Day: July 20, 2018

Ferndale (population 1,371) is a little town about 20 miles south of Eureka, California which is best known for it’s large number of Victorian homes and buildings.  I drove down to Ferndale Sunday morning of the weekend I was staying in Arcata.  Here are some of the houses I saw:

What I loved about this first house is that the gutters off the main roof, instead of feeding the rainwater through a drainpipe, dropped it through a series of little cups which would overflow and send the water to the next cup down the line.  The narrow drainpipe in the next photo removes water from the small roof over the front porch.

This next photo was taken shortly before 9am, while it was still overcast.  When I came back in to Ferndale from having driven out to The Lost Coast I revisited some of the houses to get better photos after the sun had come out.

Same house, shortly before 1pm:

Same thing with this next house, the “Gingerbread House,” which is right across the street from the white house shown above.

Morning photos:

And early afternoon photos:

Other houses in town:

 

Ferndale (population 1,371) is a little town about 20 miles south of Eureka, California which is best known for it’s large number of Victorian homes and buildings.  I drove down to Ferndale Sunday morning of the weekend I was staying in Arcata.  Here are some of the houses I saw:

Ferndale (population 1,371) is a little town about 20 miles south of Eureka, California which is best known for it’s large number of Victorian homes and buildings.  I drove down to Ferndale Sunday morning of the weekend I was staying in Arcata.  Here are some of the houses I saw:

Ferndale (population 1,371) is a little town about 20 miles south of Eureka, California which is best known for it’s large number of Victorian homes and buildings.  I drove down to Ferndale Sunday morning of the weekend I was staying in Arcata.  Here are some of the things I saw:

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While I was walking around Ferndale I noticed this variation of an artichoke (a globe artichoke), which has a huge purple flower on top.

I also noticed, about 3 blocks back from Main Street, what I thought were going to be terraced gardens going up a hillside.  Turns out it is a cemetery.

I then took a few steps right across the road to include the sign…

I guess they just couldn’t bring themselves to say “Dead End”

After visiting the little town of Ferndale I decided to give seeing The Lost Coast another try, this time approaching from the north (Ferndale is where the road starts/ends depending on your direction of travel).  Immediately after leaving Ferndale I started to climb what would turn out to be a relatively small mountain.  While it had been overcast the whole time I was taking photos in Ferndale, as I drove through the heavily wooded road winding up the mountain I realized the sky above me was now blue, and I assumed that I had actually driven up through the cloud deck.  That assumption was confirmed when I reached a clear plateau at the top of the mountain and could look out at the clouds over the ocean.

These were taken starting at 1029am and I was at an altitude of 1,884 feet according to the MyElevation app on my phone.

I resumed driving (while it still had some deteriorating-condition issues this road was much better than I was anticipating – believe me, after the fiasco trying to get here from the south on Friday I had REALLY lowered my expectations…).  I drove back down through the clouds (I was curious at what altitude the cloud tops were but by the time I had driven that far down the mountain I had lost what little cell phone signal I had on the Ferndale side of the hill so the app didn’t work) and finally reached the foggy coast.  It was now 1101am and I had traveled about 12 miles south from Ferndale.

(story continues in Post 2 of 2)

Well, they say timing is everything….   I was enjoying the serenity of sitting by the road, watching and listening to the ocean when the sun finally started to break through the fog – at least right in my little part of the world.  This sequence of photos started at 1114am.

I’ve posted several photos from my vantage point looking south and once again, over the course of just a few minutes you can see more and more blue sky in them as the fog either lifted or started moving out to sea.

I decided I had seen enough and didn’t try driving any further south on the road as I didn’t want to push my luck.  As I drove back north towards Ferndale I once again drove up through the, now diminishing cloud deck to the totally clear sky above.  When I got to the relatively high plateau I took a few pictures using the digital camera but am VERY disappointed how they came out.  I am learning that the Nikon camera isn’t quite as good zooming in on things as the Canon camera was.