This is a freshly edited "Throwback Tuesday" post from last March and a Happy Happy Birthday wish to my wonderful husband.  Last year, we decided to celebrate my husband’s birthday by visiting one of our favorite places on the California coast.  Maybe even the planet:  Mendocino.

I know I’m lucky.  We live in a beautiful city, within a beautiful state.  We are a 45 minute drive along bucolic roads to some of the most photographed views of the ocean (and where Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" was filmed.  So much better claim to fame than "Psycho" don't you think?)  

We can drive four hours east and find ourselves at the world-famous Sierra Mountains, home of a ski resort called Heavenly. (The past several years there hasn't been much snow, so the "ski" part of the resort's name is rather optimistic unless you're THIS guy.)  

Mendocino Village is about a three hour drive northwest.  There are two incredibly scenic ways to get there from Petaluma.  A favorite is to go straight out to the coast and soak in the rugged coastline with as many crashing waves, gorgeous rock formations, stunning seaside homes and beaches as we can fit into our cold little hearts.  However, the “price” of this route includes a convergence of tourists in large RVs and convertibles, as well as impatient motorcycles all vying for the same narrow hairpin turns.  (Literally, hundreds of miles of turns…and ocean views).

The other route is to jet up the freeway for about an hour before heading west through serene redwood forests, vineyards and farms and then up the coast where the Navarro River meets the Pacific.  For most people, the word “freeway” would immediately sway the decision, but just like everything else in Northern California, even our freeways are special.  Well, at least some of them.  This stretch of Highway 101 happens to magically balance smog, restless drivers, and concrete with happy little nuggets of nirvana among rolling hills covered in vineyards and conversation-worthy, large-scale art sculptures..  

I may sound like I’m justifying driving up the freeway, and you’d be partially right as that is the route we opted to take for this particular trip.  We brought along our youngest (11-year-old) and our goal was maximum view and ambiance, combined with minimum car sickness (aka ambiance).

If you haven’t been lucky enough to have spent time in Mendocino, let me acquaint you with this "Northeast whaling village" conveniently located in California.  What we know as Mendocino today started as a logging community in the 1850’s.  Many of the same buildings and wooden walkways are still standing. (They're also very uneven and will trip you up without a  backwards glance.  Don't ask me how I know.)   

Even with it's very compact "downtown", there’s an abundance of small restaurants, café’s, coffee shops, bookstores, clothing stores, and wine tasting as well as specialty shops that feature handcrafted art, jewelry, chocolate, quilts and jams.  There's even a doctor with a shingle advertising "420" assessments -- no appointment required.  

We managed to eat (and eat and eat), do some wine tasting, shop, listen to some live music, read, and take several walks through the bluff trails and even trek down the challenging steps from the bluff to the beach.  A perfect weekend if you ask me.  (It’s really convenient that my husband loves one of my favorite places as much as I do).

A quick side note:  If you only make it to Mendocino once in your life, please stay at The Mendocino Hotel.  It’s historic, it’s old and creaky, it has ancient plumbing, it’s still decorated with vintage furniture, rugs, and portraits and it’s perfect.  It’s the only hotel on Main Street that has unobstructed views of the ocean.  And, if you’re a book lover like I am, you can spend most of a day curled up in their lobby near the crackling fire with views of the ocean in a wing-backed chair sipping on a glass of wine brought by a friendly server.  Yeah, it’s as amazing as it sounds.   

For twelve straight years we trekked to the Strawberry Music Festival at Camp Mather near Yosemite. The talent on the stage was always top notch (even though we didn't always fully appreciate the banjo-rich genre). But for many, the real entertainment was off stage at the different camps throughout the park.  Each camp is made up of a self-selected group of friends/family and have creative names like "Camp Always Get What You Want," "Camp-a-Ford-it", or "Camp B Denied".  You can drift from camp to camp and listen to jam sessions of some highly-talented music junkies into the wee hours of the morning.  And if you're musically inclined, you can even join.

Instead, we chose to emulate a hero from another popular television show of the time:   

Mork. The centerpiece of our uniform was indeed rainbow suspenders.  This was long before the rainbow became a symbol of LGBT pride, but I'd like to think we were on the cutting edge of tolerance.  The suspenders held up our white bell bottom jeans, tastefully accompanied by a yellow baseball shirt, topped off with a white "cat hat." (I'm really hoping other people called the fashionable hat in the picture below "cat hats" too and it's not just a small town "hick" sort of thing.)

We were the envy of all other junior high bands. As far as we knew.  

After playing for four years, I dropped band in high school because it conflicted with the ability to fit in all the classes I needed for college eligibility.  Or at least that's the official version I tell people.  Honestly, I probably would've figured out a way to make it work if the new uniforms weren't so ugly.  They were the traditional, unflattering, wooly brass-buttoned, high hat monstrosities.  I loved band, but clearly not enough to overcome my shallowness.

My husband played the cello.  I can't tell you how much this impresses me.  It's such a formidable instrument. For one thing, there's the sheer size.  (My flute case was so small that I could spin it around like a seasoned gun slinger.)  And then there are all those strings and a bow.  It's all very mysterious.  And really sexy.  He can even play by ear, entertaining us all with the opening notes to Jaws or the "chorus" to Indiana Jones.   And, unlike the flute where there were 10-12 of us fluting out our tunes at any given performance, he was usually the only cello in his orchestra.  No pressure there.

Our oldest musical "prodigy" played the clarinet very casually for about a year in elementary school.  Another took some piano lessons which she hated, but then later taught herself to play a few tunes on the keyboard. And our youngest currently plays the clarinet (with gusto) in her junior high band. (They just got back from a very cool band trip to Disney.)  Our son, on the other hand, served the mandatory minimum sentence of 6 weeks of recorder in 6th grade and was the Milli Vanilli of elementary school choir, lip syncing his way through every concert.

On very rare occasions - last Christmas for instance --  we gathered some music that we could all play.  It was a nice rendition of Eidelweiss from Sound of Music.  After a lengthy, noisy, trash-talk filled warm-up, we were able to string together about 12 bars of the song before things fell apart.  Let's just say nobody's going to be trying to sign us for a record contract any time soon.  Yet it stirred our desire to return to the Strawberry Music Festival.  Come join us, we'll be at our camp under the name, "Von Crapp Family".