Cape Mendocino

The town of Fortuna was on our way to the cape yesterday, so that is where we stopped to attend services. As is generally our experience, the church members and pastor of Christ Lutheran were very gracious to us. We were even invited to dine with them at their new member luncheon . We are thankful that in our travels we have been fortunate to continue being a part of the body of Christ. From there we took a Sunday afternoon drive to Cape Mendocino, the furthest western point on the Continental United States. There is only one road into this area, a narrow winding road up and down forested hills and meadow land.  Needless to say, the scenic vistas were awesome. The picture below gives you an idea of what I am talking about.

This is truly rural back country- only a few ranch houses and herds of cattle dot the landscape. You can"t  live out here and think you can take a fast trip into town for supplies.There is one town on the cape, the town of Honeydew. And in that town there is a building which has the services of a post office, also sells groceries and gas(one pump of expensive gas).  We tried to figure out how anything even got trucked into this area, what with one narrow road in and that road having many large pot holes! There is another road out which we took later. After traversing upward on this peninsula we suddenly came around a curve and was given our first sight of the ocean. Off in the distance we could see high waves crashing on the rocky  seashore.

We even saw one lonely cow taking a stroll on the beach. That scene seemed so strange.. Some of this country has open range, after awhile we got use to seeing cattle grazing and lolling about by the roadside.

 The coast here is quite rocky. We saw many large boulders jutting out of the ocean as the one pictured below, it is called Steamboat Rock. An historic marker notes that a lighthouse was present here from 1865 to the 1950s. Nine ships were shipwrecked here. There were a few people on the black sandy beach, the first people we had seen all afternoon other than a few ranchers on the road in their pick-up trucks.

The weather was very changeable yesterday. There was rain during the night so a light mist and haziness would hang over the land when the sun went behind the clouds. We still certainly had a very enjoyable day!