Here There and Everywhere

En Route to Ft. Bragg, California

“Ft. Bragg . . . California?”

We get that a lot; most of our friends have heard of the Fort Bragg in North Carolina but most are not familiar with the Ft. Bragg just north of Mendocino on the northern California coast. We discovered it two or three years ago on one of our hiking and exploring trips, and fell in love. Some places just send out vibes, affinity vibes.

AdventureMan was talking this morning about Ft. Bragg, saying that if we lived there, we’d get tired of eating, even at the places we love, over and over again. It’s a drive to get just about anywhere from Ft. Bragg, maybe two or three hours north of San Francisco. But it’s lovely.

The drive from Bandon to Ft. Bragg is the most challenging drive of the trip.

The scenery is spectacular, the day is beautiful, sunny and windy. The drive as far as Crescent City is a piece of cake on Highway 101, alongside gorgeous scenery part of the way.

In Crescent City, we stopped for lunch at Fisherman’s Restaurant, which looked like a lot of fun. It was:

I had to have the Cali melt 🙂

They had a display case full of so many different kinds of pie!

But on we went. I had taken over driving, and later, we just laughed. As soon as I got on the road, highway 101 changed to a narrow forest lane, with twists and turns, and impatient large lumber trucks coming up quickly behind me and riding my bumper. I think I mentioned before that the rental Nissan Altima drives like a beached whale. It was awful.

I drove for three hours, and most of the time it continued awful, in different ways. Going through some small town, we kept getting behind a piece-of-junk car that had a bumper sticker that said something like “you know I have a sense of humor because I drive this car.” He was a horrible driver. No matter how I tried to avoid him, he kept ending up in front of me.

Finally, things evened out for a short while and I asked AdventureMan if he would drive. Just as he started driving, we got to California 1, an even narrower forested road with steep twists and turns. It didn’t look that bad on the map, it looked like a short stretch, but that was deceptive, it went on forever. By the time we came out again along the coast, AdventureMan needed to stop and stretch and take a breath – it was a stressful road.

Entering Ft. Bragg area

May 2, 2018 - Posted by intlxpatr | Adventure, Beauty, Eating Out, Geography / Maps, Quality of Life Issues, Restaurant, Road Trips, Travel | California, California 1, Crescent City, Fisherman's Restaurant, Highway 101