Roamin Goes To The Beach

The last week of the year between the holidays is usually a slow time for us work wise.  This year we decided to close shop, take a vacation and go to the coast.

nice small beach within walking distance to our home on wheels

Caspar Beach it is.  There is beach access right across the street from the campground. How. Sweet. Is. That?

yep, it's really that close :-)

I'm a sucker for the beach.  It's my sanctuary from life.  I could sit on the sand, soak up some sun and read a good book for hours, all while listening to the sound of the crashing waves on the shore.  During my high school and young adult years I lived very close to Half Moon Bay.  It was an easy 30 minute drive to the beach.  I was in heaven! 

Caspar Beach RV Park is a small park with both tent sites and RV sites.  They offer a Good Sam discount so we ended up saving a little bit of cash too.  During our visit the tent areas were closed due to being flooded out.  We did walk the little bit that we could and it looks like a great campground to tent as well as RV.  The Wi-Fi worked quite well too.  Our five day stay was just what we needed.

our spot among the shade trees

Since our trip to Carmel in November we now know how much Rufus likes the beaches too.  Our days were usually planned around his enjoyment but let's face it: we had fun too!

Ron asked at the front store if there were any good tide pools in the area.  The owner told him about a small beach close enough to visit.  We opted to take the truck since the road there is narrow, too narrow at some spots for walkers with a dog.

The narrow trail leading to the beach was quite muddy in places.  We had to walk along the outer areas to keep our shoes somewhat clean.  Luckily someone had placed some wooden planks down in some of the areas.
















Our hunt paid off.  The beach was completely empty.  Rufus did hundreds of zoomies without tiring.  Unfortunately the low tide was still too high to reach the elusive tide pools.  We did however manage to climb around a bit and enjoy the quietness of it.

During our time in Caspar we visited the towns of Mendocino to our south and Fort Bragg just a little north of our campground.




Mendocino is a cute little town with plenty of shops to stroll through.  We'd rather visit the beach and stroll through the sand than shops.  I found a geocache for the area that is like a walking tour of the town.   As we walked along the streets I did notice the locations a few of the hints pointed toward.  But alas, the beach was calling us...

While walking along the bluff we spotted a small beach with a seemingly gigantic pile of drift wood.  We could see people walking down there.  But how do we get down there?  We walked further around and then we spotted the staircase built into the side of the cliff.  So that's the path down :-)

yippee, we found it :-)

Once down to the sand, Rufus had a great time and more zoomies were had!  Ron and I enjoyed discovering the various pieces of drift wood and one in particular looked like a giant cinnamon twist doughnut!

see what I mean??

Mendocino and the drift wood beach

The weather during our stay was cold and sometimes windy but always sunny.  One beach we didn't get to was Glass Beach.  Perhaps the next time we visit the area we'll get to see it for ourselves.

There is a small lighthouse in the area that we stopped at on a different day.  Point Cabrillo Light Station has a couple of geocaches in the vicinity.  We found one but the other seems to have been displaced by recent renovations.

     


The lighthouse itself is now a museum/gift shop.  Inside there are photos of the light keepers of old and trinkets for sale.  Donations are gladly accepted if you don't want to make a purchase.  There are other buildings which are now rentals.  Yes, you can stay in the same buildings where the light keepers resided years ago.  How cool would that be?

This past month we've been at our home base riding out the winter storms.  The rain has been coming down in record totals!  California needs it, so I'm not complaining.  Once the spring hits and the weather is more conducive to onsite work, I'm sure we'll be traveling more.