North Coast Trip

September 27-28. Claire loves to go on adventures. When it is the weekend, she'll get very serious and come up to me and says, "Mommy, I want to go on a 'venture." An adventure is pretty much anything that is not the normal trips - library, grocery store, Maria's house, park. You can pose any kind of outing as an adventure and she will be excited about it.

In this case, we decided to go camping along the North Coast of California. We decided to stay in Hendy State Park in Boonville California, which is a nice campground with Redwoods. We stopped at a fruit stand along the way and bought these apples called "pink pearls" which were pink on the inside, and tart. They were just Claire's size and she liked them very much. She just ate them like an adult - I had to watch that she didn't eat right through the core.

We took a hike through the redwoods and stayed in the tent that night. The next day we set out for Fort Bragg. We stopped in Mendocino on the way, and went down to the beach from the Mendocino headlands. It was a beautiful day. The tide was low and we were able to see crabs, sea urchins, sea anenomes and starfish! One of the beaches had a lot of driftwood, which someone had crafted into teepees which Claire enjoyed exploring. There was also a fresh spring grotto, where water fell from the cliff. It was beautiful. Claire was not too enthused about the ocean but she liked everything else. There were also berries everywhere in Mendocino.

We made it to Fort Bragg, which is home of the "Skunk train" - a steam engine that travels from Fort Bragg to Winters, California. We missed the one departure for the day but that turned out to be okay because Claire is a little young for a 6 hour round trip train ride to be all that thrilling. Instead we had lunch at the North Coast Brewery Grill. For some reason it was just the most delicious food I'd had and it was very satisfying.

Next we went to another beach, just north of Fort Bragg. There were long boardwalks which Claire loved to run on. Running running running. There were tide pools but they were not as good as the ones at Mendocino.

After the beach we called it a day and headed on the long drive home! It was well worth the drive and we had a great time. Check out our photos (link top left, called "North Coast").