Vaycay -- Part 3!

Part 1 | Part 2

In today's chapter ...

We woke up at Little River Inn and it was a gorgeous, sunshine-filled morning. Jimmy slept till NOON. I had a whole morning without him, hanging on the patio, eating mini bagels and Snapchatting our trip so far : )

When we finally got out the door of our hotel room, probably around 12:45p -- sorrrrrry, housekeeping -- we realized our destination for the day was only the town of Mendocino; 8 miles away. So we poked around! We sat at the beach across the street, took lots of pics and finally moseyed our way up the road to Mendo.

Beautiful day.

Spoiler alert: Mendo is THEEEE CUTEST. It reminded me a little of Mackinac Island actually -- right on the water, a bit old-timey, historical ... just without the horses. In the best way possible.

The first thing I wanted to do was check out the Good Life Bakery. A friend recommended it, and who doesn't love bakery treats? I ended up with a salted caramel latte and ... a bagel.

James was like, "you had mini bagels for breakfast, now you're eating a ginormous poppyseed bagel for lunch -- what's for dinner? Bagels?"

Well, I didn't even think of that. 

A bagel just sounded fluffy, fresh and delish in the moment. I didn't want to commit to an entire sando or dessert. Anyway, I ate most of it, drank my latte and we headed back out.

From here, G and I visited the Mendocino Headlands State Park and Pt. Cabrillo Lighthouse, where we saw WHALES!

We couldn't stop laughing at this one sign en route to the lighthouse (we had to walk like, a half mile). It said something like, "we don't get a lot of mountain lion attacks, but when we do, they're known to be unpredictable and deadly. Take care!"   lololol

Playing with my panoramic!

Anyway, I think I mentioned, it's whale migration season and they're all heading north. First, we'd see like, a million poofs of air (from their blow holes? I need a second-grade science class, STAT). Then we'd see fins and bodies coming up! It was nuts to think how close to the shore they really were. First whale sightings of my life, score.

Pt. Cabrillo

Between the state park and the lighthouse, we had done a LOT of walking. We checked in at our hotel, the North Cliff Inn, in Fort Bragg (8 more miles up the road), and immediately filled up our in-room hot tub.

James was like, "let's just turn it all the way hot, it'll cool down way too fast anyway."

Lies.

Fast-forward like, an hour later, and we're dumping ice buckets in it, draining half and filling the other part with freezing cold.

We're the worst. Sorry, drought!

After a bit of relaxing and a quick call for a dinner rez, we headed back to Mendo, to Cafe Beaujolais, which also came highly recommended by a coworker.

I will try not to exagg, but ... one of the top five best meals of my life. I've never had better mussels. (Or bagels). jkjkjkjk

And, although chicken might sound like a boring entree, the skin was crispy and nice, and it came with the creamiest, BEST risotto with mushrooms. We split some kind of bread pudding for dessert and then couldn't move for awhile.

So we went back to our hotel and fell asleep like old people.

Judge us.