Saturday 6th October

Today we chalked up five thousand miles on our trip so far. We began the day by visiting Van Damme State Park. The sea was an unusual flat calm so many kayaks were being launched.

Our main aim was to visit the Pygmy Forest where there are very old trees which would normally reach a hundred feet plus but which are stunted due to lack of nutrients in the soil.

In the afternoon we visited Mendocino Headlands Park which was once a major lumber port and you can still see the remains of the ship loading gear.

Mendocino is known as the watertower town as there is no piped water and the town still has to rely on pumped water from wells.

In the evening we walked down to Glass beach which is the remains of the city dump where visitors comb the sands for multi-coloured glass. Only in America can a city dump become a tourist site.

As we were returning we saw this herd of deer grazing on scrubland beside some houses.