BRIAN GAUVIN

PUBLISHED IN: American Way, World Traveler, New Orleans Magazine, Louisiana Life, Travel Holiday, Beautiful B.C., Texas Highways, Canadian Living, Sail Away, Sea, Living Aboard, Pacific Yachting, Natural New England, Preservation, AAA Southern Traveler, AAA Midwest Traveler, The Travel Tab, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Contra Costa Times, The Toronto Sun, Journal du Montreal.

SPECIALTIES: Domestic and International travel with an emphasis on the Southeast; ports and rivers; working and floating marine subjects; stock photo library.

BOOKS: Gone Fishing, Insight Guides New Orleans (photography & writing), Insight Guides The New South, Compass American Guides Gulf South, stock published in several travel and marine books.

(504) 566-7121
1211 Ursulines Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70116
» brian@gauvinphoto.com
» www.gauvinphoto.com

NORTH COAST TOUR FEATHERED WITH FLUFFY BEDS

by Brian Gauvin, Contra Costa Times; The Sunday Times; Great Escapes

My thoughts drifted like the cedar-scented haze rising from the smoldering mound of cedar fibers, rice bran and more than 600 enzymes covering me. It was getting warm. I forgot to try to relax.

From somewhere, perhaps the Japanese rock garden in front of me, a soft voice bade me to rise from my enzyme bath to a pavilion in the woods. Afterward, I emerged feeling euphoric from my massage.

I was at Osmosis, a Japanese-style spa founded by Michael Stusser in Freestone, in Sonoma County, California. Freestone is a handful of restored buildings and 92 people. Some are refugees of modern urban blight, but the old-timers are descendants of Russian wheat farmers who arrived in the 19th century to grow food for their countrymen in Sitka, Alaska. They grew grapes as well, germinating the Sonoma Valley wine tradition.

I was on a ramble through Sonoma and Mendocino counties, a confusion of valleys and rugged coastline dotted with small towns reached by way of narrow, winding roads. The roads, even U.S. 101, are so twisted and hilly that locals estimate distance in terms of on-the-road time, rather than in miles.

Occidental is 31/2 miles from Freestone. It is not much bigger, but its roots are Italian, nourished with three Italian restaurants and eight cappuccino and espresso bars. The town’s culinary reputation began in 1876, when the Northwest Pacific Coast Railroad pushed its narrow-gauge track through from San Francisco to the Russian River. The railroad workers, tourists from the Bay Area and loggers, chopping down the giant redwoods, savored the tasty food and local wine.

It was at the Inn at Occidental, as I was sinking further into the comforter couching my bones, that I realized this was going to be a bed tour. Northern California nourishes a profusion of small inns, any one of them worthy of a weekend escape.

Jack Bullard bought the inn three years ago and filled it with a staggering collection of art and antiques. Normally the inn serves only breakfast, but periodically Jack hosts a Tastemaker’s Dinner for guest to become acquainted with regional products, such as wine, goat cheese and mushrooms.

Ultimate Comforts

My next bed was a high oak nest in the Victorian Room of Gravenstein Inn, a gorgeous 1872 Victorian home on the outskirts of Graton near Sebastopol. The view of Kathleen and Frank Mayhew’s six-acre property is as restful as the bed.

Breakfast was a fruity affair of fresh pressed Gravenstein apple juice, fruit pancakes and hand-made sausages. The yield from the orchard makes its way to the table as the season dictates.

The Elk Cove Inn commands a sweeping view of surf and rugged rocks from the bluff overlooking Greenwood Cove. Before the stock market crashed in 1929, Elk was a bustling lumber town. Today’s 200 residents thrive on hospitality from a fistful of historic buildings. The Elk Cove Inn is a two-storey Victorian house built in 1883 by L.E. White Limber Co. as an executive guest house. In 1968, it was converted to one of the first bed-and-breakfast inns on the Northern California coast.

In 1994, Elaine Bryant bought the inn and built four new guest cottages on the bluff. I was in the Greenwood cottage, enjoying a fireplace and one of those marvelous beds. This time, however, a substantially cushioned window seat looking out over the deep blue sea competed for my attention.

In the morning, after my massage, I felt ready for Elaine’s feather-bed breakfast: a layer of raisin bread and cream cheese, smothered with fresh peaches and pineapple, baked in a rum and ginger sauce.

Proselytizing included

Rachel Binah is protective of her eponymous inn. She leads a group toward the sound of pounding surf and wind, whipping across the headland at the mouth of Little River. The 1860 house had been derelict fo five years when she found it. Now it is the exquisite Rachel’s Inn, surrounded by huge cypress trees extending into state parkland between the house and ocean.

“Imagine this ocean cluttered with oil derricks, these beaches lifeless from toxic dumping and oil spills,” she says, a refrain expounded to the politicians and personalities she likes to recruit as a spokesman for ocean protection. “This is such a good place to come with a bottle of wine and look at the sunset,” she adds.

Two miles north of Rachel’s, at the mouth of Big River, lies Mendocino, a town on the National Historic Register worthy of several day’s visit.

Stanford Inn By the Sea is on the south side of the river. It is large as inns go, with 33 rooms, and has amenities such as television, telephone and movies that many smaller inns shun. However, the big beds, big fireplaces, large baths, wide balconies and excellent service are not omitted, and Joan and Jeff Stanford operate it from a personal perspective.

The grounds slope down past raised garden plots of vegetables, herbs and flowers, past the pond where black swans float, past the barn where llamas chew, past the pasture where horses graze to the marina. Canoe and bicycle rentals are available at Catch a Canoe marina under the Coast highway bridge.

From the cliffs shoring up Mendocino, I watched a fiery-red sun set the town’s facade aglow, and water from distant lands surge against the rocks. What a peculiar bunch of people have come to the West Coast, carving out curious lives in strange little towns where the bigness of everything shapes their attitude. The giant redwoods reach the sky, and the wind comes from as far away as I can imagine.