Hi everybody!
We are on the coast! Surprise! It all happened so fast! Here are my photographs of the trip out here. We piled into the car and arranged ourselves on the dash. We left Sacramento heading toward San Francisco, but we went well north of SF to the Mendocino Coast.
Here you can see what a stormy day it was.
This is our exit on Highway 101. We’ll be heading west again.
We saw grapevines in Sonoma County. Miss Kate said yummy nummy.
We also saw wet hills with lots of rock slides.
Here we saw some pretty redwood trees.
We arrived at the Russian River! Here we are crossing the Hacienda Bridge and now we’ll make a left and follow the river to the ocean. It isn’t the biggest or most beautiful bridge I’ve seen, but I like it. 
Can you see me on the dash? I guess you can’t. Maybe I was tying my shoe laces. We stopped for gasoline in Guerneville. Miss Kate found some nice postcards there of the Russian River and of the bridge, and I called dibs on the bridge postcard. (I think I’ll bring it home with me.)
This is the Russian River. It’s named that for the Russians who lived here a long time ago. It’s very full.
We’re done heading West and will go North on Highway 1. In just a few minutes we got our first glimpse of the ocean!
Here’s me where the Russian River flows into the Pacific Ocean. Can you see how brown the ocean is? Miss Kate says it’s usually the green-blue color, but it’s been raining a LOT and lots of dirt has been flowing down the river.
Highway 1 has a lot of curves; this is me with one called a “hairpin turn”. It made us a little queezy in the tummy.
There were dozens of trees that had recently fallen across the road. I couldn’t count how many!
We drove by Fort Ross. Here you can see the tops of the redwood buildings there. Miss Kate told us that back in 1812 about 40 Russians with 150 Alaskans came ashore and created Fort Ross in a month. Russians had been eye-ing Northern California for a long time, but Spain had claimed it. However, Spain hadn’t moved above the middle of California, where San Francisco is today. The Russians built Fort Ross so fast and had guns and supplies so that when the Spanish found out, it was too late. The Russians were moved in! Oh, and the Russians weren’t the first in this area – they bought the land from the local Native Americans for 3 blankets, 3 pairs of pants, 2 axes, 3 hoes and some beads. (After seeing all of those fallen trees, they should’ve asked for more axes!) Hypno-dog was very proud, and he knew that Ross wasn’t some British name, but was short for Rossiya. The Russians left around 1840 – no war or anything, they just thought there were better deals up north – and they left these buildings, but more than that they left a little bit of Russian with the Native Americans in their language. For example, the Gualala Indians called milk, moloko, long after the Russians were gone. Those tribes have blended into the population, so their languages are gone. We can learn about them only from reading what one or two white men wrote down a hundred years ago. Now hundreds of acres of land are preserved to keep Fort Ross like it was 200 years ago.
Well, that was one tiring day, but it was fun to see everything. I’m just glad a tree didn’t fall on us!
I’m hoping for some nice house plants at The Sea Ranch, where we’re staying …
Love,
Holgi
