We said goodbye to Simon, Colette and little Josh and headed north from San Francisco to Point Reyes, a headland with a gorgeous rocky coastline. At first we weren’t that impressed but when we headed out on foot we discovered some beautiful coves and beaches littered with sea lions. We did this one particular walk expecting to see a rock off the coast that looked just like a chimney, but when we got there we could not work out which rock it was supposed to be! However, it was a lovely walk all the same. We somehow got lost trying to leave the headland and kept taking wrong turns as the map was very confusing and there weren’t any signs. Eventually we made it out of the maze and were on our way one of the wine valleys in Northern California.
Napa Valley has a reputation for being a bit snooty and very expensive so we were keen to check out Sonoma instead as it was reputed to have some pretty good wines, but far less attitude. Although Sonoma is cheaper than its more famous sister Napa, it is still a pretty pricey town and our travelling budget wasn’t going to stretch to even a motel. The campsite was a long way north of town so we decided to test out couchsurfing, something that had been recommended to us by a few people along the way. For those that have not heard of it, it is a website where people can advertise their couch/spare room as available for people to stay. The thinking is that at different points in your life you will be in need of a bed or able to offer one. You get references from the people you meet and from friends who are also on the site so people can read others’ opinions of you before deciding to meet you. We stayed with a slightly eccentric family in Sonoma who were also couchsurfing virgins. Linda, her son Dominic, Corgi (a family friend) and their menagerie of pets made us feel very welcome in their home for the 2 nights we spent with them and it was nice to be staying in a home rather than a clinical motel room. The two pitbulls, Monkey and Le Stat were so funny as they were huge young dogs who thought they were cats - they’d come and sit on you or the back of the sofa which they are far too big and heavy to do!
Our mission while in Sonoma was to yet again hire some bikes and wobble our way round a few vineyards sampling the local wines. The weather was lovely and we had a great day pedaling around, even though Le Roux’s map reading was a little lacking and we got lost en route to the first winery! We managed to squeeze in five vineyards and a picnic before heading back into town. Our favourite two wines of the day were a Gewürztraminer from Gundlach Bundschu and a slightly sparkling muscat from Ravenswood and we splashed out on a bottle of each. Sonoma also has quite a few artisan food shops so having dropped back our bikes we wandered around town sampling cheeses, fudge and chocolates – a great way to end a lovely indulgent day.
The next morning I was up in time to watch the Royal Wedding replay on BBC America – I couldn’t drag myself out of bed at 3am to watch it live, nor could I face watching it on an American channel with the totally OTT presenters! After I’d watched the whole 4 hours (Le Roux busied himself with his blog as he had no interest in it!), we said our goodbyes and headed north on Highway 101 to Ukiah to meet up with a friend of Le Roux’s who he had met on a plane in Alaska, rather randomly!
It had been a few years since Le Roux had seen Matt, but he and his wife Laura very kindly invited us to stay for a few days. They were so welcoming and friendly that we felt like old friends in no time. On our first night we joined Matt’s Dad’s 80th birthday dinner with a few people at the fabulous seafood buffet at the Indian Casino Restaurant. We were amazed that for $16 we could eat as much Dungeness Crab and other delicious seafood dishes as we wanted. There was even a dessert buffet which included chocolate covered strawberries and a sugarless cheesecake which was to die for. We all rolled out of the restaurant after eating way too much. What made the night even better was that they the casino gave us $10 of free credit for gambling which we lost on the slot machines all too quickly. Laura had a good night though as she managed to win $200 playing blackjack, so a fun night was had by all.
The next day was Matt’s Dad’s 80th birthday party with all his friends and family – a massive affair with well over 100 people. Matt had organized to have a wild boar roasted Fijian style which is done by wrapping the boar, placing it in the ground on hot rocks, covering it over with banana leaves, hessian sacks and earth, and then leaving it for a few hours. After only 2.5 hours they dug up the boar which surprised us, as we’d expected it to need much longer. It turned out we were right and it needed to be cooked for a few more hours, so they had to finish it on the BBQ instead. It was nice, but not quite as good as everyone had hoped. The party went very well though as there was plenty of food, including a really good chocolate cake made by Matt’s Aunt, and the live music created a good atmosphere – one guy even played the didgeridoo!
As the party was in the afternoon, Matt and Laura took us to see the Ukiah Speedway in the evening to watch the various classes of cars race around the ¼ mile banked track. We were amazed to hear that some of the kids racing were as young as 8 and aptly called “The Mighty Midgets”. The big boys also raced that night and drove souped up V8s – their roars almost as load as the crowd! We even saw a few spectacular crashes with bodywork flying all over the place – luckily nobody was hurt and it was all very entertaining.
Sunday began with a delicious brunch at their favourite haunt, Bluebirds where I had the most enormous serving of french toast made from apple and cinnamon bread and served with blueberry compote – seriously yummy! We then stopped at the Anderson Valley Brewing Company for a spot of beer tasting and although I am not a beer fan, I actually found one I liked called Summer Solstice.
Our next activity was shooting on the ranch that Matt’s Dad looks after about 40km north of Ukiah, with a view to bagging ourselves a wild turkey. After exploring for a while and not spotting one (despite Le Roux using the very irritating turkey caller!), we instead picked a good spot and set up a shooting range. I shot a revolver and a pump action shotgun at our tin can targets – I was rubbish with the hand gun, but got 3 out of 3 shots with the shotgun! A little scary to be firing proper guns loaded with live ammunition - it certainly got the adrenaline pumping but it was great fun and not something you’d normally get the opportunity to do. Matt and Le Roux even tried shooting two revolvers at the same time, and pretended they were commandos by shooting the pump action shotgun from their hips – crazy boys! On our way back down the mountain, a few mountain quails made the mistake of running out in front of us and Le Roux promptly dispatched them, hitting 3 in one shot!
After our explosive visit to the ranch it was time for a more placid drive along the coast. We drove through the picturesque town of Mendocino where we took a few pictures before stopping in Port Orford harbor for a seafood dinner. Our time with Matt and Laura had come to an end far too quickly and it was sad saying good bye after a fun action packed weekend. We were sent on our way with a goody bag of fruit, chocolate easter eggs, the mountain quail and some abalone that Matt had very kindly sourced for us.
From Ukiah we headed north to the land of the Redwoods, where we drove along the Avenue of the Giants, so called as it passes through old growth forest, which means that it has never been logged and the trees are typically over 400 years old. The drive was really scenic and the size of the trees blew us away – they are truly giants! We hadn’t planned to visit Confusion Hill, which is a funny little tourist attraction but we got confused as to where we were so we stopped to ask for directions! It has various curiosities and exhibits including a wonky cabin with various illusions such as water that appeared to flow up hill.
We eventually found Cathedral Tree, which is a drive-thru tree and I somehow managed to get our enormous Jeep Grand Cherokee through it without scraping the paintwork! The tree was incredibly big and still thriving despite the large tunnel cut through the bottom. This was just one of many crazy tree things we saw along the way, with others including a “one log house”, a petrol station housed in a hollowed out Redwood, an enormous Paul Bunyon and his Ox sculpture and heaps of different size wood carvings of bears and other animals.
Our last tree related stop of the day was at the Rockefeller Forest, home to Founders’ Grove in which there were many massive and interesting Redwood trees. We wandered around taking funny pictures of us inside, under, on top of and hugging the trees! Up close you really appreciate how big they are.
Having worked up an appetite we stopped at the Samoa Cookhouse for a traditional home-cooked logger’s dinner of soup and salad, followed by chicken, ham, potatoes and veg, and then chocolate cake for dessert, all washed down with a cup of tea. You could have seconds of everything, but we rolled out of there on just one serving of each course! That night we camped at a lovely spot right by Clam Beach. You have to self register at most campgrounds and we keep not having the right change to put in the envelope which is frustrating. Having asked everyone there for change with no luck, we headed up the road to the shop. Luckily for us it turned out to be a shop/pub combo so we had a couple of drinks to get some change! It was rather a random little place and we ended up talking to some odd but friendly locals.
The next day, our last in California, we started by visiting the picturesque little village of Trinidad which has a photogenic lighthouse and some lovely beaches and coves. As we continued the drive north we came upon a meadow of grazing elk – our first sighting them. We obviously had to stop for a few photos, after which we drove on to visit a couple of “special” trees – “the Big Tree” and “the Corkcrew Tree”. By this point, I think we were a little tree-ed out!
So we drove out of Redwood country and California, and headed into Oregon to see the much lauded coastline. Even though it was pretty cold and windy, I kept having to leap out of the car to take photos as the scenery was so lovely – gorgeous long sandy stretches of beach scattered with enormous boulders and white flecked sea.
At our woody campsite in Gold Beach that evening we prepared the mountain quail and abalone that we’d brought from Matt & Laura’s. It was quite bizarre to be preparing such exotic fare at a picnic table with our limited kitchen equipment! However, Le Roux did an amazing job on the abalone, which was incredible – so soft I could cut it with my plastic spoon! I’d love to have it again, but unfortunately it is hard to come by due to overfishing and poaching. The barbequed mountain quail tasted pretty good too. I was in charge of the accompaniments and things didn’t go as well as our frying pan is pretty large and our gas burners quite small and the damn pan fell off and spilt a load of oil all over everything! Luckily we had some more oil, but the gas canister was running out so the oil wasn’t hot enough and the sauté potatoes took forever to cook and ended up really greasy. I then managed to tip over the pan again – so annoying!! The garlic courgettes tasted good but had to be eaten as an appetizer as we don’t have enough pans and stoves to finish everything at the same time.
Matt & Laura had recommended a Jet Boat Ride up the Rogue River, so we’d booked ourselves onto the 104 mile round trip which included some patches of rapids. It was an early start and the day did not begin well when we each had to endure a cold shower - we thought we’d seen the back of them when we left Central America! However, luckily the weather had cleared up for us and we had a great day for the boat ride – sunshine and blue skies.
We saw all sorts of wildlife including ospreys, bald headed eagles, a river otter, a doe and her two fawns, and my favourite of the day, a mummy bear and her two cubs. They were grazing on the river bank having recently come out of hibernation. We also saw another lone bear on the opposite bank. Our guide was very knowledgeable and great fun as he kept us entertained with 360 degree turns and a thrilling ride through the rapids. We stopped for lunch about 30 miles in land and it was amazing how much warmer it was there than on the coast, so we sat outside to eat our buffet food.
On the way up the river we’d passed lots of fishermen who were sitting in their boats waiting for the salmon to bite on their way upstream. Even if they did happen to hook one, the chances were they’d have to put it back as they are only allowed to keep the hatchery born ones which are missing a small back fin. We came across only one or two lucky fishermen who had caught a keeper that day. I reckon they are just using the fishing as an excuse to get out the water with their mates and drink beers!
Over at the marina we tried to catch some Dungeness crabs but we weren’t having much luck with our little bait box with loops on the outside, so a friendly couple lent us their big crab net and soon we were catching quite a few each time we pulled the net up. However, you are only allowed to keep males over a certain size and we struggled to get any that met those requirements. We had fun trying though. While waiting to pull up the crab net, we kept looking at our clams as they moved their weird necks and shuffled around in the bucket – such funny things.
We called it a day on the crabbing after a couple of hours and continued our journey north, up the Oregon coast. We set up camp in a lovely patch of woodland near the sand dunes that are a major feature of that part of the coastline, before heading into Florence for some clam chowder at the renowned Mo’s – another Laura recommendation! It lived up to expectations and we rolled out of the restaurant stuffed having eaten too much delicious homemade bread alongside the soup!
That night Le Roux left our bucket of clams on the picnic table so they’d have plenty of air. However, after we’d settled in for the night we heard the lid fall off, so Le Roux had to get up to investigate. Some creature, probably a raccoon, had been interested in our clams for dinner! Next morning we discover that it had actually grabbed one of the poor clams but had dropped it again. Amazingly this clam was still alive so we reunited it with the others and hoped that it would recover from its ordeal. By this point, we’d actually become a little attached to these ugly clams and were a little reluctant to cook them up for dinner, especially as it would be a lot of work to prepare them and we definitely had way more then we could eat. So we made the decision to put them back. We found a suitable spot and Le Roux had to dig them all back into the mud – hopefully they’ve all survived!
After we’d checked into our motel, Le Roux was desperate to have another go at crabbing, even though it was pouring with rain, so we donned all our waterproof clothing and stood on the pier hoping for some large male crabs! Unfortunately, even though he persevered long after I’d retired to our dry, warm room, the tides were against him and there was too much freshwater in the bay from all the snowmelt and rain, so he came back empty handed. Given that the Dungeness crabs cost $20 each to buy, we’d just have to remember how good they had tasted when we had them in Ukiah! It was off to the pub for dinner instead, where we had a free cup of clam chowder, followed by a pulled pork sandwich and some BBQ ribs – very nice, but again we rolled home as the portions are so big in the US. After dinner and a couple of drinks we made our escape as it was karaoke night!
We left there fatter and drove to the Blue Heron deli for yet more tasting. We chomped our way through several bries - our favourite being the smoked one, slurped our way through some local wines – very average, nibbled lots of pretzels coated in various dips, chutneys, jams and sauces, but our favourite thing of the day was the incredible blue cheese dressing which was made using a zingy Italian vinaigrette with cider vinegar as a base with little chunks of a lovely blue cheese – you could eat it as a dip as it tasted so good! Oregon was proving to be a bit of a food highlight in our trip!
TO BE CONTINUED…
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