Griffin and I celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary (June 8th) with a long weekend in Mendocino, California. Mendocino is located on the coast about 150 miles North of San Francisco. It’s a very, very small town that consists of mainly bed and breakfasts and small upscale shops (there was one that only sold kaleidoscopes).

We drove up Highway 1 the entire way to get there which was very beautiful but the curves got old after the first couple hours. It was a fun drive in the Acura through, for those with a strong stomach… I would definitely recommend taking this route if you’ve never done Highway 1 (as we hadn’t), and especially if you have a fun car. But it does get to be a bit much for a long road trip, we ended up taking 101 back home (which was still very pretty).

We stayed at the J.D. House, a bed and breakfast. You have to check out their website to see how beautiful this place was. We stayed in the Captain’s room which had an amazing deck. The house was built in 1870, and as a result was a little rickety but it had been updated well. When Griffin walked across the room the entire floor shook. The view from the deck:

While we were there we didn’t do a whole lot, mostly just lounging around, dining about, enjoying the scenery, and a little bit of exploring. On Friday evening we had dinner at The Moosse Cafe as part of a package from the B&B. The old house has been converted into a restaurant on the bottom floor and a small inn on the top floor. The food was pretty good.

On Saturday we drove to Fort Bragg, a slightly bigger town about 10 miles North of Mendocino on the coast. While there we visited a succulent nursery and bought a few plants (a yellow jade and a aloe) that are supposed to do well in full to partial shade (the conditions outside our back door under the deck). More on them later. We also visited a small lighthouse (Point Cabrillo, if I remember correctly).

Overall the town of Mendocino is very pretty and “quaint.” We enjoyed staying at the B&B (in particular the breakfast scones each morning, I think I ate 7 of them while we were there… yum). But the town got so quiet in the evenings it was a little boring for us. All the shops closed at 5pm and most of the restaurants were very upscale and expensive ($25+ for an entree). The average age of the patrons there was a solid 10-20 years older than us. So while we enjoyed the vacation and seeing the Northern coast, it wasn’t something we are super anxious to repeat.

We drove back on Highway 128 to 101 which was a very pretty drive. Coming out of Mendocino you wind through a huge redwood grove which opens up into the Sonoma valley.