Honeymoon Day 6

Today was our last full day in Mendocino. We started out with breakfast (quiche-of-the-day: spinach feta, from which I removed the gross feta). We once again got up late today (8:15-ish), and what with DST moving everything back an hour, I've gotten worried about what will happen to me when we get back to Socorro. I have a hard enough time getting up in the morning as it is, without it still being dark.
We had seen a lot of things the last couple days, and we only had a couple of the B&B's recommendations left. First, we headed out to Jughandle State Reserve, whose entire point is some sort of 2.5-mile nature trail called the Ecological Staircase which shows the floral changes associated with the different ocean terraces here (due to tectonic uplift of the coast). However, the list of places didn't specify the length of this hike, and we just weren't up for it right before lunchtime. Maybe if we'd gotten lunch, but even then I don't know that we would have been super excited. Plus the trail was out at one point. So instead we went out to do our favorite activity, sit on the seacliff and look out. We had still (probably) not seen any whales on the trip, so we were thinking that maybe, just maybe one would appear.
After a very short wait, we started seeing sprays of water coming up out of the water. I hurried back to the car (for some reason we had left the binoculars there) and hurried back. We spent a long time (1 - 1.5 hours) just sitting there staring at the whales, as well as at a "stork" who was doing some fishing and then entertained us with his attempts to down his slithery prey. It was super neat. It's too bad we don't have some sort of super-zoom for our camera so we could have taken pictures of the whales to share, but suffice to say that it was quite an experience. We never got to see much of a whale (I think I once caught one's entire tail out of the water, but I didn't have binos) but it was still amazing to think of how much whale there was that was not visible. Great times.
After that we went back into Fort Bragg to see about lunch. We had seen the North Coast Brewing Company the day before, and I wanted to go there to have a local microbrew. But when we finally got there, we discovered that they don't open up until 2pm on Wednesdays. So instead we went down the street to Taka's Grill, a Japanese place. I had Chicken Udon ($6.75) and Alison had Inari ($5) and a vegetable roll ($4.35). The Udon was good, although the chicken was not completely to my liking. Our waitress was kind of strange (new there too), and she messed up my order (wrote down a vegetable roll for me too), then when I told her so she promised to get my udon out in a hurry, and took the vegetable roll for her own lunch.
After lunch we had an ice cream sandwich next door at Cowlicks Ice Cream, which was super good. After this there was just one more place to see on the list, so we left Fort Bragg behind (bye-dee-bye) and headed back to go south of Mendocino. We were in search of Spring Ranch State Park (which is apparently part of Van Damme State Park). To get there, you pull off Highway 1 at a specified point, and basically start walking toward the ocean. There's a trail. We spent a little time at the seacliff looking for whales, but not much since we had spent so much time earlier. Instead, we just walked around a little bit to locate the "postcard views of Mendocino" advertised on the B&B hiking tip sheet (note: never really found). We spent a little bit of time trying to get a good picture of a mini-blowhole in the rock, but it never really came out. Also, we looked a bit at the sealife clinging to the cliff face. Afterwards, we picked our way down to the beach to look around down there. The neatest thing we found was a waterfall that emanated from a spring up high on the cliff, which discharged directly onto the sand, where it immediately percolated underground. There wasn't even a pool under the waterfall, much less a stream coming out of it. Super neat. We also saw some anenome-like creatures and more barnacles and such. I took a few close-up pictures of a probably dead crab. Then we climbed back up to the terrace, and hiked out to drive back to the B&B.
At the B&B we got out our complimentary half-bottle of white wine and some organic cheddar cheese we had bought the day before in Fort Bragg and headed out to the clifftop benches across the street. We sat there for awhile just drinking, eating, and listening to the ocean. It was beautiful. Alison claims to have liked the wine, but she only had half a glass while I was forced to drink the other 2.5 glasses in the bottle. Luckily it was pretty good wine, as far as wine goes. When we finished, we headed back to the room to get caught up on internet stuff, and to get ready for dinner.
We left for dinner at 7, and decided to hit the Mendocino Cafe again (where we had dinner on Sunday). We both got the same thing we had had the previous time (Chicken Quesadilla for me, Thai Burrito for Alison), and I also had a Wolaver's Organic Pale Ale. This stuff isn't pasteurized, so perhaps it was a little past its prime (bottled back in October). In any event, it was a little skunky and bitter, as IPAs are wont to be. I don't know if I'll have it again.
After dinner we headed back to the B&B to get ready to leave in the morning. Tomorrow is going to be a long day of lots of driving to make it to Yosemite, where there will probably not be internet access (no more blogging!). Hopefully we can make it there without chains!