Weekend Round-up: Mendocino

Rob and I left San Francisco on Friday around 6:00 pm. We drove through a lot of Marin and Santa Rosa traffic before stopping to eat dinner in a tiny Italian restaurant in Healdsburg. This place was a relic: they had vinyl booths and plastic grapes hanging from the ceiling! From there we took the winding, only partially paved 128 over to the coast. There was only one radio station in that stretch, a “groovy” seventies rock station that Rob dubbed KLSD! We arrived at our campground at Manchester Beach around ten, set up our tent and went straight to bed.

We woke up early on Saturday to the noises of the bustling KOA Kampground (the “k” thing is mandatory). After oatmeal and coffee for breakfast, we drove up to mile marker 24 to meet up with the people from Ross Ranch. Rob and I were the only experienced riders and therefore got the “naughty” horses. In fact, our horses disliked each other. Rob’s would try to nip mine and mine would give his a massive stink eye! We rode down to the beach and then sauntered along in the gorgeous waves for two hours. Here’s a photo Rob took of me (on the right) demonstrating my best I-took-riding-lessons-for-years posture.

After our ride, we drove to Point Arena and had lunch out near the pier. The waiter at this little grill reminded me so much of Manuel from Faulty Towers! A quick stop at the Point Arena market before heading back to our campsite for a nap. Around 2:00, we walked down to the beach to explore. Manchester Beach is covered in driftwood and there are makeshift huts tossed in here and there. Rob carved our initials into the driftwood of one of the better shelters. I soon became obsessed with finding the perfect piece of driftwood to take home and ran from patch to patch like a squirrel. We found a magnificent piece of redwood burl but it was more than six feet tall and pretty impossible to carry. I settled on a football sized piece instead and Rob found a gorgeous green bottle with a red cap to bring home.

We stayed at the remarkably warm beach for a few hours before heading back to the KOA for a dip in the hot tub and dinner. They have a local folk singer come in on Saturday nights to perform kid songs during the ice cream social (yep, KOA Kampgrounds are very much like summer camp). Rob built a fire in our campsite and we stayed up for a while.

Up early again on Sunday in time to shower and go to the pancake breakfast. After packing up the tents we drove south along the 1 for about an hour before turning east along the Russian River. Rob and I stopped in Monte Rio to talk to a real estate agent about buying a small cabin in the area possibly in the next year. From there we drove up to Guerneville. I remarked at how many shirtless men were walking around…and then that there didn’t seem to be a lot of women…and then I realized what was happening! Guerneville had been taken over by “Bears” (the manly, plumber-like variety of gay men). In fact, it was the official “Lazy Bear 2006” weekend! We had lunch in a pizza parlor with all the rest of the San Francisco visitors and drove on to Napa to visit Nicole and Dave in their new house.

You can see all the photos from our weekend online here. Rob and I arrived back in San Francisco at 7:00 last night and spent the evening unpacking and relaxing.