NorCal Road Trip Day 3: When Life Gives You Apples, Make Apple Wine

BIRTHDAY BUSYNESS

Rebecca’s birthday, the whole reason for our trip, was on our second full day in California. I kicked off the celebration that morning by giving her a New Girl-themed birthday card and gift. We enjoyed a cup of coffee on the front porch and soaked in the sight and scent of our personal redwood grove one last time. 

Before we said goodbye to our first California crashpad, we stopped by The Sun & Cricket, a shop at The Madrones, to do a little last-minute perusing. Our plan for the day included brunch in Little River, a stop at Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, a drive through the scenic Avenue of the Giants, a hike in Humboldt Redwoods State Park and a detour through Ferndale to admire its Victorian architecture. We needed to get all the way up to Eureka by the end of the day to check in to our hotel and have Rebecca’s birthday dinner. 

Needless to say, I may have overplanned. 

A PHILO PHILOSOPHY

The original itinerary we developed for our trip was slammed full of activities and driving. In hindsight, I definitely tried to fit too much into one week. I underestimated how much time we would need to get from town to town and to enjoy each activity. Even then, there wasn’t much room built in to simply rest. After all, it was vacation. I didn’t want us to feel miserable for the sake of checking boxes. So far on the trip, I was surprised by how much we’d deviated from the plans I’d made. Day 3 forced us to make a decision: would we push ahead as planned or embrace flexibility and spontaneity? We opted for the latter. 

We hadn’t made it very far at all when the beauty of a roadside apple orchard on the way out of Philo beckoned us to stop. By this point, we were embracing our new motto: do as little or as much as we want. Just because we planned to do one thing didn’t mean we had to stick to it. If we decided to do something spontaneous on the trip, we did not want to feel stressed or guilty about it. So we scrapped our brunch plans, decided to grab some food and return to the orchard for a picnic. We asked the local woman working the stand at the apple orchard for a recommendation for lunch. She told us Lemon’s Market was right up the road and had the best deli sandwiches around. Next thing we know, we were in a charming market in Philo submitting our orders with crayon and paper. 

With our sandwiches in tow, we headed back to the apple orchard. We’re big proponents of asking the locals for recommendations. That’s the best way to get inside the everyday life of a place and experience it from the point of view of the people who live there (well, that or visit the closest Walmart but that isn’t as much fun). Had we not ended up at Lemon’s, I never would have tasted Mendocino Mustard on a sandwich and that would have been a shame. 

It turned out this unplanned stop would be one of the highlights of Rebecca’s birthday. Though we were in a region known for its grapes, we found ourselves sitting at a picnic table under the shade of an apple tree belonging to Gowan’s Orchard and Cidery. We tasted several award-winning apple wines, enjoyed our lunch and admired the gold of the parched hills that surrounded the Anderson Valley. The entire experience affirmed our “do as little or as much” approach and allowed us to let go of our detailed itinerary to simply enjoy the ride. 

SEALS AND SQUIRRELS

We repeated the amazing drive through the redwoods toward the coast, connected with Highway 1 and rode through Little River and Mendocino. We stopped in Fort Bragg to check out Glass Beach, a former trash dumping site that is now part of a state park. I thought it would be a relatively short stop, but this “trash beach” was magnificent. Broken glass, smoothed by nature to resemble tiny colorful stones, disguised itself among the similarly sized pebbles to create a fascinating mosaic. 

While beautiful, Glass Beach represented a sad legacy of humans ignoring our ethical imperative—and divine calling—to steward the planet well. But nature will always reclaim its territory. I was reminded of that as the ocean wore down broken glass with pounding waves and beautiful succulents sprouted from the surface of an old tire. 

Animal lovers will especially want to visit Glass Beach. Seals rested on nearby rocks, ravens congregated on picnic tables and dozens of ground squirrels scurried to and fro among the tunnels they’d hidden among the wildflowers. I’d never heard of a ground squirrel so this was a major highlight for me.

So there Rebecca was, sitting on a bench eating some baby carrots we’d packed as a road snack, when a small child walked up to her and politely asked for a carrot. So Rebecca gave the child a carrot. Well, the kid runs off and tells all his friends that this pretty lady is giving away free carrots. So we give a few more carrots to the children out of the goodness of our hearts. All of a sudden, we’re surrounded by a bunch of children. It was cute at first, but the atmosphere changed quickly when they started pestering us for more carrots. I mean, they wanted the whole dang bag! When the savages started climbing in her lap, she’d had enough and we walked away. But they kept following us!

Well, in reality, we weren’t being harassed by children—they were ground squirrels! And they’re pushy little devils. They were very sweet and gentle at first. But then, they got greedy. I saw one squirrel store an entire baby carrot in its cheek and then immediately run back up to me for another one!

Now, I recognize that we were in the wrong. There was a sign that clearly told us not to feed the wildlife. So, I am not encouraging anyone to do what we did. But at the end of the day, it was really hard to resist the opportunity to hand feed cute little squirrels on Rebecca’s birthday. I mean, it was a dream come true. You should definitely go to Glass Beach, but my conscience requires me to tell you this: do not feed the wildlife. In addition to the legitimate reasons you shouldn’t feed the squirrels, you will also end up getting harassed! 

Our bad behavior aside, the views from Glass Beach were incredible. In fact, beautiful views are everywhere in Northern California. Whether you’re in wine country, the redwood forests or along the coastline, state parks abound and picturesque scenery awaits. That’s how we ended up making another pit stop at a lookout point as we headed north from Fort Bragg. After enjoying another view of the coast, we were running out of daylight. So we took the pressure off ourselves, scrapped our plans to drive through the Avenue of the Giants and headed north in route to Eureka.

HELLO HUMBOLDT

Highway 1 veered inland, politely leaving the Lost Coast of California to its solitude, and connected us with Highway 101. We crossed from Mendocino County into the (in)famous Humboldt County—a rural region known for its long history of marijuana-growing outlaws. As we wandered our way up to Eureka together, we had no regrets. We loved our “do as little or as much” philosophy and the tone it had set for our day. 

If my original plans had their way, we’d be getting up early the following morning, driving to a national park for a hike and then making a 3-hour drive inland to Redding for a one-night stay. In the car, we both agreed we wanted to slow down and enjoy ourselves. So, we cut the Redding leg of our trip and Lassen Volcanic National Park along with it, knowing we were improving our trip by saving ourselves time and energy. This is the sort of move that usually would have stressed me out, but I felt totally at peace with it.

It turned out to be a game-changing audible.