Glimpses of the Coast FORT BRAGG is the only sizable town along the Mendocino Coast (more than 6300 population.) It’s great for folks who want convenience to everything. That’s everything except big box monopolies and gambling casinos. You can walk to the beach, to the Skunk Train Depot, and to Laurel Street to shop or mix at a San Francisco style Headlands Cafe with live jazz. Fort Bragg has an excellent 49-bed hospital, a lively Senior Center, public transportation, four movie theaters and three live theaters, and so many locally sponsored fairs and annual celebrations, you’ll plan to miss some of them. It’s easy to connect in a small town like this, fun to run into people you know, and vital to have privacy when you want that.   The Highway widens at CLEONE, three miles north of Fort Bragg, but it’s not just a wide spot in the road. It’s the entrance to Mackerricker (Mi-CARE-i-ker) State Park, with acres of camp sites, a fresh water lake, miles of Old Haul Road (an oceanfront hiking and biking trail), a country store with a gas pump and a campground, a popular Mexican restaurant called “The Purple Rose”, and the Ricochet Ranch horseback riding stables. There’s also a charming inn, the Cleone Gardens, with tubs and nine rooms. Cleone claims to be a banana belt, sheltered from ocean winds by an inland curve of the coastline; it runs north a couple of miles, through Inglenook with its mysterious fen to Ten Mile River. They say that this area is a little warmer and gets more sunshine. It may produce the most wild rhododendrons and best fuchsias on the coast. For sure, it’s a great place for kids.   WESTPORT lies about ten miles further to the north of Fort Bragg and has more of a New England flavor. It, too, is an old lumber town, a seaside village still offering the basic necessities for locals who want to live away from it all, and a sandy beach, shops, and B & B’s for tourists who want to get away from it all for awhile. The winding drive up to Westport on Highway 1 offers unsurpassed views of white water activity in every conceivable coastal terrain. It is motorcycle heaven, this coastline. In the hamlet itself, you’ll find mostly cute little, beach houses (none under $300,000) and learn that they are surrounded on three sides by larger parcels of land—10, 20, 80 acres with huge houses and million dollar price tags.   CASPAR lies three miles south of Fort Bragg, half way to Mendocino, and is a growing phenomenon—becoming famous—almost. This is a self-made community with a palpable spirit and long-term, mile-high goals of resisting change. The diversity of the participants in the active and friendly Caspar community is almost eerie. What brings them together? Oceanfront dwellers, retirees, artists, aging “hippies” and young couples with kids? Once a sizable lumber town, “downtown” Caspar is now so small as to appear abandoned, but so alive that it’s been featured in TV films and newsprint as far away as New York City. No conveniences here yet, just the Caspar Inn, a block of post office boxes, a thriving Community Center, and a shul for the Jewish community of maybe 300 around Mendocino. The momentum in Caspar continues to climb; it’s the spirit of it that seems to suck people in—to share in a unique goal of survival and setting an example in an ever-changing world.   Everywhere the Mendocino Coast is a gardener’s paradise, with flowers in bloom every day of every month of every year. MENDOCINO, the invincible and incomparable jewel of the Coast, poses like the supermodel she is on a 300-acre peninsula above the unpredictable, blue Pacific. Owning property in Mendocino Village is like having a 17th century antique to show off and pamper but living in the Village is not for everyone. Mendocino is so special that you’ll recognize some of the views from TV and movies, feel the excitement, happily pay the price for an unforgettable pastry, meal, or night’s sleep and, whatever you do in Mendocino, you may have to elbow your way to do it. An exceedingly popular and romantic art colony, it’s more than unique—from the collapsing old buildings and still necessary water-towers, to the elegant restaurants, galleries, goldsmiths, and custom clothiers, Mendocino has it all. It’s so small that you wouldn’t need a car to live here year ‘round but don’t forget your checkbook.   LITTLE RIVER lies just two miles south of the town of Mendocino on a gorgeous stretch of ocean bluff. It offers the Coast’s only golf course, a landing strip for your private plane, and a couple of great eating places—the Little River Inn and the Edge of the Earth. There is a post office and one other business, a Highway One pull out with gas, groceries, wine and beer, and a darned good deli. Take a few minutes for a quick bite and enjoy the ocean view. Little River is so beautiful that you can’t count the lodging facilities in and around it. Very, very many. It’s also the entrance to Van Damm State Park and a campground right on the beach. A popular mobile home, retirement community known as “The Woods” is about three miles inland from Little River. The Woods provides many amenities for folks over 55, offers reasonable home-ownership, and even has some assisted living units.   ALBION is now a post office and hardware/grocery store about seven miles below Mendocino, just across the dramatic bridge that spans the Albion River. This area boasts a couple of the finest restaurants anywhere, the Ledford House and the Albion River Inn. From here Albion Ridge Road goes back inland a few miles and has crossroads leading to countless country homes on an acre or more of land. This is the first stop on the coast after ascending the Anderson Valley on Highway 128 from Cloverdale, via Boonville, Philo and Navarro, through colorful wine country and miles of dense redwood groves,. If you have taken the other scenic route, on Highway One through Gualala and Point Arena, you entered our “territory” (the area covered by our local Multiple Listing Service and CMAR) through Manchester, Irish Beach and Elk.   ELK can only be described as a Story-Book kind of Village. It so charming, so cute, so beautifully groomed, planted and pampered and yet, it is a real town. It has just about everything. People drive miles to spend a day in Elk because there’s something about it that makes you feel like you’re on vacation. It’s fun. Real estate is at a premium here, of course, just like around Mendocino and anywhere else along the coast with an ocean view or ocean access. Elk is surrounded by undeveloped land, huge parcels of land, sometimes they even include oceanfront bluffs.   Everywhere the Mendocino Coast is a gardener’s paradise, with flowers in bloom every day of every month of every year. Year ‘rounders who can afford it may schedule a long vacation to some sunny haven, like Mexico or the Arizona desert, sometime after the winter holidays. We need the rain but it can become a bit much about the first of February. If your life depends upon it, it might be a good idea to invest in a generator before your first winter here. In spite of what has just been written, you don’t actually need a raincoat. I gave mine away after a couple of years here. Had better use for my closet space.

Serving the Mendocino Coast from Westport to Irish Beach