To Mendocino

Tuesday brought a pleasant looking day. We drove down highway 199 toward the California Coast. The road, know as “Cave Road” passes Oregon Caves National Monument. Other than the caves the road is pretty ugly until we reached the California border. We climbed to over 2,000 feet and ran into snow. Since the sun was shinning, it was beautiful. There was close to a foot of snow on the ground.

The road wound down to the coast at Crescent City. We stopped at the “Tree of Mystery” just south of Crescent City. Susan and Tasha especially found the walking trail very interesting. The rest of the trip took us through groves of old growth redwoods.

We reached the Stanford Inn in Mendocino late in the afternoon. This Inn is a classy place – and it even allows dogs. In California dog cannot be in the interior of restaurants. The Stanford Inn has gotten around this by putting tables in the lobby near the restaurant and dogs can sit with their owners as they eat. The food was good even though it was all vegetarian. Our room had a “real” fireplace which we enjoyed. We also had a great view from our balcony.

We stayed two nights in Mendocino, so we had time to let Tasha run on a beach, walk the Mendocino Headlands, and around the village of Mendocino. In the afternoon we drove down to the Anderson Valley and visited Roeder Estates. We ended up with champagne to bring home. We walked the grounds of the Stanford Inn, which has horses and llamas. It truly was a beautiful place, we will stay there again.