DAY 01 – Berkley to Mendacino

Daily: 186 Miles / 35.8 MPG
Total: 250 Miles / 35.8 MPG

It was strange to wake up in a house filled with furniture and all the stuff of day to day living, not to mention two cats. We lingered over coffee and a breakfast of spinach feta omlettes and buttered walnut wholewheat toast; the feast accompanied by a splendid view of San Francisco Bay, complete with the Golden Gate Bridge rising from the morning fog.

We stored a couple of boxes in Beth’s garage, repacked the car and by 10:15 we we truly off on the first day of our latest adventure.

The drive from Berkley up the East Bay is through an industrial wasteland of low ramshackle industrial buildings. The sights improved as we crossed the bridge over into Marin County; miles of rounded hills covered with parched golden grass dotted with stands of deep green live oaks. The hills are so impossibly steep that you can feel the geological pressure of the coastal range subducting under the continental plate pushing the rock towards the sky.

The sense of geological forces at play increased as we turned up Highway 1 toward the coast. Grassy slopes turned to rocky cliffs, grasslands morphed into redwood forests; bedrock thrust against towering truncks.

The road grew increasing twisty as the temperature dropped from a dry 90-degress to a humid 65 in less than ten miles.

We climded innumerous switchbacks with steep banks and no shoulder. At one point we saw hawks soaring at the same level as our car, so close we felt we could touch their wingtips, only to discover that they were hundreds of feet above the ground a we were traversing along a cliff edge. I would have preferred a few guardrails.

Both the scenery and the drive were breathtaking as we wound up the coast. We turned into Russian Gulch State Park and after driving off another cliff, found our campsite.

This was Lynn’s first night camping! We had a nice little site tucked into a grove of pines. We quickly pitched our tent, put our provisions into the metal “bear box” and headed off on a short hike.

We walked along a seaside bluff covered with a meadow bursting with wildflowers. The Pacific shore is so different from the East Coast that we had spent so many months sailing along. The promentories and rocks protruding from the sea, often miles out from the coast, present a much less friendly prospect to the sailor. That sense was heightened as the ocean turned slate grey and a thick fog ghosted into shore.

We were happy that we made our landfall here from the east, rather than seeking a harbor that doesn’t appear to exist along this shore. We had a simple dinner and turned in for the night.