Mendocino In 2016 - A New Spine Tingling Adventure!

Hello Fellow Travelers!
Me and the PS took a little trip to Mendocino/Ft. Bragg.  Inland has been pretty warm

3.5 Ton Fresnel Lens at Point Cabrillo Lighthouse Built in 1909

The Staircase at our hotel- I had to navigate this bad-boy many times!

so being near the ocean sounded like a good idea and let's face it being near the ocean always sounds like a pretty great idea to me anyway.  Mendocino was cool, ocean-swept and lovely.  We stayed at a historic inn with spectacular views and I had fresh shellfish.  Mendocino has a lot of art and hand-blown glass hanging about and, as an added bonus, it was the date of their annual film festival, so there were added flowers and wine around town.

Mendocino was foggy, sunny, sumptuous, and eye candy.  In a word, perfect!  The hotel's back patio looked at the ocean.

This should have been a scenic piece of heaven, right?

It's a little bit different in 2016.

Prior to 2011 the PS and I would explore the coastline, going wherever the winds took us, staying at beach houses that cropped up along the way.

Going anyplace now requires the second by second planning  Seal Team Six used on Bin Laden! 

 Every item I will use has to be planned, pulled, multi purposed and cleaned.

This little "getaway" had less spontaneity than a bank heist!

Constant vertigo makes even the most beautiful winding staircase dangerous and taking a shower lethal.  Restrooms are death traps.

Any mishap can potentially result in some annoying injury now, so I've become very risk-averse.

To be able to successfully ingest bite-sized, pieces of protein-rich seafood I look at menus online and make all my decisions before I go.  Where should we go?  What will I order?  Will I order anything? (The PS says it's "weird" not to eat, so I always order)  Where will we sit?  I now treat dining out like a D-Day plan with food!

Mendocino has woods on one side of the road and spectacular, rugged ocean views on the other side.  Consequently, artists and local art  abound.  There are hundreds of ocean/tree/coastal paintings in every restaurant.  I was surrounded by hand blown, glass sculptures in any restaurant we went to.

  In Ft. Bragg I had fresh scallops which was a perfect choice for me, they were bite-sized, round and had no sauce.  As mess-free as food can come!  And delicious!

Scampering along the shore is not currently in my skill set but I was bound and determined to check out the Pt. Cabrillo  Lighthouse - I read it had a 2+ ton lens.  2 TONS OF BLOWN GLASS!  I had to see it!

This is where the years of running (the  PS)  and working out come in handy - to get to this lighthouse, I had to wheel over a mile to get to it!

I was laughing so much (and it was truly hilarious!), it took me a few minutes to realize that there were cars going past us.  Turns out you can drive the entire way!

Good thing I'm always prepared for an adventure.