Mendocino, at random

Mendocino may be a fairly small village, but it’s seriously packed with historic buildings, numerous water towers, and so many small details that even without stopping to do any shopping — okay, well, much shopping — I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of amazing finds. In this series of images, I’ve focused on a relatively small area that […]

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Duck purple

I have frequently admired the blue-green iridescence of the male Mallards’ heads, so it was a nice surprise yesterday to get a glimpse of royal purple on these relatively drab females. I was sitting in my car in Lucerne, on the shore of Clear Lake, when a small group of Mallards settled down very nearby. I think we were all […]

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Colorful characters

As I wandered through the village of Mendocino earlier this month I found quite a few sculptures on the grounds outside the Mendocino Art Center, but others can be found randomly around town. One of the most prominent is the former Masonic Temple, built between 1866 and 1872. Its builder, Erik Albertson, topped it off with a sculpture that is […]

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A walk into town

During our recent stay in Mendocino, I actually walked into town twice from our rental house on the east side of Highway 1. Of course there’s loads of amazing ocean views to take in along the Mendocino Headlands; but if you stroll along any of the village streets you’ll soon find all sorts of quirky touches and beautiful historic structures. […]

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Forest hike

I’m not sure if there’s a name for this phenomenon, but maybe you’ve noticed that whenever you’re driving carefully along a winding, narrow, possibly dirt road full of potholes searching for a specific location in the middle of nowhere, three miles can feel more like 50 miles. Just a few miles up Little Lake Road in Mendocino, not far from […]

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Life in a small town

Just a few of the photos from my wanderings around Mendocino village last week. Zooming in closely on my computer, I realized the man in the photo above was carrying an American flag. Now I kind of wish I’d stayed to see what he was doing. I wasn’t aware of the significance of the two signs shown below until I […]

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Painting with light

Some of the sights along the coast on Highway 1 almost seem like paintings to me as I look through my photos of our drive north. The ever-changing clouds made the sky a wild backdrop for the wide open spaces and rolling coastal mountains.  

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August flashback

As I write this, it seems that winter has returned for another round of rain, snow, sleet, hail, and everything in between — not only in my neck of the woods but all around the continental US. Going on vacation in the coastal redwoods may not have been the greatest idea right now, but we were eager to escape from […]

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Below Timber Ridge

I just keep finding more and more photos from our stay at The Sea Ranch in Sonoma County back in September 2022. I thought this would be the final set, but there are still quite a few more images for me to go through. Every one of them brings back great memories, and I hope you enjoy them as much […]

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