Loooooong Drive with a road map

Sunday morning started at 8:15 am outside of Sacramento.  I said goodbye to Karly, got some green tea from Starbucks and then made my way along highway 80 to highway 5.  It was very flat, lots of farms along the side of the road, but nothing else.

So, when I decided to do a road trip I also decided to add a tiny challenge... NO GPS.   I have a highway map of the state of California (which was used frequently Sunday) and google directions, which are handy only to know what roads to take, not when to take them if there's no navigation.  So I have to use the state map to know what towns to turn in and what towns have taken me past where I was suppose to turn.  It's kind of fun to look at the map and map out your route (and then look at the google directions every now and then!). My route for Sunday is highlighted in yellow.

I drove east on route 20 through some hills and along the north coast of Clear Lake, just south of the Mendocino National Forest.  After a couple of hours I turned north on highway 101 and things began to get interesting.   I noticed that up on the mountains there looked to be a bit of smoke.  Eventually I saw signs for "base camp" and wondered if I' accidentally driven to Asia and the Himalayas, but no.  Base camp was for all the firemen in the area and fire trucks, and helicopters and dusting planes and emt's.  Uh, should I be here?   The cops were letting everyone continue so I did, got a little panicked as the smoke got thicker, but after 30 or so minutes everything was good.

I made it up to Humboldt. State Park and the Avenue of Giants which is a long stretch near highway 101 with HUGE redwoods.  I drove through a tree (glad I didn't get an even slightly bigger car). Then I headed back south down 101 to Legget so I could hit the beginning of route 1.   Well, the beginning of route 1 had an awesome yellow sign with the little symbol indicating back and forth curves for... 22 MILES!  Ugh.....  Well, I survived that, which was through a mountain.  After about an hour things began to get really foggy, and at first I worried there was a fire, but then as I got closer I realized it was fog.

Then it happened, I came out of the mountain and trees and saw the most amazing view ever, the Pacific Ocean.   Most guidebooks will tell people to skip this part of the Pacific Coast Highway because it just isn't as good as the part south of San Francisco.  Those guidebooks are stupid.  It was cold (50 degrees cooler than my hike the previous day) it was windy, it was foggy, it was beautiful.    Probably one of the prettiest things I've seen.  I spent the next three hours driving and stopping along the coast as I drove to my hotel (good pictures to come later, for now deal with the iPad photos).   I stopped to view the Point Arena Lighthouse before I went to my final destination and got a really great view.  

 Then, after 10 and a half hours, I ended up at my hotel in Point Arena.  It's above the wharf, on a cliff overlooking the cove that has fishing boats and some sea otters. No sunset because it was too foggy, but still an amazing view.  

Today, off to drive through San Francisco, along the coast to Monterey.