Ferndale, CA... and some extras

sopas ej · #1 Posted **Sep 3, 2021, 7:20 PM**

My partner and I made ourselves a 4-day weekend last weekend (Aug. 27-30, 2021) using his birthday as an excuse and did a road trip of the northern California coast, with Mendocino being our home base.

One of our stops was Ferndale. So, here are some random photos...

Ferndale

Photo by me

A Catholic church. Being that I'm from southern California, I'm not used to Catholic churches having this style of architecture (they're usually Spanish/Mission-style/Mediterranean or Modern).

Photo by me

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A very interesting cemetery. A lot of Scandinavian-looking names, too. And apparently, Ferndale was settled by many Danish people in its early years. I read somewhere that they established dairies or something, and to this day, Ferndale has its very own butter industry or something, served at its restaurants.

All that cemetery exploring was making us hungry. And it was dinnertime anyway, so we started walking to look for a place to eat.

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This looked like a good-enough spot to get food, we said. And it was.

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Total old-school American-style restaurant. Choice of soup or salad with your entrée. I got a salad.

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I had the chicken, which came with veggies and potatoes. Just the right portion size, too. I'm the one who sprinkled it with all that black pepper.

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After dinner, it was a bit more walking, and then the drive back to Mendocino.

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As we started driving out, we turned off a side street, and saw this very pastoral scene.

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Then it was the three hour drive back to Mendocino, to sleep and then to get up in the morning to start our drive back home to LA.

This was the furthest north in California we had been in a very long time, and the last time we were here, California didn't have exit numbers (didn't start having them until about 2002). Since the exit numbers for the 101 start in Los Angeles, it was very weird for me to see exit numbers this high! The exit we took to get into Ferndale was Exit 691.

Photo by my partner

You can't tell from the picture, but these trees were really tall and just everywhere. Redwoods, mixed with other kinds of trees. Some of the 2-lane highways we drove through in the daytime were through total redwood forests, all dark and nice. I just had to take a picture, because it's a completely different landscape from where we live.

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The next morning we got up and started the long drive home. But we didn't rush. And I took some pics along our road trip home...

The little town of Point Arena, in Mendocino County.

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A pit stop for lunch in Bodega Bay, where the classic Hitchcock film "The Birds" was filmed.

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The Tides Restaurant. Unrecognizable anymore from the "Birds" film, being that it's been added on to and remodeled over the years.

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We ate at The Tides. We didn't think the food would be all that, but it actually was pretty good. Of course you have to get the seafood, right?

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It doesn't look like much but this was actually a very good crab caesar salad. No imitation crab here! My partner had a delicious-looking grilled tuna salad, which I didn't take a picture of.

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Golden State Cider, with all California ingredients, apples from Sonoma County, even. Mmm, mmm!

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Tomales, a small town in Marin County. I know Marin County can be nice, and I think San Rafael is a cute town, but we only used to associate it with the hoity-toity towns of Sausalito and Tiburon (which incidentally, at their founding, didn't start off wealthy/hoity-toity--they were originally very working-class/industrial mining and fishing towns), and the very suburban Corte Madera. But the towns of Marin County along Highway 1 are really quaint and nice. We had never explored this part of the County before, and after this drive, we wished we had explored it a long time ago. Now we have a much different opinion of Marin County.

Photo by me

Photo by me

THIS is a stop we really enjoyed, the little town of Point Reyes Station. We're really into mead, and we had read about this meadery a while ago, and we forgot about it until we just "happened" upon it. So we hung out here for a bit, hehe.

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Mmm, mead... The mead they produce at this meadery is the slightly fizzy kind. It was really good.

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We had quite a number of them. This was my partner's 2nd or 3rd glass (?).

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The setting was so nice too, outdoors, among the olive trees, so relaxing... And this is more of the "typical California" Mediterranean setting I think of and is more familiar to me. And the funny thing, this is the first meadery we've been to where families with kids were at; usually it's just adults. This place doesn't even serve food, so I thought it was funny that there were kids here.

Photo by me

Photo by me

Can you tell I really like this place? It was very relaxing. We were actually here a while, at one point many people left and it seemed like we were the only ones there. Our server was extremely nice, too.

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OK, the town of Point Reyes Station itself.

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And then into San Francisco. We didn't stop here, we kept driving through...

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Is this an actual Euro-style California plate? Are these legal?

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Years ago, we would stay at a little hotel on Union Street.

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Across the Bay...

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...into Berkeley. We love Berkeley!

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Parked it and walked it to our go-to place for momos in Berkeley. We love us some momos.

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This place has all kinds.

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I love it when the chai develops that skin.

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Mmm, momos!

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We also got other food, to sop up all that alcohol we had earlier.

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And then from here, we drove straight home back to South Pasadena.

What a fun trip and weekend!!

LAsam · #2 Posted **Sep 3, 2021, 9:17 PM**

Looks like an amazing trip! I love small town California. Haven't gotten to see any towns up where you were, but I have seen some of the gold rush towns in the Sierra foothills like Grass Valley and Nevada City. Momos are Nepalese if I remember correctly? Look delicious! I think I had those in a Nepalese restaurant in the North Beach section of SF.

homebucket · #3 Posted **Sep 3, 2021, 9:19 PM**

Fantastic tour! I agree there are a lot of little quaint towns along the Tomales Bay coastline. Lots of good oyster farms in that area as well. Did you get to check out Cowgirl Creamery? I get most of my cheeses from there. I'll have to check out that Meadery sometime as well, looks interesting!

The North One · #4 Posted **Sep 3, 2021, 10:11 PM**

Ferndale looks like a dream, so perfectly preserved and simple. Wonder what it's like living there.

MplsTodd · #5 Posted **Sep 4, 2021, 12:34 AM**

Great tour! I love the California coastline and wish I could spend more time there. But photo tours like this help bring me there. Thanks!

EastSideHBG · #6 Posted **Sep 4, 2021, 3:27 PM**

Beautiful! And no, from what I have found it does not appear that the Euro style license plate is legal in CA.

ethereal_reality · #7 Posted **Sep 4, 2021, 4:48 PM**

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It looks like you and your partner had a wonderful little get-a-way. Thanks for sharing your photos, sopas.

sopas ej · #8 Posted **Sep 5, 2021, 5:17 AM**

Thanks for the comments, guys!

Quote:

Originally Posted by LAsam

Looks like an amazing trip! I love small town California. Haven't gotten to see any towns up where you were, but I have seen some of the gold rush towns in the Sierra foothills like Grass Valley and Nevada City. Momos are Nepalese if I remember correctly? Look delicious! I think I had those in a Nepalese restaurant in the North Beach section of SF.

Yes, momos are Nepalese and Tibetan. There's a Himalayan restaurant on Venice Blvd. in the Palms/Culver City area and two Nepalese/Himalayan restaurants in Pasadena that serve momos (one of them even serves yak momos), but none of those restaurants have the many choices of momos that this particular place in Berkeley has.

Quote:

Originally Posted by homebucket

Fantastic tour! I agree there are a lot of little quaint towns along the Tomales Bay coastline. Lots of good oyster farms in that area as well. Did you get to check out Cowgirl Creamery? I get most of my cheeses from there. I'll have to check out that Meadery sometime as well, looks interesting!

We did not get to check out Cowgirl Creamery. Maybe on our next trip---hehe we're already planning on staying up there near the Tomales Bay some time in the not-too-distant future, we've already looked up some places in Inverness. And yes, you should check out that meadery sometime, it's pretty good, and it's a very chill place.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EastSideHBG

Beautiful! And no, from what I have found it does not appear that the Euro style license plate is legal in CA.

Thanks for looking that up for me. I was wondering, because the registration stickers on that plate look legit, as does the alpha-numeric combination on the plate, which follows the standard "#XXX###" configuration for a private passenger vehicle CA plate. I've only seen that on another car once before down in the LA area.

DetroitSky · #9 Posted **Sep 5, 2021, 5:54 AM**

Very nice!

Its amazing how similar waterfront towns can be across the country. Tomales looks just like a small Michigan beach town.

Pedestrian · #10 Posted **Sep 5, 2021, 7:56 AM**

First of all, driving through San Francisco you passed my front door and if I'd known I would have waved.

Ferndale is noted for 3 things:

- Lots of unspoiled Victorian architecture.

- Numerous earthquakes, mostly centered off the coast

- It used to be where an undersea low frequency cable came ashore by which the US Navy communicated with submarines in the Pacific Ocean basin. That system has now been shut down I believe because there was concern the low frequency emissions were harmful to marine life including whales.

Earthquake faults off Ferndale:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernda...9.18.06PDT.gif

Pedestrian · #11 Posted **Sep 5, 2021, 7:58 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by sopas ej

We did not get to check out Cowgirl Creamery. Maybe on our next trip---hehe we're already planning on staying up there near the Tomales Bay some time in the not-too-distant future, we've already looked up some places in Inverness. And yes, you should check out that meadery sometime, it's pretty good, and it's a very chill place.

Cowgirl Creamery sells their products in San Francisco. They used to have a stall in the Ferry Building Marketplace but I think they shut that down due to covid. But still places like Whole Foods and others have their stuff I think.

mousquet · #12 Posted **Sep 5, 2021, 2:27 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by sopas ej

Is this an actual Euro-style California plate? Are these legal?

Photo by me

Yup, that's pretty much the kind of plain and minimalist plates stuck to Euro cars. It is easier read for the cops, lol. Only useful characters written to it, so they can find the owner of the vehicle more easily if needed.
That BMW was designed in Bavaria after all, so why not? The plate regulation is known to be flexible in the US. So that is definitely not illegal over there.

Some cool little Victorian facades out there.

xzmattzx · #13 Posted **Sep 9, 2021, 2:34 AM**

Nice pictures!

Ferndale looks great! What a nice stock of Victorian architecture!

That landscape way up in northern California is interesting to me, too. I have never seen it myself. What are your thoughts about that part of California in general? Is it extremely woodsy? Is there more farmland than you would think?

Where does Mill Valley fit in with your conceptions about Marin County? I remember driving through it to get to Muir Woods, and I thought it was nice. The houses in the hills, nestled amongst redwoods, was enchanting to me. Tiburon was pretty nice as well, and being from way out of town, I did not pick up too much on any uppitiness.

What's the best meadery in California? How does the one you stopped at stack up against others you've been to? If you are ever in northern Delaware, or passing through from Philly or New Jersey to Maryland or DC (or vice versa), check out Liquid Alchemy in Newport. It is a pretty good meadery around here.

How long does/did it take you to drive from San Francisco to Pasadena? How long did it take to get to Ferndale from San Francisco?

JManc · #14 Posted **Sep 9, 2021, 4:56 AM**

Great photos. Bucket list is to drive up CA coast.

RE: Plates. Texas has those Euro style plates too. Only seen them on cars that look like they were brought over here from countries with those types of plates.

sopas ej · #15 Posted **Sep 9, 2021, 6:23 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

Nice pictures!

Ferndale looks great! What a nice stock of Victorian architecture!

That landscape way up in northern California is interesting to me, too. I have never seen it myself. What are your thoughts about that part of California in general? Is it extremely woodsy? Is there more farmland than you would think?

Thanks! It is very woodsy, yes, at least the parts of Humboldt County that we drove through. Ferndale seems to be on a plain, and there is agriculture around it. They must still have a large dairy industry because we saw cows everywhere (unless they're beef cows), but yes, there is definitely some farmland.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

Where does Mill Valley fit in with your conceptions about Marin County? I remember driving through it to get to Muir Woods, and I thought it was nice. The houses in the hills, nestled amongst redwoods, was enchanting to me. Tiburon was pretty nice as well, and being from way out of town, I did not pick up too much on any uppitiness.

I think Mill Valley is nice, and I like the look of the town as compared with Sausalito/Tiburon, because it's more rustic-looking. I've also only driven through it once, though, so I didn't really get the feel of what the locals (or visitors) might've been like, but I did get the sense that a lot of those people had money.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

What's the best meadery in California? How does the one you stopped at stack up against others you've been to? If you are ever in northern Delaware, or passing through from Philly or New Jersey to Maryland or DC (or vice versa), check out Liquid Alchemy in Newport. It is a pretty good meadery around here.

The best meadery in California? Hard to say; we've been to only six of them, and we pretty much like all of them, though the one we really like is one in Carpinteria (in Santa Barbara County) called Apiary Ciderworks & Meadery. The Heidrun Meadery in Marin County had the best setting outside among the olive trees; their mead is good too, but like I said in my earlier post, it's a different style of mead, which is kind of fizzy like champagne, but still very good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

How long does/did it take you to drive from San Francisco to Pasadena? How long did it take to get to Ferndale from San Francisco?

From San Francisco to Pasadena, is about a 6 to 7 hour drive, sometimes more, depending on which route you go, and how fast/slow you drive (one time going really fast, and with only 1 pit stop, I made it in a little over 5 hours). And then of course there's the traffic factor, too.

It's kinda hard for me to gauge how long it would take to drive directly from Ferndale to San Francisco because we kind of took our time; plus we drove from Ferndale to Mendocino, and then from there we took our time to drive to San Francisco. But my guess would be from SF to Ferndale directly... maybe about 5 hours? I'm not sure.

sopas ej · #16 Posted **Sep 9, 2021, 6:36 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by JManc

Great photos. Bucket list is to drive up CA coast.

Thanks! Yes, I really love the California coast too, particularly the central coast. I believe the only part of the CA coast I haven't been to/driven on is the part north of Arcata, and the part of the coast between Ferndale and Rockport.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JManc

RE: Plates. Texas has those Euro style plates too. Only seen them on cars that look like they were brought over here from countries with those types of plates.

Well, looking it up online, it seems that there's a company (or companies) that make those kinds of plates, and you can have anything printed/embossed on them, but they're probably really only for cars in states that don't require a front plate, and you can put it on the front of your car like you would any other novelty plate, like an AZ flag plate that I've seen, or a U of Michigan logo novelty plate.

Many years ago, at a previous job I had, I had a co-worker who every so often, would go to Sweden with his wife to buy a Volvo and have it shipped to LA, but before shipping it, they would do a road trip around Sweden in it (and maybe even some other European countries) before shipping it back home. It would have red Swedish import plates on it, similar-looking to these, and they would keep them on the car and just put the California plates on over it:

Princeps, flickr.com

Pedestrian · #17 Posted **Sep 9, 2021, 7:23 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

Nice pictures!

Ferndale looks great! What a nice stock of Victorian architecture!

That landscape way up in northern California is interesting to me, too. I have never seen it myself. What are your thoughts about that part of California in general? Is it extremely woodsy? Is there more farmland than you would think?

This is, of course, the Emerald Triangle and cannabis is, I believe, the biggest cash crop. Hence, the "farmland" is not very apparent to the casual observer, being intentionally hidden (marijuana is legal in CA now but you still need a license to grow it in commercial quantities and that's apparently cumbersome to obtain so many growers don't bother. Also, if the operation is large enough, the Feds, who still consider it illegal, might come calling).

Cannabis aside, dairy farming and wine grapes are probably the biggest crops. In valleys you often see cows grazing or grapes growing but the hills are pretty well forested.

Quote:

Where does Mill Valley fit in with your conceptions about Marin County? I remember driving through it to get to Muir Woods, and I thought it was nice. The houses in the hills, nestled amongst redwoods, was enchanting to me. Tiburon was pretty nice as well, and being from way out of town, I did not pick up too much on any uppitiness.

The majority of the land in Marin County is not available to development, being either parkland or having some kind of environmental restriction. So the homes are in the corridor along US101 and roads leading to and from it on the Bay side of the county except for a couple of little coastal towns like Bolinas. Mill Valley is part of the 101 corridor. Mostly the houses aren't large but they cost a lot anyway. My guess is the priciest parts of the county are along the Bay--Belvedere, Tiburon, Sausalito--though. Those have great views of San Francisco. There's also the town of Ross which is inland and very upscale.

Quote:

How long does/did it take you to drive from San Francisco to Pasadena? How long did it take to get to Ferndale from San Francisco?

There's 2 routes from SF to Ferndale/Eureka: Highway 1 along the coast and US101 inland. The former takes a lot longer--hours longer. But it's spectacularly beautiful the whole way. US101 is fairly scenic too once you get north of Santa Rosa but not nearly as curvy and more of a "regular" road though it does go through scenic small towns and redwood groves. Still probably takes 5 hours or so, though (just a guess--long time since I've done the full trip).

geomorph · #18 Posted **Nov 1, 2021, 6:13 PM**

I love the setting for the Ferndale Cemetery!