Glass Beach & Botanical Gardens

Our little anniversary getaway to Fort Bragg, CA was an absolute blast that went by too fast. Instead of preparing to head back to work tomorrow, I’ve been enjoying sorting through the 2,ooo+ pictures hubby and I took over this adventure. Sorry, no food in this post. But it’s interesting to see how much I’ve changed since adopting a high-raw vegan diet. Not that many years ago I would have been into shopping and checking out all the man-made attractions on a getaway like this. This trip was all about appreciating the beauty of nature, much like a raw vegan diet does through food.

Hubby and I spent the first half of our anniversary hiking all around Glass Beach. The weather was perfect, the morning coastal fog disappeared giving us bright sun light to enjoy the beauty.

The trails to the beach were lined with wild blackberry bushes that were covered in wicked thorns, so we left them for the birds to enjoy.

For most of the beach, the sand is covered in beautiful worn pieces of glass and stones. Since no one is supposed to collect the glass pieces, I was happy to just snap pictures of the beauty.

There were so many interesting rock formations along the beach.

And fun watching the seaweed, crabs, and little fishes in the tide pools.

The colors of the water just blew me away, so crisp and bright. We could have sat there for hours watching the waves crash.

It took me a few shots to get a wave crashing on the rock. :-)

There were many of these little, unique streams running off the shore into the ocean that were also fun to climb.

And worth the climb for the view from the top of the cliff.

By the afternoon we moved on to the Mendocino Botanical Gardens which is a huge garden consisting of many trails. It took us about 2 hours to cover all the beauty and it was worth it.

This place is an amateur photographer’s dream and plenty of visitors were toting around huge cameras and lenses to take advantage. I tried to sharpen my skills, but limited myself to packing only one lens for the day to travel light and make things easier.

The views from the shoreline trails were just amazing.

There was an eerie whistling sound in the distance coming from a whistle buoy off the coast. Had no clue they could be that loud adding an interesting memorable piece to the experience.

We got a kick out of one couple who set up a picnic near this view with a bottle of wine and their dog just sitting there and enjoying life. I think that will be us when we retire. :-)

The blooming dahlia display was gorgeous, I had no clue there were so many varieties.

So many vibrant colors, I think we snapped 200 pictures alone there were so many perfect dahlias in bloom.

Of course I had to check out the veggie garden, lots of pumpkins, squashes, kale, greens, broccoli, etc. growing.

We had these flowers in our yard growing up and I used to pick them and pretend they were little dancing ballerinas.

Admission to the gardens was $14, but very worth it for anyone who enjoys nature, hiking, and/or photography.

It was 3PM when we left and we’d been hiking and on our feet for hours. But we weren’t done! However, I am done going through pictures for the night, so more tomorrow!