Category Archives: 157 – Arcata, CA

157 - Arcata, CA

Northern CA Coast – Arcata and Eureka Area

We got to the coast in Arcata, CA.  It’s wonderful here after the heat of Coarsegold and Pollock Pines where it was in the 90s and 100s every day and barely cooled off at night.  Here we have a marine layer every day and it only got as warm as 70 a couple of days.  A few days it was actually chilly all day until mid-afternoon.  One reason for that is we are under a huge tree and the sun only starts to hit the rig about 3pm.  What a nice change!!

While in this area we took a few drives to see the country.  On one drive we went to Blue Lake, which is really a wide spot on the Mad River.  We drove along it for a ways but in the area where we drove the access to the lake would have meant scrambling down some rocks to get to the level of the lake, and as Laddy hasn’t been feeling well lately we didn’t want him to exert himself so we only looked out at it from the road.  It’s beautiful and very unspoiled.  Here’s a picture:

On another drive we went along the coast.  Arcata is at the north end of the Arcata Bay, and we drove out to the coastline through two small towns – Manila and Samoa.  Interesting names!  Samoa was originally Brownsville, and as the harbor is similar to that of Pago Pago in the Samoa Islands, and because of a crisis there in the 1890s the name was changed.  From Samoa you can drive to the Dunes Recreation Area and there’s a bridge from Samoa across 2 small islands to Eureka.

On one of the two small islands there is a marina and a restaurant where we had dinner at the Café Marina & Woodleys Bar.  Great food and live music too!  Here’s a picture of the marina taken from our table:

And another drive took us north to the small town of McKinleyville.  Hway 101 is right along the beach for a few miles in this area and there was a vista point that looked down to the mouth of the Mad River.  It runs parallel to the coast for a way before it turns to enter the ocean.  There’s no beach access here because of the river, even though it appears very shallow.  We looked down at the mouth of the river and were surprised to see lots of seals on the sandbar.  Here’s a picture:

157 - Arcata, CA, Uncategorized

Northern California Coast – Arcata and Eureka area

We got to the coast in Arcata, CA.  It’s wonderful here after the heat of Coarsegold and Pollock Pines where it was in the 90s and 100s every day and barely cooled off at night.  Here we have a marine layer every day and it only got as warm as 70 a couple of days.  A few days it was actually chilly all day until mid-afternoon.  One reason for that is we are under a huge tree and the sun only starts to hit the rig about 3pm.  What a nice change!!

While in this area we took a few drives to see the country.  On one drive we went to Blue Lake, which is really a wide spot on the Mad River.  We drove along it for a ways but in the area where we drove the access to the lake would have meant scrambling down some rocks to get to the level of the lake, and as Laddy hasn’t been feeling well lately we didn’t want him to exert himself so we only looked out at it from the road.  It’s beautiful and very unspoiled.  Here’s a picture:

On another drive we went along the coast.  Arcata is at the north end of the Arcata Bay, and we drove out to the coastline through two small towns – Manila and Samoa.  Interesting names!  Samoa was originally Brownsville, and as the harbor is similar to that of Pago Pago in the Samoa Islands, and because of a crisis there in the 1890s the name was changed.  From Samoa you can drive to the Dunes Recreation Area and there’s a bridge from Samoa across 2 small islands to Eureka.

On one of the two small islands there is a marina and a restaurant where we had dinner at the Café Marina & Woodleys Bar.  Great food and live music too!  Here’s a picture of the marina taken from our table:

And another drive took us north to the small town of McKinleyville.  Hway 101 is right along the beach for a few miles in this area and there was a vista point that looked down to the mouth of the Mad River.  It runs parallel to the coast for a way before it turns to enter the ocean.  There’s no beach access here because of the river, even though it appears very shallow.  We looked down at the mouth of the river and were surprised to see lots of seals on the sandbar.  Here’s a picture: