Travelodge Fort Bragg

Abalone Diving

by GypsyLightChaser

Thrilling Dangerous and Delicious!

Once you taste it you will be back for more every season!

CAUTION!
Diving in icy turbulant water to find the treasured, delicious Abalone.

LIMIT 3 YOU WILL GO TO JAIL
If you are over the limit!

WARNING: Great White Sharks! Do not dive around seals as they think you are one!

ALSO: Do not drink and party the night before you go out. People die all of the time from doing this. You need your strength when you go out into this ocean, no hangover. NO SCUBA

Gear can be rented for about $25 at the dive shop Sub-Surface Progession located on Hwy 1 south of Fort Bragg

TOOLS NEEDED

2 special tools, one to measure the size of the ablalone underwater and the other to pry them from the rocks

LICENSE

Around $50 dollars can buy them at Rite Aide or Longs and other places.

A great Northern California town

by Whiskeyguy

"A great couples trip"

I've visited Fort Bragg a few times now, all of them as romantic trips, and I expect to return many times still. Situated off of California's Highway 1 on the Pacific Ocean, it offers breath-taking coastlines, a small town atmosphere, whale watching, hiking, and many other activities. It's the type of town you visit without planning out your days. The town itself has many small shops, and the people are very friendly. The Pacific Coastline is famous for its jagged cliffs as well as secluded beaches.

Fort Bragg/Mendocino Romantic Getaway

by lygchicana

Besides Mendocino and Albion, this bucolic village of 6,000 is the most inspiring seascape and inviting tidepool destination on the California north Pacific Coast. As you explore Fort Bragg's Glass Beach, trip through the glittering pebbles, shimmering beneath your pasos(steps) is discarded rusted metal, transformed to ruby, emerald and sapphire glints by the polishing swells of the Pacific tides. Once a booming logging town, Ft. Bragg still has the belching smokestacks of the Georgia-Pacific Company, as alarming reminders that we export our treasured wood resources to the Pacific Rim. Ft. Bragg, located 8 miles north of Mendocino, is the Victorian picture-postcard fishing and commercial center of the Mendocino coastal region. Along picturesque California Highway 1, downtown Ft. Bragg offers numerous art & sculpture galleries, "Antique Row" on North Franklin for your junking adventures, the North Coast Brewing Company, one of the 10 best breweries in the world, to "wet your
whistle", charming cottages and bed & breakfast accommodations, surrounded by tantalizing eateries and a few blue-collar, working-class watering holes with the soundz of R & B and an occasional blue note jazz session.

Fort Bragg's lumberyards are declining and dying, though, due to overlogging and U.S. importation of substandard lumber for our construction & building needs. The Fort Bragg Chamber of Commerce has been cleverly orchestrating a quaint retro-fit and renovation for a decade or more. Ft. Bragg's once booming and prosperous past can be nostalgically recaptured by visiting the Victorian mansion built by timber magnate C. R. Johnson, now housing the Guest House Museum, the gingerbread Queen Anne Pudding Creek Inn, and boarding the Willit's Skunk Train, run by the Calif. Western Railroad, from the old railroad depot,
built in 1924.

Fort Bragg is a hub for state parks and reserves within a 20 minute drive of its loverly perimeter. Between Mendocino & Ft. Bragg, taking Hwy. 1, you access Russian Gulch State Park directly. Its oceanfront trails culminate at the Devil's Punch Bowl, a blowhole or ocean sculpted tunnel at ithe inland end of the trails. Across Hwy. 1 there are 9 miles of climbing trails that traverse the crisp redwood, fir & laurel woods to hide in & share a stolen kiss.

Traveling 2 miles north, you veer off at an angle to Point Cabrillo Preserve,
that windkissed peninsula with its own lighthouse beacon. Another short jaunt away you can climb "the ecological staircase" at Jughandle State Reserve with its creekside bogs, meandering meadowlands, and miniature trees and evergreen shrubs. Seals bark and frolic at the Ten Mile Beach at MacKerricher State Park, two mile north of Ft. Bragg. If you make another romantic getaway to this wondrous region, try planning it for late January through or early April, perchance, you will catch a chance sighting of a lone whale or small herd on their journey towards Point Reyes Marin Headlands back to their temporary late winter, to their late winter, early spring home at San Quintín, Baja California or Guerrero Negro oceanographical study site. Ten Mile Beach has a constant and dangerously cold surf. NO SURFERS OR SWIMMERS ALLOWED! Winter time brings violent storms and ocean upheaval battering to the Mendocino coastline. Best to make your trip early spring or summer, to curl you toes in this foamy surf, squeak your feet on the Mendocino's squishy sands. TRACE YOURS AND YOUR LOVER'S NAME IN THE BLESSED SAND, SO YOUR TWO SPIRITS CAN BE CARRIED OFF TO OTHER SHORES!