We woke around 7AMish on Thursday 11/22 (Thanksgiving) and went to the front desk to see whether the second night we could keep the same room. They could! This Best Western has a Garden Cafe - on the premises where you can buy some really scrummy breakfasts. I had eggs, hash, sausages, and a bite of Kevin's bacon. It was a substantial good breakfast, and it needed to last us the day. It did.

We then headed north on highway 101. Our Goal - Mendocino. We drove up towards Cloverdale and we took the highway 128 that cuts diagonally northwest towards the coast. Again lots of twisty windy roads. This time past vineyards and wine farms. Nothing much was open given the holiday. It took quite a bit of time to get to the coastal highway. Sometimes slow. And the road wound between dark redwood groves. Kevin mounted his GoPro video camera on the front of the car and we had fun with that.

The vineyards were either yellow or reddy orange. Quite gorgeous looking.

We came out at the ocean highway near Albion. Again it was a treat to see the ocean and follow the narrow winding road up towards Mendocino.

Mendocino is a funny little quaint town. There was hardly anyone about, and a few stores were open to take advantage of those out and about on a holiday. I thought that while quaint, Mendocino had a very sanitized feeling about it - I mean I didn't see one structure in need of a good paint job.

Murder She Wrote was filmed here.

After that we decided to head south. Mission - we wanted to find and photograph Bowling Ball Beach - described in Kevin's collection of Photograph America newsletters.

So down we went and managed to find the turn off - there were a number of locals who parked their cars, and we followed the directions contained in the newsletter to the beach.

We nearly turned back as we approach a sharp descent onto some rickety looking logs built to be a "log ladder". But as luck would have it, we watched a couple who was walking their tiny dog come up. It was much easier than it looked. So down we went, Kevin filming me "bumming" my way down. Done! we were on the beach - had it to ourselves, and we scampered over to Bowling Ball Beach to photograph the rocks that were shaped like bowling balls. What fun. We were delighted that we did that!

We had the beach to ourselves.

We headed south towards Jenner to take the 116 to Sebastapol, and then the 12 towards Santa Rosa and highway 101. We planned to leave the following morning (Friday) from Santa Rosa.

On Friday 11/23 we reluctantly tore ourselves away from the coast, and turned back towards Colorado. We retraced our steps - taking the I-80 over Donner Pass through Nevada. We overnighted (Friday night) again in Elko NV at the same Best Western. Saturday we decided to push all the way home. On the way we stopped off at the Bonneville Speedway just for the fun of it.

Each year around September enthusiasts gather to race the clock on the salt flats. Maybe next year we'll plan to be in the neighborhood?

For more information check out this website.

I took this photograph above through the window of our car as we went by Salt Lake City on our way home.

While exploring and road tripping is wonderful, there is nothing that beats coming home.