Monday 1st June

June already and I’m practically half way through this marathon trip. I can’t believe how quickly time passing.

We left Eureka around 9.30 and headed south on Hwy 101. Our first stop was at a little town called Ferndale - which was lovely. Much prettier than Eureka - all shops and most of the houses were old Victorian buildings. There were lots of interesting shops to browse through and many tempting things to buy so I had too keep reminding myself that I am ‘travelling light‘!:

From there we continued south down the same Hwy 101 (the Redwood Highway) to the Humboldt Redwoods State Park and took a slight detour from the highway to drive through the ‘Avenue of the Giants’ for a while. The huge trees were mind-boggling, we couldn’t believe how big and tall they were, although I believe there are even bigger ones elsewhere.


We returned to the highway after about 5 miles through the trees and stopped for lunch at a town called Willits, then headed west towards the coast to Mendocino - where ‘Murder She Wrote’ was filmed and we drove past the house where 'Jessica Fletcher' lived. ‘East of Eden’ starring James Dean was also filmed there so that made Terry’s day! Many other films have also been made in this area.

There was no suitable accommodation in Mendocino so we backtracked north for a few miles to Fort Bragg and found another Best Western to stay in - lovely sea view from the bedroom window:
The bridge is just for walking, not trains.

Ever onwards southbound tomorrow ….