When I looked at the redwood forest video from yesterday I was so disappointed because the blinding sun-glare completely hid the beauty of those groves. This lead me on a search in an office supply store and the TruValue hardware store in Fort Bragg to find something that I could use as a lens hood for the phone I use as my dash-cam. Finding something black, the right size to block as much sun as possible without appearing in the image, and easy to attach took a while but, after a couple of failed efforts, I found a rubber grommet that seemed to fit the need. It was easy to superglue to the phone case and, I think, it was the major success of a disappointing day.
The work on the phone took longer than I had anticipated so I abandoned my idea of visiting the Sea Glass Museum in Fort Bragg and started down Route 1 towards San Francisco. I had expected this would be a highlight but for the first 60 miles there were no sustained views of the coast from the road. I stopped at several viewpoints for photos but it is difficult to know which ones are worthwhile and stopping at every one is not feasible. One that was definitely worthwhile was the Point Arena Lighthouse as seen below. The first photo shows the impressive location and the second one shows the color of the cliffs more accurately.
Unfortunately, the fog started shrouding the views as I drove south and, at Bodega Bay, I decided the coast road had given me all I was going to get and I headed inland to the freeway to complete the journey. I love driving winding roads when they are scenic and relatively free of traffic but the coast road was winding, had become shrouded in fog and I was constantly following slow moving RVs. The last, semi-foggy, shot of the day was near Fort Ross
I arrived in a cloudy and damp San Francisco via the Golden Gate bridge (the one flag on today’s map) and kept going south to my hotel in San Mateo. Even here things did not improve. The room is nice but the coffee maker did not work (replaced now), the phone did not work and the Internet connection is flaky. Hopefully tomorrow will bring back the joy.
Today’s map and video are here.
Bodega Bay….isn’t that the location of the movie “The Birds”? Beware of flying feathered things….
Yes, I thought of that when I was driving through. They may have had a difficult time attacking in the fog.
Nevertheless, the photos of the coastline are beautiful despite the foggy fail, and I hope you got a good cup of coffee!
The coffee in the hotel lobby was excellent and fresh 24 hours so I didn’t actually use the replacement. The Internet, however, was a huge pain as the connection seemed to be dropped every 10 minutes.
Spent 15th August 2011 driving from Fort Bragg to Oakland, finishing the day with an Orioles away win (IO know whose influence landed me there!). I can now label my (near-identical) Point Arena photos correctly as I hadn’t recoded where they were.
Wow, we have been doing almost identical days.
My camera has GPS built in so knowing the location is as easy as clicking on the photo in Picasa which can automatically load a Google map and add a pin for each selected photo.