Getaway to Fort Bragg

Housebound for three-plus months is tough for anyone. I decided to take a spur-of-the-moment trip north on Highway 101, through the former home of racehorse Seabiscuit (and infamous pot-growing region) of Willits across the great divide on Highway 20 to Fort Bragg. Fort Bragg considered changing the name of the town recently; upon examination, the town's namesake, Braxton Bragg, turned out to have been a wildly racist, embarrassingly incompetent Confederate General who never set foot in the area. They've since dropped the issue. 

It's been a good 15-plus years since I visited Glass Beach, which is now part of McKerricher State Park. Last time I was there, it was little more than a dump site that had been thoroughly ground down by wave action, leaving thousands of bits of multi-colored beach glass. Nothing remains the same.

But first: I lucked out on AirB&B to find a place rarely unoccupied - it couldn't have been a better choice. It was a separate, fully equipped small cabin, surrounded by a gorgeous garden, enclosed in a redwood forest. The space itself was squeaky clean and full of books, pillows and every imaginable comfort, including full kitchen and bath. Kay, the owner and hostess extraordinare, met me at the gate.

No wonder this place is hard to book - if you're interested, definitely jump on it during an opening. It may be foggy at the beach, but here, a mile inland, it's sunny and quiet.

The first thing I did after settling in was a trip to Glass Beach. It's not a dump site any more. There's a big parking lot and beautiful trails throughout the bluffs, plenty of informative signs - but alas, not a lot of glass. They should rename it "Glitter Beach" or "Sparkle Beach" or some such, because tiny bits of old clear glass (colored grayish white from the waves) are littered among the shells and stones.

The sandy beaches were nearly empty; the weather was typical for a Northern California beach: sunny but windy in the early evening, about 62 degrees F.

A number of wildflowers grow in the region, some of them rare. Many were in full bloom, and to see them popping out of the waving grasses in mounds was a thing of beauty.

The old trestle - a good place to watch the sunset.

Wait, is that a body in the water?

Nope. It's someone's old beach towel/chef's apron that got away.

A note on dinner, alas. As a travel writer, I'm used to eating alone, and I seldom run into any kind of "special" treatment. Fort Bragg is a fairly large, isolated town with few sources of income for anyone except the tourist trade, which is less than half of what it usually is. That's why I was surprised by the oddly rude behavior of my waiter at Silver's at the Wharf. The staff, including my waiter, were laughing and joking with other patrons in groups of two or more - especially those that ordered from the bar. When I didn't, and ordered an inexpensive menu item, my waiter practically sneered at me. The fish and chips came quickly (decent rock cod and exceptional hand-cut fries, by the way), and timing was adequate, if somewhat unfriendly. Maybe I reminded him of his first wife.

ROAD TRIP! Don’t Drink the Water and Off to the Coast

Lithia Park (image: A.N. Smith-Lee)

In 1908 the Women's Civic Improvement Club of Ashland petitioned for the creation of community space along Ashland Creek for a city park. The town engaged John McLaren, superintendent of Golden Gate Park, to design the new space. McLaren served as landscape architect of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in 1870. The original name of Lithia Springs Park was later shortened to Lithia Park; initially, there was a spring-water source at the park. The discovery of lithia water near Emigrant Lake (south of the city) led to a plan to establish a mineral spa on the grounds. Voters approved bonds to pay for the project, which included piping the mineral water from its source to Ashland.

image: A.N. Smith-Lee

Although the park was popular, the mineral spa plans proved too expensive and were abandoned in 1916. Probably a good thing, since a fountain in the park spouts full-on Lithia water, which leaves a bright red/orange stain where it flows and tastes like salty rust; I couldn’t even swallow it, perhaps envisioning my interior permanently stained the color of active lava. But the park, though not large, was eminently beautiful, capturing the best of autumn colors along its unsullied paths. Just outside the park is the roundabout that fronts Ashland's city hall (left).

Ashland Springs Hotel (image:oyster.com)

Many of Ashland's historic buildings have been preserved and restored. The city has 48 individual structures and two historic districts (the AshlandRailroad Addition District and the Downtown District) on the National Register of Historic Places. One that stands out (literally) is the nine-story AshlandSprings Hotel, towering over the town like an Art Deco wedding cake. “The tallest building between Portland and San Francisco” in 1925 when it was built, it’s been completely renovated from ruin.

We drove around for a while, searching for the “bad” neighborhoods in Ashland, with no luck. No rundown homes with rusting cars out front, no iffy trailer parks. What’s wrong with this picture? We headed north and found a few of them in Medford, which reminded me too much of the California town I grew up in, a poster child for uncontrolled suburban sprawl on a too-flat landscape. We ate at a vegetarian café in the pretty older section of town – the café will go unnamed, because the food was mediocre and they forgot half the order until we went up to the counter to ask for it. The older section of town was predictably deserted, victim of the uber-malls at the edges of town. Great little coffee shop there, though – the Limestone Coffee Company. There’s a lot that can be done with these all-too-familiar parts of too many towns, and Medford is making an effort to do it. In my travel books, I’ve been to dozens of places where residents loved their home enough to have gotten together and re-created a vibrant downtown as a center for the arts, restaurants, and boutique hotels – a destination for visitors and homies alike. Medford has a massive Harry & David plant (fruit gift baskets, confections, bakery) with tours, and beautiful surrounding country including an up-and-coming wine region that may eventually outshine Napa Valley. We decided to explore some of it: we drove north and veered west for the coast…

ROAD TRIP! Hope Yet for a Little Rail Town

Courtesy of cornerstonedunsmuir.com/historic-dunsmuir/

Heading north from the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, we stopped in Dunsmuir, a small town in the midst of a beautiful mountain range before the CA/OR border. My daughter had fond memories of the place, but my impression was of a town that waved goodbye to its glory days: empty storefronts, a deserted downtown. Dunsmuir has had its share of booms and busts. By the early 1900s, largely thanks to being a railroad center, Dunsmuir was the most populous California city north of Sacramento. By the mid-1950s, the railroad transitioned from steam to diesel locomotives, and the substantial workforce in Dunsmuir was let go and dispersed. Due to its position in a time warp, frozen in the 1930s, the downtown is designated a National Historic District. Dunsmuir remained popular with tourists and sportsmen until 1991, when a train derailed upstream from town. A tank car ruptured and spilled its entire contents into the river:  approximately 19,000 gallons of soil fumigant. Over a million fish, and tens of thousands of amphibians and crayfish were killed. The entire basis of the river’s ecosystem was destroyed including trees and other plant life along the river. The chemical plume left a 41-mile wake of destruction; the accident still ranks as the largest hazardous chemical spill in California history. The area is now largely recovered from the spill though some species (crayfish and frogs) have not yet come back. The watershed is carefully stewarded by the Upper Sacramento River Exchange, and the Upper Sacramento River is open to catch-and-release fishing all year round. Let’s hope the once-thriving little town of Dunsmuir sees better days. At least they've got plans for upcoming events, and the town has a lot of fans and potential. A great opportunity here for someone enterprising… 

Journeying on, we smelled the scene of destruction before we saw it – evidence of this year’s extensive fires left charred trees like thousands of 40-foot-tall black pencils across much of the range between Dunsmuir and the border. It will take a while, but fire and regrowth is the natural order of things. We dropped into a high plain, then into Ashland.

ROAD TRIP! Exploring Life in the Northland...

The coast by Heceta Head, Florence, OR

 It was a road trip for fun; it was a research trip for the future. My daughter and her husband lived in Portland for a year a while back, and I’ve had many friends who were nostalgically familiar with Portland, Eugene and southern Oregon. To experience a real Autumn, with deciduous trees in a Trix bowl of colors, a mild winter (maybe even snow!), a cooler summer – it all had appeal, not only as a place to visit, but for a possible migration north. The water situation in northern California is not a good one. Snow in the Sierras seems to get thinner-to-non-existent every year, and our water supply largely stems from snowmelt (we won’t mention here about how LA and points in between are bleeding off what water we have – see the movie Chinatown for that story). California is experiencing its most severe drought in recent history. Lake Shasta is currently at 53% total capacity (more about the current water conditions in California and the Bureau of Reclamation's webpage).

Traffic has reached critical levels; the expense of living in the Bay Area surrounding San Francisco has crept up like a starving tiger thanks to the dotcom super-salary boom, and California is burning.
 It’s a concern for the future. Leaving this gorgeous place for good would require at least a lateral move (same quality of life and beauty, less traffic and expense). The image of wet and green Oregon was more than tempting – so Ms. Nikki (my daughter) and I decided to test the water, so to speak. It was illuminating.