Spring Break Trip-Day 4

Unfortunately, the day had come for us to leave Point Arena and head back home. However, we didn't have to check out until 11am, so we milked as much time out of our stay as possible. Predictably, this day was perfect with the sun fully out. We eventually checked out and said goodbye to the Wharf Master's Inn. Before leaving town we stopped at Franny's Cup & Saucer bakery to grab some pastries. Britt had scouted this place out and was excited to see what they had. As soon as we walked in to the little bakery I knew that this was a good call. It smelled amazing. We looked over all the things that they had and Britt ended up getting a mini-pizza and a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie and I got a croque monsieur (literally "mister crunch"). We made our way north on CA-1 and stopped at Navarro Beach at the delta of the Navarro River. This is a large and beautiful beach just south of Albion. When we arrived, there were no cars and not a single person on the beach. We were excited to have this whole beach to ourselves. By the time we reached the water, however, about four cars showed up and about ten people got out. So much for having the beach to ourselves. This wasn't a problem, though, because of the size of the beach. We enjoyed ourselves for a little while before heading back to the car to have some lunch. Britt finished off her mini-pizza and I thoroughly enjoyed my croque monsieur.Next, we headed east on CA-128 and drove through the Navarro River Redwoods (left), which was very pretty. We then drove through Anderson Valley and passed many beautiful vineyards. We turned onto CA-253 and headed towards US-101, which we took north to CA-20. We followed CA-20 all the way to its end at I-80. Along the way, we were impressed with the size and scenery of Clear Lake. We had good views of Sutter Buttes as we made our way across the central valley, which is an island of jagged peaks smack dab in the middle of the valley. After passing through Yuba City, we began climbing towards our beloved Sierra Nevadas. We drove through a little bit of rain but emerged onto I-80 near Lake Spaulding and were greeted with a beautiful snowy alpine scene with Old Man Mountain in the middle of it. We were only a few miles from home and happy to be close. However, we were sad not to be on the coast anymore because of the great time that we had in the past few days. Perhaps, one day, we will return.