbourne, the location, said she couldn’t have thought of a better spot for a movie about the end of the world.  This is lore not truth, a journalist’s concoction, but clever nevertheless (to make something up with enough legs to last for decades).  Witness Anthony Lane’s recent New Yorker story on how Murdoch would rather print falsity and take the sales with an apology afterward, than steer the high road.  Truth, fiction, science fiction, never could get through OtB, despite Ava’s glowing facade.  But it has a great ring to it, and we are, essentially, on the beach, literally and figuratively.

In The Majestic East of Eden during the Summer of '42 lies Cabot Cove where Same Time Next Year The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming

Out of Sight

Morning sun breaks over the beach near Brookings, Oregon

Thursday (so I'm told), August 18, 2011: A glorious morning dawned, as the hymn goes, but we were a bit out of joint.  SS was kept awake by the neighbouring room, who were awake until two, as well as the tsunami siren going off in the middle of the night (how he knew it was, specifically, a tsunami siren remains a mystery).  I too felt groggy, so our early start was delayed, but we were on the road by eight.  It was a 500 plus km day...

the Josephine Grant McGreery Grove on the Redwood Hwy

The road swept by archetypal seaside sights, rocks, dunes, miles of beach (the “wild river” portion of the OR coast, the southernmost area, was beyond impressive) into Brookings, where the glorious weather faded, and, as we crossed the state border, turned gloomy.  Gas went up from $3.67 a gallon in OR to $3.99 in CA—but liquor outlets abounded, I suppose because of CA tax.  At one point the car thermometer hit 57 degrees and we turned on the heat (I was, after all, in flip flops.  It’s August!).  The 101 in Oregon, a “scenic byway” turns into the Redwood Highway in northern California, but initially, as we followed the Smith River towards Klamath, it was a tad dull.  How soon that changed.

put on the Andreas Vollenweider

South of Klamath is the Redwood National Park.  The weather wasn’t perfect but the sights didn’t suffer.  Despite the ocean fog, floating through the giant redwoods, the magnificent trees were Ansel Adams impressive.  It was hard not to multiply the age of the trees—assuming the average tree was older than 800 years—as a measure of value.  We wondered how many 800 year old structures have retained their function without disrepair?  Discuss.  We pulled over a few times to let the less impressed pass by.  Various amusing and sometimes sad commercial enterprises dotted the landscape, but it was hard to see anything as impressive or majestic as, simply, the trees.

The highway wound through forest, farms, lagoons and towns until we reached the first major development, Eureka.  To that I can only say, no, I have not found it; it wasn’t. 

South of Eureka turned heavenly.  It was sun drenched and clear, for me scorching (we hit 79 at one point), the road through redwood forests and townships.  A byway along the old Highway 101, called The Avenue of Redwoods, left us reeling.  But we were also short on gas—and when I asked in a town where the nearest station was, we had to backtrack 10 miles (as opposed to go forward 20).  That cut our side trip in half.  We had lunch outdoors at a general store in a tiny spot called Del Rio, then back onto the freeway.  Which, in the American spirit of brilliant engineering never ceased to amaze me—i.e., how much of 101 was freeway,actual  65 mph two lane freeway.  That all changed as we took the Highway 1 cutoff to the coast.

Arbor Day Grove, Avenue of the Giants, old Hwy 101

two trees from a tree

making his mark

For the first 25 miles off 101 the coast connector snakes up a mountain and down the other side, a series of harrowing switchbacks with nary an inch of shoulder to spare.  Most corners were 15 mph and some were 10 mph—speeds which didn’t afford an ounce of “cheating.”  It made the gravel hairpins on Harris Rd on Saturna (recently voted one of the ten worst roads in BC) look like cake.  The temperature dropped as we approached the Pacific and once again mist set in.  But the narrow roads with steep drops and brutal curves continued.  The patchy fog might have been a godsend, for in those breaks where it was clear the drive became a little beyond the pale.

mists near Mendocino

We stopped in Fort Bragg for groceries, where BC Hothouse peppers were $4.99 a pound, CA field peppers 99 cents.  From FB about ten minutes south to Mendocino, then another thirty or so to Irish Beach.  So a major drive, but most of it without much traffic and stupendous weather.  We have an actual home for this leg of the trip.  There is a large yard, four decks, a hot tub, two bedrooms, two baths, W&D, kitchen with all the mod cons, HDTV with 200 plus Dish stations, and a stupendous view into the Medocino Headlands.  There is also the cool Pacific breeze and no neighbours up until two.  SS cooked up a wonderful ravioli with pesto and fresh greens with heirloom tomatoes.  We toasted with a bottle of Gosset (I am trying to make sure I don’t go the route of J M Keynes, whose only regret in life was that he didn’t drink enough champagne.)  The dog, a little disoriented at all these various dens, is hard pressed to figure our agenda.  That will all change tomorrow on the beach I’m sure.

good sniffs

how interesting, tell me more

Out of Sight: The best Elmore Leonard film adaptation?  It gets my vote.  Has none of the “look at us perform” ingness of the Get Shortys and their ilk.  And in the DVD extra material it turns out J-Lo was actually in a trunk initially for the in a car trunk scene.  Who knew she would go on to Monster in Law, Gigli and a host of other so-memorable films I’m hard pressed to remember any others?  George Clooney certainly didn’t falter, nor Soderbergh.  Yet it’s not either of their greatest movies by a very long shot.  That said, it’s certainly not boring and hugely approachable, recommendable even, although, like the steep drops of Hwy 1 to the roaring surf, and the hairpin turns, not to everyone’s taste I guess.