We ended up staying in Merced, CA for three nights then headed to Ukiah, CA for no other reason other than I wanted to go to San Francisco and Ukiah and go over the Golden Gate Bridge and Ukiah was on the way toward Oregon. The guy working the desk at the hotel in Merced strongly recommended the Ukiah area not because it was in the Mendocino wine country, but because it had breweries. He seemed to know a lot about breweries and I had no real reason to want to go to breweries but I listened and booked the room in Ukiah. We didn’t go to any breweries, but driving through wine country was really pretty and we found a nice casino that Jim let me play at for all too short a period of time. I won a little though.
The guy at the Merced Hampton Inn teaches Jim's duck about breweries in Ukiah
The Pacific northwest wet weather started for us somewhere south of San Francisco. It was still fun because we took a few wrong turns and ended up in the downtown area. Jim kept asking if I wanted to stop but, well, I wasn’t smart enough to pack wet weather gear and, well, it was raining pretty hard. We parked for a little while at the Presidio where you could (even through the rain and fog) see Alcatraz Island without getting out of the car. After watching the rain and the island for awhile we crossed the bridge.
Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in the rain
It seemed to take forever to get from Merced to Ukiah. I guess I never thought about how long California really is. The coastline is beautiful and I loved Mendocino county, but when you’re on a trip like this, you get kind of anxious to move on to the next state after you’ve seen what or who you’ve come to see. There’s such a big difference between Southern California and Northern California though. That made the whole trip through one of the more interesting parts of the whole trip.
Jim's duck visiting Ukiah, but not the breweries