Bay to Gualala
Photos
Mendocino County draws visitors from California and around the world to its rocky shoreline, sandy pocket beaches, and dense forests. Along with its natural attractions, the Mendocino County coast has fine art galleries, unique performance spaces, and lively community events.
Visit a gallery or take in a performance
For over half a century, the nonprofit Mendocino Art Center has exhibited the work of artists from the Mendocino area and beyond and has offered classes in painting, sculpture, ceramics, and jewelry-making. Outdoor painting demonstrations and quick-draw competitions are just a few of the center’s public events. The Art Center’s activities include the annual Mendocino Coast garden tour held in June and arts and crafts fairs that take place in July and November. Musical performances take place on the first Sunday of each month. The Mendocino Art Center is located at Little Lake and Kasten streets. For information, see: www.mendocinoartcenter.org. With a long-standing reputation as an artist-friendly community, the town of Mendocino is also home to many commercial galleries, as are Fort Bragg and other Mendocino County communities.
Mendocino Art Center
The Mendocino Theatre Company offers a year-round schedule of plays at its theater at 45200 Little Lake St.; for information, call: 707-937-4477. In Fort Bragg, the venerable Gloriana Theatre puts on a range of productions; call: 707-964-7469. The Symphony of the Redwoods performs at venues in Fort Bragg and Mendocino; for upcoming performances, call: 707-964-0898. The beautifully restored circa-1928 Arena Theater in Point Arena maintains a busy schedule of film screenings, live opera simulcasts, theater works, and community events; call: 707-882-3456. In Gualala, the Art in the Redwoods Festival, now in its sixth decade, is held in August, with performances and art exhibits. For information on events throughout the county, see: www.mendocino.com.
Kayak on the sea
Relatively sheltered waters at Van Damme State Park, plus a beach-level parking area, make the park a fine launch spot for sea kayakers; sea caves are not far away. Kayak Mendocino offers tours year round from Van Damme State Park; call: 707-937-0700. At Mendocino Headlands State Park, Big River Beach is another spot to launch small craft, and the rocky shore has sea caves and excellent views of the historic town of Mendocino perched on its plateau. Catch-a-Canoe, located at the Stanford Inn on the south bank of Big River, offers boat rentals and bicycles, too; call: 707-937-0273. Russian Gulch State Park also has a good kayak launch spot at a cove beach. The small community of Elk is situated on a high bluff, but a paved path provides a way for kayakers to roll equipment down to the water’s edge at Greenwood State Beach. Dramatic sea caves and offshore rocks await visitors who launch there. Tours and instruction are available at various Mendocino County locations from Liquid Fusion Kayaking; call: 707-962-1623.
Mendocino Bay Overlook
Go fishing
Noyo Harbor at Fort Bragg is a departure point for ocean fishing trips. Albacore, salmon, lingcod, and rockfish are frequently taken by those on party boats, which can be arranged at the harbor. Wildlife excursions in search of seabirds and gray or blue whales can also be booked at Noyo Harbor. Shore fishing is possible at numerous sites along Mendocino County’s rocky coast, and abalone divers often head for Russian Gulch State Park and Van Damme State Park.
Explore the back country
Most of Sinkyone Wilderness State Park is roadless, and many of its attractions can be reached only on foot or horseback. Together with the adjoining King Range National Conservation Area, Sinkyone Wilderness State Park provides a long stretch of undeveloped coast for intrepid explorers. Several more easily reached coastal destinations also include a back-country component. Jug Handle State Natural Reserve, Russian Gulch State Park, and Van Damme State Park offer much more than the shoreline activities for which they are well known; each has forests and meadows with miles of trails for hikers or, in some cases, bicyclists or equestrians, located well inland from the coast. Mendocino Headlands State Park draws many visitors to the scenic bluffs around the town of Mendocino, but the park also includes over 7,000 acres of land in the Big River watershed, inland of Hwy. One. Visitors get there by trail or by kayak on the river itself.
Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, Lost Coast Trail
Big River
Other attractions
Annual Whale Festivals are held in the Mendocino County communities of Fort Bragg, Mendocino, and Little River on successive weekends in March during the gray whale’s migration season. Sea kayak tours, food and wine tasting, and art exhibits are scheduled. On the first Saturday in July, Fort Bragg hosts what is billed as the world’s largest salmon barbecue, benefitting salmon restoration efforts. For information on all these annual events, see: www.fortbragg.com.
Near the Mendocino County coast is a geological oddity, the strange sinkhole reached via the Little River Blowhole Trail. Despite the site’s name, water does not actually splash up out of the deep, circular hole in the bluff, but at high tide the waves wash rather mysteriously into it through a half-hidden natural tunnel. At Russian Gulch State Park is a feature called the Devil’s Punchbowl, actually a collapsed sea cave, into which the ocean surges at high tide.
Mendocino County’s pygmy forest is a rare living resource. At Van Damme State Park dwarf trees and shrubs grow in shallow, nutrient-poor soil called podzol, a Russian word that describes the soil’s ash-gray color. Pygmy trees that are decades old may reach a height of only two or three feet; in better conditions the same species attain normal size. Pygmy forest soils are among the most acidic in the world, with a pH about the same as vinegar. A boardwalk leading through the forest is reached via Little River Rd., off Hwy. One.
Mendocino County
Sinkyone Wilderness State Park
KING RANGE NATIONAL CONSERVATION AREA: Mattole River Beach (Humboldt Co.) to Four Corners (Mendocino Co.). Most of the King Range is in Humboldt County. The Lost Coast Trail continues south from the Hidden Valley trailhead on Chemise Mountain Rd. into Sinkyone Wilderness State Park in Mendocino County. Nadelos and Wailaki campgrounds, accessible by Chemise Mountain Rd., are near the Lost Coast Trail.
NEEDLE ROCK: Briceland Rd./Mendocino Co. Route 435, 7 mi. S.W. of Four Corners. Sinkyone Wilderness State Park visitor center, picnic area, campsites, and the
