Mendocino, California

The trip came out of dragging Google Maps around after dinner: a name three hours north, on the water. The planning ended there.

We left early Saturday morning, and the coast changed temper the farther north we drove. Past the Golden Gate the beaches and the wind’s patience run out together, and by the little town of Albion there was nothing left but cliff, swell, and wind-flattened grass.

The cove#

We stayed at a small inn on the headland at Albion; below the lawn outside the room, a river reaches the sea under the last wooden bridge on Highway 1.

The bridge is wartime carpentry. In 1944 the steel clearly had somewhere more important to be, so the bridge had to make do with wood. Luckily, good wood is one thing California has never been short of. We had crossed it ourselves on the way in.

The wooden trestle bridge over the Albion River mouth

The lawn runs out at a split-rail fence, and the fence is the whole show: the swell working the sea stack, the pampas grass catching the light and letting it go. I know these pictures look surprisingly alike. Come watch the sea with me anyway 🐶

The cove at Albion over a split-rail fence

A bird hanging over the water past the fence line

Pampas grass under the headland across the cove

A white house and flagpole behind a white fence

Picnic tables on the grass facing the ocean

Point Cabrillo#

Point Cabrillo is a lighthouse nearby. You park beside the keeper’s old houses, an inn themselves these days, and walk the last half mile on your own: downhill, fences on both sides, the lighthouse growing slowly at the end of the path.

Walking the path down to the light station

The path past the keeper's houses in the cypress

To be honest, Point Cabrillo is not really a lighthouse. It is more of a small village: keeper’s houses in the cypress, an oil house with a red roof, white picket fences. The house at the end of the grass that grew a lantern is the most conspicuous thing there, and somehow still not the main character.

The Point Cabrillo lighthouse and the oil house

Carved whales on a windowsill, the headland beyond

The visitor center and gift shop got browsed, of course. The little bookstore is a careful one, stocked with souvenirs so fine you hold your breath around them. And past the glass, the real Pacific roared on with its afternoon.

The headland and surf through a window grid

A doorway and window in the afternoon light

Still, the sea can rage all it likes; the whole point of a lighthouse is to get along with it. And with the sun, a rare guest this late in the year, stepping in to mediate, we came away with some very presentable, very artistic colors.

The keeper's houses behind their white fence

Old cypress over the fence line, backlit

The road home#

Just past three on Sunday the car pointed south again. Two days of coastal bends and not one complaint; before the drive home it got a pullout above the surf to itself.

The car parked on a pullout above the surf