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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.

Here are more photos of the Carter House Inn, located in downtown Eureka, California.

Here are some commercial properties I saw last Saturday morning while doing a walking tour of “Old Town Eureka” in downtown Eureka, California.

And this is a huge mural I saw painted on the side of a building near where I had parked my car:

And giving credit where credit is due:

Friday of last week I drove from where I had been staying in Ukiah north to Arcata, which is about 10 miles north of Eureka, California.  When I stopped at the Visitor Center in Eureka Friday evening I got a map with a walking and driving tour of the town highlighting many Victorian and other homes in the section called “Old Town Eureka”.  Saturday morning I drove back to town to take a look:

This is a fixer-upper which looks like it could use some TLC – but it certainly has potential.

Then there were these six houses all in a row.  While maybe not considered Victorian they are well maintained.

Looking for something with a little more color?  OK, how about this?

That house is so cool I’m going to do a separate post with closeup photos of various portions.

Looking for something even more elaborate?  OK, this ought to do the trick:

That is the former “Carson Mansion,” built in 1885 by pioneer lumberman William Carson.  It is one of the premier examples of Victorian architecture in the United States, perhaps the world  It was almost demolished, which was going to cost $ 35,000.  Well, an organization bought it for that price and supposedly spent over two million dollars painting and restoring it to it’s current condition.  It is now a private club, the “Ingomar Club” (named for Mr. Carson’s favorite play).  There are rumors and lawsuits about the behavior within the confines of the club but I’m content to just stick to the exterior.

Here are some other photos (I didn’t want to venture onto the property since it is private).

There are other photos, including interior shots and a great photo of the house painted and lit up for Christmas, online.

Here are a few more houses I saw while doing the walking tour of Eureka.

This is “Pink Lady,” built for Mr. Carson’s son Milton as a wedding gift, and is right across the street from the Ingomar Club.  It is now a rental property and there are some amazing interior and exterior photos online.

Hard to tell because of the bright morning sun but this last house is lavender in color.

 

Wednesday morning I drove about an hour east of where I had been staying in Redding, California to visit Lassen Volcanic National Park.  This Park was the main reason why I left the coast of northern California and traveled inland (only to be greeted by 100+ degree temperatures!).

Lassen Volcanic National Park was created by Congress in 1916 after a series of volcanic eruptions of Lassen Peak in 1914 and 1915.  Scientists and seismologists are particularly interested in Lassen because it is one of the few places in the world which contains all four types of volcanic, or hydrothermal, formations.  They are Composite (or stratovolcanoes), Shield, Plug domes, and Cinder (or Scoria) Cones.

I arrived at the northwest entrance of Lassen at around 830am local time and the Visitor Center didn’t open until 9 so I had time to take a leisurely walk around Reflection Lake:

This is Lassen Peak.  It now has a maximum elevation of 10,457 feet.  The park entrance is at around 5,000 feet elevation and most of my time in the Park was at that elevation or higher, so the temperatures most of the day were very pleasant compared to what I experienced while in Redding.

Walking around the lake you can now see formations called Chaos Crags to the left of Lassen Peak.  While they appear to be about the same height they are actually shorter (only 8,530 feet) but are much closer to where I was taking these photos.

And here are just Chaos Crags (actually a series of 6 “plug dome” volcanoes).

I then went to the Visitor Center and learned more about the history of the Park.  To look at a map of Lassen, Google “NPS Lassen Volcanic Map” and on the first page you will see the brochure map which you may then print locally.  The main, paved road only curves through the westernmost side of the Park.  As was the case at Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon Parks, which I visited earlier this trip, I can only see a very small percentage of the Park from the main road and to get to most areas you must hike (which I don’t) or travel on unpaved roads (which I am reluctant to do).  I should also mention that, generally on the eastern side of this and the 3 Parks mentioned earlier, the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,600 mile-long trail similar to the “Appalachian Trail” in the East, traverses these Parks taking hikers north and south along the western side of the country, from Mexico to Canada.

I left the Visitor Center and the first place I stopped at was Chaos Jumbles, a huge rockfield created over 300 years ago by a series of avalanches which resulted from the collapse of the northwest face of Chaos Crags.  The thing that impressed me the most about this was the incredible distance these (substantial) rocks traveled just by the massive force of the avalanches.  The initial release traveled more than 4 miles and stopped only after CLIMBING over 400 feet on another hillside!

These rocks came from Chaos Crags, which is in the distance.  The rockfield continues a considerable distance behind this vantage point as well.

Further up the road I came to the “Devastated Area,” this one caused by the series of eruptions of the northeast face of Lassen Peak just over 100 years ago.

I continued on around the Lassen Park Highway until I got to the closest point the road gets to Lassen Peak (and also the highest point the road reaches, at 8,511 feet).  This was the snow still on the ground just off the left side of the road:

I was now looking at the “backside” of the mountain which gets longer exposure to the southern Spring and early Summer sun and no longer has much snow left on it.

But I did have a very nice view looking down at Lake Helen, with Mount Diller and Pilot Pinnacle off in the distance:

 

Here are more photos I took Wednesday at Lassen Volcanic National Park in northeast California.

This is looking back at Lassen Peak after driving down the hill and around to the other side of Lake Helen.

And this is a closer view at Mount Diller and Pilot Pinnacle.

This huge rock (I should have gotten pictures when there were people out taking photos near it) was at a scenic overlook (out here they call them Vista Points) near an area called “Bumpass Hell.”  That area is now off limits to hikers as the Park Service is making repairs and improvements to the trail leading to it.  Bumpass Hell, named after Kendall Bumpass – the man who discovered it, is a series of mudpots, fumaroles and sulfuric springs similar to what I saw last year at Yellowstone National Park.

This was a hillside further down the road.

This is Brokeoff (not Brokeback!) Mountain, what’s left of the Brokeoff Volcano which erupted approximately 600,000 years ago with a force estimated to be 50 times that of the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980.

And shortly before leaving the Park at the southwest entrance I stopped at the “Sulphur Works,” an area similar to Bumpass Hell but located right next to the road.

This is a mudpot.  It is much more interesting to see in action (I took a short video but can’t post it on the blog).  A mudpot is a bubbling pond of hot, gray water (bubble, bubble, toil and trouble…) and releases a pungent sulphur , rotten egg, odor.

These sulphur formations often leave very colorful side effects.

And this was taken from a vantage point near the southeast shore of Lake Almanor, about 30 miles from the Park as I headed south towards where I am staying in Quincy, CA.