the writing and photography of Neil Kramer

Tag: redwoods

Mendocino to Eureka

 Mendocino Botanical Gardens —

The only botanical gardens in America looking over the ocean.

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Glass Beach, Fort Bragg —

We heard about this famed Glass Beach in Fort Bragg.  Supposedly, years ago, residents used to throw their bottles and glassware into the ocean.  Mother Nature fought back and spit the glass back onto the beach, but the glass was now chiseled like stones. 

We went out searching for this beach, visualizing sparkling glass stones covering a large area.  But we could not find it anywhere.  We couldn’t find any signs pointing us in the right direction.  Finally, we found a sunken area between two hills that had some glass piece strewn around. 

“Is this it?” I asked.

“It must be,” said Sophia.  “It’s not very impressive.”

We bent down and examined the historic glass pieces.

“Well I guess it is sort of interesting.  Maybe collectors took the rest of the glass.”

Then we noticed that there were a group of tourists in the distance combing over another area of the beach.  We were not on “Glass Beach.”  We were simply admiring the broken pieces of glass of a Budweiser bottle that some drunken idiot must have broken last night.

Frankly, the real Glass Beach wasn’t any better. 

Here are some of the “real” glass stones, and the nice view.

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Boat Junk Yard, Fort Bragg —

So ugly it was beautiful.

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“Avenue of the Giants” —

We took tons of the typical touristy shots.

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Sophia’s idea for a photo, not mine —

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And thank you again for all your birthday greetings!

Planning Our Road Trip

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Sophia’s list of exciting things to do on our road trip to Portland:

Dune buggies in Florence, Oregon
Driving through Giant Redwoods
Jet boating on Rouge River
Mud Bath in Calistoga
“Safari West” in Santa Rosa
Hiking Near Pacific

Neil’s list of exciting things to do on our road trip to Portland:

Stopping at Los Bagels in the tiny town of Arcata, California, voted the best bagels outside of New York City.

Tentative plans:

Day 1 and 2 (next Saturday) — Santa Rosa/Napa

Day 3 – Mendocino

Day 4 – Eureka/Redwoods

Day 5 – More Redwoods, Gold Beach, Oregon

Day 6 – Florence/Yachats, Oregon

Day 7 – Portland

Any suggestions, like what do we do if it rains all the time?

Our Upcoming Drive to Portand

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First up, thanks for all those birthday greetings for Sophia.   She was tickled pink.   Yesterday, we saw a concert by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band from New Orleans.  We ate French crepes in the morning and Indian Tandoori at night. 

But there was ONE little problem.  Remember, yesterday, I wrote a whole post about how important it was to make an elaborate toast for the birthday girl.  And how important it was to make this toast with some sort of alcoholic drink.   So, I waited all day to make this toast until we were at dinner, not realizing that I made reservations at a Halal Indian Restaurant, which means they were Muslim and didn’t have alcohol!   Luckily Danny plied us with champagne when we stopped over at his house after dinner.  To top it all, he baked a birthday cake for Sophia!

What we are looking forward to during our upcoming road trip to Portland to meet some bloggers:

Neil:  Tillamook Cheese Tour

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Sophia:  The Redwoods —

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(thanks, Psychomom!)

 

A Year Ago on Citizen of the Month:  Brokeback Birthday

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