Thanksgiving was pretty intense this year. We spent Wednesday night packing for a camping trip the next day (and night) along the coast north of Fort Bragg, CA (about 4 hours north of San Francisco). That meant it was going to be cold. Like 39°F cold. And windy. Stephanie and I are not campers by any stretch of the imagination. We ended up packing each and every conceivable blanket we could find to take with and stay warm.

The catch was that we had to be in Santa Rosa to meet up with our other co-campers, Julie, Patrice, and Eva, and Eveline and Adam, the next morning at 9:30. Meaning leaving SF at 8:15. Meaning no sleeping in on Thursday morning! Oh well, the nice thing was that by noon we were almost there. Stopped off at Navarro Beach for a cold windy lunch and our first glimpse of the ocean before heading up CA-1 through Fort Bragg to MacKerricher State Park.

We set up camp, took a long walk on the beach before the sun set, gorged ourselves on tri-tip and brie over an open fire, laid on the beach to watch the stars, managed to stay warm (and alive) through the night, had french toast and bacon and sausages for breakfast. As Stephanie said, we stuffed ourselves again (and again)!

After packing up the camp later in the morning, we headed down to Russian Gulch State Park for a hike and then Mendocino for some eating (again!) and shopping. By that point the troops were getting weary, so we bid our friends goodbye and eventually hit the road ourselves, down to Healdsburg to spend the night with Jean Claude (Stephanie’s dad) and Sabine.

Here are some of the pictures I took during our trip.