We took a more leisurely approach today, taking advantage of a two night stop-over in Mendocino. This town is also located on the Pacific Coast, some 200 miles above San Francisco. Mendocino also built its industry and wealth on lumber, specifically giant redwood trees.
By the 1960s-1970s this industry had declined. It coincided with the hippy movement, with many moving into the town to share peace and love. From our experiences today some have still remained. There are quite a few interesting ‘characters’ here ready to catch the ear of passing tourists. One guy we got chatting to offered to do our life chart (by means of numerology), explaining how we can be reincarnated a thousand times. A delightful discussion, but we eventually turned down his offer. It is quite enough to know what we a doing tomorrow let alone for the rest of our lives,
We moved on to find this is a quiet and pretty town with wide roads and little traffic. It makes pleasant walking. Several houses date back to the latter 1800s, some are now museums… and we found yet another really nice bookshop. Unintentionally, these stores are becoming quite a pull for us with such an interesting array of reading matter.
Just a few miles up the bay there are areas known for their ‘glass beaches’. This concept was unknown to us previously so we headed to the local museum, whose owner was also a character and passionate about the beaches and glass. He had a fine array of glass pebbles and explained their origin.
We discovered that the sea was the dumping ground for trash before the age of environmental enlightenment (and plastics to a large extent). Despite the obvious problems this would cause, Fort Bragg’s coastline is formed in such a way that the trash stayed in the bay and was not swept out to sea. Hence, years of glass pieces rolling up and down the shore has caused them to become rounded and worn, larger pieces looking like pebbles. Ceramics are also affected in a similar way. Glass that has been washed and rolled in the salty sea gain a frosted surface. If this happens in river water (with no salt) the surface remains smooth. The colour depends on what the glass was originally used for. An example was red glass pebbles that had been formed from car reflector lights. Some particularly beautiful examples on display were light green pebbles with frosted surfaces, formed from bottles and jugs. Such pieces are often used for jewellery.
Having learned about this we headed to the nearest glass pebble beach, full of anticipation. What a disappointment. The beach had many beachcombers all searching for a little piece of treasure. What we did see were the smallest pieces of glass hardly half a centimetre in length. We have seen more on our own beaches. It seems that too many treasure hunters have taken away gems over the decades. Some people advised that the best time to visit is when the tide is out and the sun reflects of the surface of those remaining, but large pieces are hard to find today.
Our final destination was the Mendocino Botanical Gardens. This too was on the coast and seemed an unusual site to place a garden, being battered by the winds and salty air. However, the extensive acreage was beautiful, coupled with the views over the bays. So many of the plants were similar to ours, such as rhododendron and dahlia, and there were fine displays of heather.
Tomorrow we leave this lovely area, heading to our final destination of Napa before we start our journey home.
**Technical hitch. We apologise that there have been issues with the day 11 and 12 reports. Day 11 has come over multiple times, and day 12 (which we have had a great deal of trouble sending) does not appear to have all its photos displayed. We suggest you view the latter at www.timetocompletethebucketlist.com site where it is displayed correctly. We do not know what is causing this. It is out of our hands, but many apologies for the inconvenience.
Copyright: words and photos Sue Barnard 2019