Week 37 : Westport To Dutchman's Flat

Amy and I set out from Westport knowing that the week ahead was going to be pivotal. During the last twelve months of our virtual journey there has been lots to virtually see. The detailed Google Earth photos have been brim-full of information : villages, towns, shops, and places of interest of all kinds. This week the Google Earth photos are brim-full of ... trees. Big trees and small trees and even more big trees. Mile after green mile of them. Don't get me wrong, they're lovely. Kind of majestic. Unchanging. Grand .......... (sorry I must have dozed off there) .... and just a tad boring.

"This week", I announced to Amy as we walked out of Westport, "we are making for Dutchman's Flat". She didn't ask me about our destination which was a good thing because I knew nothing about it. As far as I could gather it was nothing more than a couple of buildings in a clearing surrounded by ... trees. But we had the sea with us for the first part of the week and when you walk in sight of the coast there is always something to lift your spirits.

A few hours north of Westport we got to Wages Creek and went in search of something to lift our spirits. We found a campsite and a beach and, guess what, some trees. " Wages Creek Beach in Mendocino County, California is a really good place to spend some time" says a strange little website called Goingoutside.com. "Wages Creek Beach is a relaxing place and it sure is a nice beach. Among the things you can do near Wages Creek Beach are paddling, fishing, swimming, and boating, so there's no way to get bored". They certainly got most of that right although they forgot you could also throw pebbles into the water. And count trees. Anything but bored, Amy and I forced ourselves ever northwards.

Soon we reached Westport - Union Landing State Beach. There were fine coastal sunsets, lots of fish ... and trees. The main species of fish which can be caught around here are Day Smelt and Night Smelt. As you might imagine, the Day Smelt spawn during the day and the Night Smelt spawn at night. "Isn't that fascinating", I said to Amy, but she was otherwise engaged, chasing some fish through the surf.

After all that excitement, Amy and I settled into day after day of walking and trees. At times, the road left the coast and headed into the hills, but eventually it came back again. And then one day it didn't. We were about to leave the sea behind and cut inland. We were at the start of the Lost Coast.

I avoided telling Amy that we were at the start of the Lost Coast : she would only make silly jokes about how we had found it again. Instead we walked a few hundred metres away from the main road so that we could get a taste of, what is, one of the last coastal wildernesses in California. The 40 mile stretch of coast between Middle Rock in the south and Eureka in the north is so craggy and wild the normally robust Highway 1 has to skulk inland. It would have been adventurous and challenging to trek up the coast, but over recent months Amy and I had become addicted to Highway 1 and we were determined to follow it to its end.

So we headed inland. Into the trees. For a couple of days we saw nothing other than trees. I misquoted Ben Jonson to Amy : "I think that I will never see, anything other than a bloody tree". By the end of the week we reached Dutchman's Flat - or at least I think we did. There was a brief clearing in the forest, a barn, a house. It wasn't flat and there were no Dutchmen around. But for a precious few square yards there were no trees.

Week 36 : Fort Bragg to Westport

I'd like to see the Skunk before we leave", I said to Amy as we prepared to head north out of Fort Bragg, California. She looked slightly surprised, but nevertheless grateful. She was used to a hefty tug on the leash whenever she tried to investigate the local wildlife. She was used to being dragged past squirrels and hoisted over dormant door-mice. Now here was her guide, philosopher, feeder and owner actually suggesting they go in search of a local critter. She had never eaten skunk and she tried to imagine what it might taste like. Her train of thought was interrupted by a great hiss of escaping steam. Her train of thought was interrupted by a train of iron and steel.

The California Western Railroad (a.k.a. The Skunk Train), like almost everything on this part of the Californian coast, was a child of the booming nineteenth century logging industry. It was built in 1885 to move the massive redwood logs to the Mendocino Coast sawmills from the rugged back country. Steam passenger services were started in 1904 but discontinued in 1925. During the latter half of the twentieth century its decline matched the decline of the logging industry. Until the 1960s it was operated as a division of the Fort Bragg Logging Mill but was later taken over by the Arizona-based Kyle Railways. By the 1990s, the logging days were in the past and the main purpose of the 40 mile line was as a tourist attraction, In August 1996, a group comprising entirely of local Mendocino Coast investors took over the railway and it has been thriving ever since.

I explained all this to Amy who didn't seem particularly interested. Indeed, when a train steamed into the depot and caught her off her guard, she launched a vicious attack on it and we had to scurry away and go in search of a more gentle and serene location. We followed the signposts and headed for what has been described as one of the most unique beaches in the world - Glass Beach. The story of the beach is interesting, almost inspirational, and therefore I didn't need much prompting to explain it to my dog (which was fortunate because I didn't get much prompting). Beginning in 1949, the area around Glass Beach became a public dump for the town of Fort Bragg. People dumped all kinds of refuse straight into the ocean, including old cars, and their household garbage, which of course included lots of glass. By the early sixties, some attempts were made to control what was dumped, and dumping of any toxic items was banned. Finally in 1967, the North Coast Water Quality Board established a new dump away from the ocean. Now, some 40 years later, Mother Nature has reclaimed the beach. Years of pounding wave action have deposited tons of polished glass onto the beach. There were quite a few tourists around taking photographs of the shining glass pebbles and Amy and I joined in the game. You had to be a bit selective with your field of focus in order to avoid the bits of old car tyres which were also in the habit of being washed up. But the beach is a fine place and a monument to natural recycling. Amy did her bit for the recycling movement by appearing by my side with what looked like a bit of dead seal in her mouth. We hurried on.

Later that same day we waded across Pudding Creek on the seaward side of the recently rebuilt trestle bridge which carries the old Mackerricher State Park road over the estuary. Our old friend Highway 1 was a little to the east but I had decided to stick to the coast as far as possible this week. For the next few days we would be travelling the length of Mackerricher State Park which, Amy was pleased to note, was one of the few dog-friendly State Parks in California. As we walked over the rocky headlands and across the numerous sandy coves, Amy was free to wander - as long as she kept within the legally required limit of a six foot leash. If the truth be told, at one stage, as we approached Lake Cleone, her leash extended to about six and a half feet for a few minutes and we spent the rest of the afternoon hiding behind bushes and living in dread of Governor Schwarzenegger swooping down on us in an helicopter gunship. The northern part of the Park is given over to the less than appropriately named Ten Mile Beach and Ten Mile Dunes. In fact they are seven miles in length from end to end : their name comes from the Ten Mile River which can be found at their northern end. The name of the river comes from the fact that it is ten miles north of the Noyo River which - quite appropriately this time - is ten miles to the south. As usual I explained all this to Amy and, as usual, she preferred to sniff things.

We could have crossed the river and kept our feet and paws dry if we had tracked about half a mile inland and crossed over the bridge that carries Highway 1 north. But Amy knew better and decided to risk wading across what she assumed was a shallow little stream : the result was that we got soaked and when we dripped and squelched into the tiny settlement of Seaside Creek we were a sorry site. The weather was kind, however, and we lay on the white sandy beach until we were dry. The sea and the land, nature and mankind all seemed to be in harmony on this delightful bit of coastline. I lectured Amy about this as we walked north, making several very valid points about love and universal friendship, harmony and mutual dependence. As the lecture drew to a close we approached a marble memorial stone which had been set adjacent to the road a few miles out of Seaside Creek. It celebrated the life of one Randy Fry, an enthusiastic diver and fisherman who died a few hundred yards west of this spot in August 2004. He was eaten by a Great White Shark!


We kept to the main highway as we travelled north and were eventually delivered to the beauty and tranquility of the Pacific Star Winery. Wine barrels line the cliff tops, maturing casks of glorious wine are stored in sea caves within the sound of breaking surf. The tasting rooms are open almost every day of the year and you can sample up to ten different wines - all for free. There are even picnic tables available so you can drink your wine, enjoy a picnic and watch the whales swim by. This really is a little bit of paradise on the Pacific coast. Amy behaved herself and sat quietly and watched the sun set over the Pacific. I just sat quietly and got slowly pickled. If you are ever travelling through Northern California it is worth stopping off at the Winery. If you are not, if you are just driving to work on the A616 through Keighley, it is worth making a detour. We spent the night at the charming Howard Creek Ranch Inn, which was remarkable both for its old world charm and for the fact that dogs were welcome guests.

Our week came to an end in the little village of Westport. A hundred years ago when lumber was king it had a population of over 20,000, now it is home to little more than 230 souls. It's a pleasant enough spot, but - as I suggested to Amy - one could easily get bored with so little to occupy yourself with. However she had spotted a poster advertising the village's famed annual chicken barbeque. She was smitten. If paradise for me had been that glorious winery a few miles down the road, paradise to Amy was a chicken barbeque. As our week came to an end we were searching the lists in Real Estate offices looking for a property midway between village and winery.

Week 35 : Albion To Fort Bragg

Checking the map soon after Amy and I left the town of Albion, and noting that my next destination was likely to be the City of Fort Bragg, I wondered what was awaiting my faithful dog and myself. The name conjured up images of a large military camp, but whether this was fact or something out of an old episode of Sargent Bilko I couldn't decide. As we walked up the rugged and almost deserted North Californian coast I had difficulty envisaging giant runways, endless huts and all the other paraphernalia of a military encampment. As it turned out, I was right - but that discovery was seven days away.

As Amy and I walked through southern Mendocino County our constant companions were the giant redwood trees that give their name to this stretch of the California coast. A mature Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) ranges in height from 30 to 112 m (100 to 367 ft) and the diameter of the trunk measures up to 7.5 m (25 ft). The life span of the coast redwood is believed to be 2,500 years, but, as I explained to Amy, nobody is quite sure as they have managed to outlive anyone attempting to study them. Amy showed all her usual interest in my occasional road-side lectures, clearly illustrating how she often is mistaken for a dumb animal. "Coast Redwoods have the ability to sprout from the root-crown following death of the main stem", I continued. "So have I", her look seemed to say. "It is tolerant of flooding and its bark is resistant to fire", I continued reading from my handout from the Mendocino Redwood Company. "The distribution of the Coast Redwood currently totals approximately 1.74 million acres", I announced as we walked in the shade of these magnificent trees. "Over 350,000 of these acres (550 square miles) are in publicly owned entities such as state and national parks and other public preserves". Amy yawned as stopped to test the trees resistance to dog-pee. "The remaining acres of the redwood forests are owned by a variety of private entities, 1.2 million acres (1,875 square miles) owned by seven industrial timber companies, and the balance of 200,000 acres (310 square miles) owned by private non-industrial landowners". Amy seemed to come out of her lecture-induced stupor and for a moment I thought I had captured her attention with one interesting fact or another. But she has simply seen some critter or another running through the undergrowth.

By mid-week we had reached the small town of Mendocino. Whilst you might be forgiven for thinking this is the County Town it is not - it takes its name from the County rather than the other way around. It is home to just 824 people and was originally a small logging town called Meiggsville. With the decline of the logging industry in the first part of the twentieth century it fell into decline but eventually re-invented itself as an artists' colony and home to both a music and a film festival. As Amy and I walked the little streets that stretch out onto the headland which thrusts out into the Pacific Ocean, I realised that there was something familiar about the place. As I remarked to Amy, you felt as though you had been there before. It was only later, as I was reading a local guidebook whilst enjoying a pint of Newcastle Brown at Patterson's Pub, that I realised that this was where that never-ending TV series "Murder She Wrote" was filmed. I recalled endless days back in England when the TV set was turned on in the background in order to provide a little company when re-runs of the show would appear almost back-to-back. As far as I recall, the stories for all two hundred and odd episodes were the same, but the scenery was nice. And here Amy and I were - looking out at the same scenery. Any minute now, Angela Lansbury would walk around the corner and stop to give Amy a loving pat on the head. Any moment now. an antique Civil Way sword would be thrust into my back and the usual cast of characters would seek out my murderer. Finishing my beer quickly, we left town and headed north.

We headed north to more trees, more rocky coastal points and tree-lined gulches, more sandy bays and isolated lighthouses and we eventually arrived at what, in these parts, is something spectacularly different - another road. It had been getting on for two weeks since we had seen a decent road other than the Shoreline Highway which had been our second home for months. There were little streets here and there darting to the left and right, but none of these were a proper, grown-up road - a road which actually took you somewhere different to the relentless northern quest of the Shoreline Highway. The road in question was the Fort Bragg - Willits Road (California State Route 20). As we walked up the Shoreline Highway we were passing the western end of the road. If we chose to abandon the coast and follow it east we would finish up in Emigrant Gap, Nevada, within spitting distance of Lake Tahoe and Reno. Both Amy and I agreed to resist the temptation to head east. Before taking that momentous change in direction we has another two States to see, not to mention Fort Bragg.

We headed into Fort Bragg the following day, and quickly we discovered that this was not the military base that we expected. There is a massive US Military Base at Fort Bragg, but that is Fort Bragg North Carolina. The one link between the two is that they were both named after Confederate Army General Braxton Bragg. But Fort Bragg in California had closed down by the 1870s leaving only the name and a thriving saw-mill and logging port behind. And now, of course, most of the logging industry is gone as well and Fort Bragg is building a new identity as a tourist town. It had been a long week and Amy and I were looking forward to a few days' rest and relaxation. Fort Bragg seemed like a good spot. Amy was particularly keen as it was one of those wonderful American "dog-friendly" towns. So we booked into a small dog-friendly hotel and settled down to discover what delights were on offer.

Week 34 : Manchester To Albion

Amy and I left the small township of Manchester behind us and set forth in search of Albion". I realise that this sounds like the opening sentence of some early Victorian social reformers' account of his quest for the soul of the nation, but bear with me. The Manchester in question is the small township of Manchester in Mendocino County, California. Albion is a town some 25 miles further north up the coast. And Amy is my six year old soft-coated wheaten terrier. Together we are 34 weeks into a five and a half year virtual walk from Los Angeles to New York. Together we are sampling some of the delights of rural America without leaving the discomfort of our own cold, grey home.

One of the things about walking along this stretch of the Northern California coast is that there aren't many choices to make. There is only one decent road - Highway 1 - which heads north in one direction and south in the other. As long as you keep the sea to your left you can't go far wrong. It can get a bit boring at times but there is always something interesting to distract your attention.

Take, for example, the proceedings of the Irish Beach Architectural Design Committee. Irish Beach is a "second home and rental development" located about four miles north of Manchester (remember, this is Manchester California, we're not talking about Salford here). Such developments are springing up all over coastal California as city-dwellers go in search of idyllic country retreats. Government planning laws in the States are nothing like as strict as they are in the UK, but this does not mean that you can build what you want. In place of the Local Planning Department sits the Architectural Design Committees - collections of local citizens who decide what you can build, where you can build it, and - in some cases - what colour you can paint your front door. So the next time you get fed up with your local bureaucracy, have a read of the Committee Minutes and the extended discussions about the design, size and location of the sign outside the office of William Moore and be thankful that you are not a resident of this particular piece of the Land Of The Free.

A few miles further north is the Inn At Victorian Gardens, a very select little establishment which caters for the type of guest who likes good food, fine wines, tasteful furniture, spectacular coastal views and a generous dollop of American eccentricity. If you have a few minutes to spare, take a look at their website and, in particular, the Flash Presentation. It's a mixture of soft-focus, grainy art-photos and verse. For example, describing the overall ethos of the Inn, the poem states : "Time is taken / from the hands of an antique clock / and shaken out like fine linen / to remove its kinks". By the time you have read it all you are not sure whether it is rather good or just plain tacky. Fearing that she may have been "shaken out like fine linen", Amy was not keen to stay, she we kept on walking.

The next little town we came to was a small town of some 200 inhabitants and the wonderful name of Elk. Originally it had been called Greenwood, but then someone discovered another place with the same name somewhere else in the State, so they changed the name to Elk. Elk was a lumber town, its fortunes were built on the destruction of the great Redwood forests to the east of the coastal strip. The timber was cut at the steam-driven sawmill in Elk and then shipped out from the wharf. When the redwood ran out, Elk went into decline and by the 1930s had become a ghost town. It only began to slowly come back to life in the 1960s and 70s when this part of the coast was beginning to open itself up to recreational use. Now it has a generous collection of small hotels, inns and - for some unknown reason - massage parlours.

Our final destination for the week - the small town of Albion - was also a lumber town. The town was founded in 1853 when a retired English sea captain, William Richardson, built a saw mill there, the first saw mill on the Redwood Coast. Like most of its neighbours, the town has now lost its timber trade, but a lasting reminder to the power of wood in this part of California can be found in the wonderful wooden bridge that carries the coast highway over the Albion River. The bridge was built in 1944 when steel and concrete were in short supply. It is the last remaining wooden bridge on the coastal highway and has now become a tourist destination in its own right.

Week 33 : Iversen Point To Manchester

"It's a big place, America", I said to Amy as we walked up Highway 1 just north of Iversen Point. She ignored me. You will have probably gathered by now that Amy ignores me a lot of the time. You probably are wondering why I keep trying to engage her in conversation. Well let me tell you, when you are nine months into a five and a half year walk across the American continent with only a soft-coated wheaten terrier for company, you would try and make conversation with her.

Returning to the point I was trying to make, I mused - somewhat rhetorically I must admit - "how do they come up with names for all the places?" I said this as we walked passed Schooner Gulch. There is a State Beach here and Amy soon drew my attention to a notice which provided an answer to my question. It is said that Schooner Gulch got its name from a story in which a schooner was sited, one evening, stranded on the beach in the mouth of the gulch, yet in the morning showed no evidence of being there. "Spooky", I said to Amy. She continued to play dumb.

"OK, clever-clogs", I said as we passed Galloway Creek, "what about this place?" She found another notice which proclaimed that one John Galloway was the first recorded occupant of the area. John was born in Scotland and occupied an area of Schooner Gulch between 1866 and 1868, which was largely used as a milling operation for timber.

A little further up the road we came across a signpost pointing to Bowling Ball Beach. There were no handy noticeboards here, so I challenged her yet again. This time she pulled me down to the beach. When I saw the large round boulders lined up along the line of breaking surf I knew that she had won yet again.

As we continued to walk north I reflected on the power of information. How could Amy know the answer to all these questions. We reached the Rollerville Cafe just south of the "city" of Point Arena. Hungry and thirsty, I tried to enter. Amy drew me away (she can have a powerful pull on a leash). Later I tried Googling the Rollerville Cafe but the only hit I got was for an Environmental Health Report which listed a number of critical food and hygiene citations. "Proper methods to sanitize utensils, equipment, or work surfaces are not being followed", I read. And Amy somehow know about this. Spooky.

It was an odd day. It felt as if there was something in the air. I was relieved to get to Point Arena for a rest. The trouble was, armed with our access to the Environmental Health website, it was difficult to find any place to eat, drink and sleep which was free from criticism. "Too much information", I said to Amy, "can be a dangerous thing"

Point Arena is a strange little place. With a population of under 500 it is one of the smallest incorporated cities in the State of California. Small it may be, but it has a certain style about it. For example, the city has a Poet Laureate, one Fionna Perkins. She writes poems to mark important local occasions. Her are a couple of verses from her latest offering:

A DAY TO REMEMBER

What if global warming
brings our Pacific Ocean
washing new shores halfway
up Main Street hill, no
longer where it is now out
at the Cove? People with
good credentials are making
such predictions.

Point Arena's response: Tut!
Tut! Henny Penny, the sky’s
not falling; it just has a
hole in it, and what can we
do to help with the patching?

"You see what I mean about something in the air or perhaps in the water" I say to Amy. Later I discovered what that something might be. The Wikipedia article on Point Arena states "Point Arena is associated with the hippy and subsequent counterculture groups. Its reported economy is largely geared toward servicing the summertime tourist industry, while a large part of Point Arena's non-tax-paying economy is based on the cultivation and exportation of marijuana.[citation needed]". Always willing to help a friend in need I went in search of a citation. The best I could find was an extract from the City Council minutes which report on how one city employee had found a fully functioning marijuana plot on the city council parking lot. Crazy place, crazy people.

Perhaps there was something in the air because I was suddenly gripped by the desire to wander. For weeks now Amy and I had been heading north in a straight line, sticking to the main highway, oblivious of all tempting side roads and paths. "Let's go to Arena Cove and then to the Lighthouse", I said a little too loudly. Amy didn't seem to object and therefore we struck out for the coast.

Arena Cove is a pretty little place with a wooden pier and some fishing boats. According to the Muncipal Pier website, you can fish off the pier, launch a boat off the pier, sunbathe on the pier, go to the loo on the pier, park your car on the pier, watch birds from the pier ..... but under no circumstances can you walk a dog on the pier. Amy and I struck a defiant blow for personal freedom by walking along the pier. And then we run away quickly before anyone spotted us. A few hundred yards north of the cove we sat on the beach and looked out to sea. "Did you know", I said to Amy, "that this is the closest point on mainland America to the islands of Hawaii?" She was unimpressed. In fact she was asleep.

I decided that we should continue our wanderings by cutting across the sand dunes and scrub land in the direction of the lighthouse which stands on the coast a mile or so north of Arena Cove. The first Point Arena Lighthouse was constructed in 1870, but came to a sad end in 1906 when it was badly damaged by the great earthquake. The United States Lighthouse Service contracted with a San Francisco based company to build a new lighthouse which would withstand any future earthquakes and this began operation in 1908, nearly 18 months after the quake. It stands 115 feet tall, and features a 1st Order Fresnel Lens, over six feet in diameter and weighing more than six tons. The lighthouse continued in service until the 1970s when it was replaced by an automated aircraft-type beacon which had been installed on the balcony tower. The lighthouse building and the keepers' cottages were taken over by a non-profit making organisation - the Point Arena Lighthouse Keepers - which was dedicated to preserving the site and making it open to visitors. Today you can stay there, eat there, get married there and probably get buried there. It is a spectacular setting and well worth a detour from the main highway.

On leaving the lighthouse we cut east across the sands looking for a shortcut back to the main highway. We had to wade through water and hike through surprisingly tall sand dunes but eventually we made it back to Highway 1 - which for some reason here in the north is called South Highway 1 - on the outskirts of Manchester. Not the home of King Cotton, not the mighty city of Manchester in the UK. No, this is the town of Manchester in California. It's an incorporated town which means it has about four buildings. There is no night life and precious little day life. The fame of the town is down to one, single topiary shrub, which is a landmark and a major tourist attraction. People driving up and down the Highway stop their cars and take endless photographs of the bush. Amy decided to pay her own homage to it : following which we quickly headed out of town to find a place to hide.

Week 32 : Sea Ranch To Iversen Point

As Amy and I walked north from our unofficial overnight camping spot on Pebble Beach, we began to recognise the sheer scale of the Sea Ranch project. This massive private development extends for more than 10 miles along the North California coastline taking in some 3.500 acres of prime land. What was once rugged coastland has been tamed and tarmac’d. What was once wild is now Galleon’s Reach, Mariners Drive and Albatross Close. It was quite sad and we stepped out with renewed energy, anxious to rid ourselves of the fakery. But the advertising boards proclaimed “The Sea Ranch …. As Far As The Eye Can See” and they were not wrong. For mile after mile the carefully planned rises, closes, reaches and drives split off from Highway 1 like slightly malevolent tendrils. We weren’t rid of it until we crossed the Gualala River leaving Sonoma behind and entering Mendocino County.

Mendocino County is big : weighing in at some 3,510 square miles. The Guide Book says that it takes more than 3.5 hours to drive from one corner of the county to the other : it will take Amy and I a lot longer than that to walk up the picturesque Mendocino coast. More than half the of the county is owned by either national and multi-national timber companies or are State or Federally controlled forests which are also logged by the large timber companies. Over recent years Mendocino County has seen increasing battles between the natural resource extractors, developers and people who have come to the county to escape urban blight, density, crime and lack of natural open space.

Our introduction to this new County came as we crossed the Gualala River and entered the small town of the same name. According to the town website, some people call it gwa-LA-la, but the natives call it wa-LA-la. This comes from the Kashaya Pomo Indian phrase, "ah kha wa la lee" which means, "Where the water flows down". The town slogan is “Gualala … where you can fall asleep to the sound of the sea”. The promise seems to have struck a chord with migrating whales who often bask on the sand bluffs near the mouth of the Gualala River. Whales are bif business around here, there is a Whale Watch Inn and an annual Whale and Jazz Festival. Amy suggested it would make a suitable location for her to extend her dietary experiences but I persuaded her that eating whale steaks might get her run out of town.

Looking for a suitable alternative for dinner I checked out the listing of places to eat on the town website only to discover that all the restaurants and hotels seemed to only serve breakfast. Whether this is due to some ancient Pomo custom or to the fact that the website is incomplete we never discovered. We did discover however, just north of the town, the Bones Roadhouse. Amy said this sounded a very superior kind of place and she settled down to Kielbasa sausage, BBQ chicken, marinated turkey breast, not forgetting their “lip-smackin’ sides”.

We were now in Redwood country, indeed, this bit of the coast is often known as the Redwood Coast. Confusingly the particular species of redwood (or sequoia sempervirens) found on the Redwood Coast is the Coast Redwood! The trees are famed for their mighty size and great beauty. They also have the very useful capacity of being resistant to decay and fairly resistant to fire as well. This natural resistance came in very useful during the fire that followed the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. P. H. Shaughnessy, Chief Engineer of the San Francisco Fire Department wrote:

"In the recent great fire of San Francisco, that began April 18th, 1906, we succeeded in finally stopping it in nearly all directions where the unburned buildings were almost entirely of frame construction and if the exterior finish of these buildings had not been of redwood lumber, I am satisfied that the area of the burned district would have been greatly extended”.

North of Gualala we entered a land of secluded bays, rocky headlands and small isolated communities. One such was Anchor Bay which is about midway between Gualala and Iversen Point. Like many small rural communities in America the history of the town is the history of one or two families. The history of such communities is also remarkably short and can be retold in the reminiscences of just a few generations. The Anchor Bay website explains about the history of the settlement in the following terms:

"Anchor Bay, as a name, was not used until about 1915", recalls Jim McNamee. "Young Dave Berry, Dave Berry's son, was fixing up the place. His father was getting old. He called it Anchor Bay. He put up the sign and the anchor which he hand carved. Berry bought the place from a man named Meagher. Berry came to Gualala from Fort Ross. He had a blacksmith shop in Gualala for quite a few years. Originally he came from Switzerland. Berry also had a blacksmith shop in the building which was the pottery in Anchor Bay. They had pottery, bricks, alot of things made out of clay, but it wasn't very good clay. It came from where the bulk of the Mar Vista buildings are now."

As we have discovered so many times so far on this brief trip of ours, one of the great strengths of the internet is to collect and preserve such memories. The virtual traveller who uses the web as his or her vehicle of discovery becomes a multi-dimensional traveller : travelling in both time and space. As I explained to Amy, as we wondered along the uncrowded highway, we had almost achieved the ancient dream of time-travel. She was not really interested. She was barking at a basking seal. She got quite a shock when the seal barked back.

We ended the week at Iversen Point. If that sounds like a big important place it is not. It’s a name on a map and little else other than some rocks, some surf and some redwood trees. “Get used to it”, I said to Amy, “we’ve a lot more of this to come before we see the city lights again”.

Week 31 : Fort Ross To The Sea Ranch

In the back of my mind I know that once I get to Seattle I will have about four years - at my current rate of progress - without site of the sea as I head across this vast country. Thus, for the time being, I like to keep the Pacific Ocean in view as I travel north. The sea acts as my guide. I can almost smell my way north - although this might be Amy's somewhat cavalier approach to personal cleanliness rather than the tangy taste of salt 'n sea. This bit of Northern California is cove-land. During the space of just one week we were to pass through Timber Cove, Stillwater Cove, Ocean Cove, Gerstle Cove, Stump Beach Cove, Fisk Mill Cove and Horseshoe Cove. Add to this a fair sprinkling of gulches and a pinch of points and you have our itinerary for the week.

At the first of our Coves we found the magnificent Timber Cove Inn with its dramatic location and slightly quirky design. You can take a virtual tour around the Inn on their website. You can also catch a glimpse of the local landmark which is a large carved totem pole which dominates the headland. If you read the reviews of the hotel it is clear it is a "love it or hate it" kind of place. Sadly, Amy and I didn't get the chance to tip the balance one way or another because it was too expensive for our resources and anyway they would not accept pets.

We had no better luck at the next Cove north. Stillwater Cove Regional Park looked suitably rustic. You can pitch your tent for nothing and pets are welcome. We could easily get around the rule that dogs had to be on leads less than six foot in length. The sticking point, however, was that dogs had to present rabies certificates. Amy flatly refused, pointing out that if she didn't demand a certificate off the park warden stating he didn't have AIDS, therefore why should he demand a rabies certificate off her. The result of all this was that once again we had to pitch our tent next to a bluff cove and hope that the wind didn't blow us into the sea.

The next day we entered Salt Point State Park and came face-to-face with the mighty trees which would become very much part of our journey through northern California over the coming months. As the terrain rises northeast of Highway One, coastal brush and grasslands blend into lush growths of bishop pine, Douglas, fir, madrone, tan oak, groves of second growth redwood. Amy - who likes trees - was in her seventh heaven. I simply stood back and reflected whether I would ever see a tree as lovely as a poem.

For the rest of the week, the road meandered north with the sea to the left and the forest to the right. You got the feeling that you were leaving civilisation behind, that you were heading into the wilderness. And then, at the end of the week, we came to The Sea Ranch. The Sea Ranch is "the ultimate in Northern California Coastal Living". It is a massive "second-home" community serving the people of San Francisco and other major urban centres. It has its own airport, championship golf course and award-winning architecture.

The houses are supposed to blend in with the landscape so that the development will "live lightly on the land". The overall plan incorporates a set of building guidelines that require homes to be designed and sited to blend all structures onto the natural setting and minimize the visual as well as physical impact upon the landscape. The result, I must say, reminded me of those concrete bunkers which were thrown up on the south coast of England during the second world war. They blended in with the natural environment - they had to do or get blown up. It's odd thinking of such things here on the isolated California coast where Film Directors, dot-com millionaires and investment bankers come to find escape. It was posh and in places it was pretty. But it wasn't real and neither Amy nor I felt any desire to sink roots and live lightly on the land here.