Today we woke up and headed up to the Russian Gulch State Park, which was about an hour north near Mendicino. It was a really pretty park, but we immediately noticed that there was no signage inside — which was pretty odd because there were some pretty impressive hikes that we needed to try to find! Thankfully going the wrong way led us right under the beautiful arched bridge. We were able to take a few quick pics beneath it before driving back up and finding the parking lot for our first hike.
The first one that we did was along the tops of the cliffs, right on the ocean. It was the Headlands Trail and it took us over to a thing called the Devil’s Punchbowl. This is a sinkhole type bowl that had the water rushing in through a cave. There was a fence surrounding the top of the bowl, but we were able to peek over and see all the way to the bottom. It was really cool to see (and hear) the water surge through the cave and hit the ‘bowl.’
The next hike was called the Fern Canyon Hike and it was a 6+ mile trail (3 in and 3 out) to a 36’ waterfall. Our Garmin watches clocked longer than 6 miles and we also felt like the waterfall was not that tall… but the hike itself was totally worth it! The trail was relatively easy — not much elevation gain and it was nicely maintained. We definitely had sections we needed to navigate carefully, muddy areas to use stepping stones or balance on the strips of wood that were laid down, etc. But the path wound through groves of redwood trees with ferns lining the forest floor. It was gorgeous! And we learned something! We often saw huge redwood stumps and couldn’t figure out what would have caused those trees to fall. A park ranger told us that over 100 years ago those trees were likely cut down for their timber and then the ‘circle’ of new growth redwoods that often surrounded a stump were the sprouts from the fallen tree. This was called fairy ring.
The waterfall was really pretty and freezing cold. We climbed onto a nearby tree and ate our peanut butter and banana sandwiches while we enjoyed the nature. Then we walked back to the car. It was a long hike but walking back always goes quicker!
As we were driving home we realized that we could possibly make the Point Arena lighthouse before it closed at 4:30. We did our best to race there and we officially got the last tour of the day — all to ourselves! We got to climb the 144+ stairs and looked out of the glass at the top and even got to go out on the balcony. It is the tallest lighthouse on the Pacific coast! It was prettier than either of us expected and incredibly cool to see the jagged coastline from that perspective. The tour guide taught us that all of the lighthouses up and down the coast were painted specific colors and had specific light blinking “codes” so that sailers could easily tell where they were according to which lighthouse they were seeing. I had never heard that before and thought it was super cool!
The rest of the night was chores — laundry, cooking pizza and salad at the cabin, and packing up. We head out bright and early tomorrow! We did, of course, take a break at sunset to go see our seal friends one more time. They were frolicking in the water, splashing and swimming like crazy. There were a bunch lounging on the rock and one baby seal by itself on a rock that was sooo cute. We spent most of our time watching him because we really thought he was seconds away from sliding into the water. The two playful seals would often swim over to the baby and talk to him or play near him. We imagined they were trying to coax him into the water, but he never budged. After an hour in the cold wind and after the sun had officially set, we called it quits and left the seals to the dark.
Point Arena has been amazing to us and it was really kind of sad to drive away from that coast and our seals for the last time.