I planned, I researched and I searched the net. Then I went and it was ten times better than I thought it would have. I spent two weeks moving up and down the coastal highway. The sights were to be loved and remembered, the videos to always look at, new details to find with each viewing. I met a man in Jenna who lived in Sacramento who hadn't been to the coast since he was a boy. We were about the same age and I thought of all the places I had been since I began to drive and I thought what could have anchored someone in one spot for so long must have been very absorbing and consuming. The first place on the schedule was St. Helena and that was a hard place to find from Sacramento without any local maps and ended up driving in the wrong direction the first two or three hours and then found the direction and still ended up driving over the mountains on 128 to 29 and that was an experience. The next day I drove over the mountains again, this time to Glen Ellen where Jack London State Park was. That was another headache finding even with detailed driving directions. On the way back I decided to stay on the main highway and found out I should have taken the mountain road back and cut my travel time to a third. After that my next destination was Clearlake. That was the most winding road of the whole trip from Calistoga to Clearlake and probably the biggest elevation change too. I looked at property in Clearlake and all around it. I blew into town late on the first day I was there most of the next and I toured a couple of houses and tracked down several that were in the MLS listings. I was definitely not impressed with the character of the old commence center except for one restaurant that looked like it had something happening.
California dreaming, part 3
Posted 09-18-2010 at 02:08 PM by Profiler
After I headed to the cost and stayed in Willits overnight on the way and looked at a house there that was a nightmare because it had slippage of the foundation, the lot was so steep. The town on the other hand was a charmer and I thought they had done a wonderful job of planning and maintaining the commercial areas and would have felt at home living there. Found a great sub/pizza restaurant on a later visit there. Didn't ride the train but the drive through the forest to Ft. Bragg made me love the mountains more there than Clearlake. My first pass through Ft. Bragg was a slight disappointment but then I stopped at the botanical garden on my second pass back south on the highway. The garden was a shinning star of beauty and the dahlias were something to behold. Their color and variety were magnificent. The Humming birds were thick as bees at this one large flowered bush and flying back and forth across it looking for a fresh flower and making an angry buzz as they spared with the competition. There must have been two dozen of them at that one shrub. The garden was a jewel in the Ft. Bragg crown.
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