One of my dear friends just had a milestone birthday, and she celebrated by throwing a weekend-long birthday extravaganza in beautiful Mendocino, CA. She and her extended family stayed at Spring Ranch in nearby Little River, which abuts part of the property now owned by Van Damme State Park.  My husband and I stayed at the JD House in Mendocino, where we were within walking distance to both great food (such as at the Trillium Cafe) and picturesque Mendocino Headlands State Park. The lede photo shows the coastline from Mendocino Headlands State Park. See photos from the town of Mendocino (with its many water towers) after the jump.

Glass Beach is technically part of MacKerricher State Park, but it's actually easier to access the main beach from Noyo Heandlands Park in the city of Fort Bragg, CA. If you want to hike up to 10 miles (5 miles and back) then you can check out the new Coastal Trail, which also connects to additional trails in MacKerricher. 

This was a return visit for me to Russian Gulch State Park. The last time that I was here, I did the more intense waterfall hike, but this time I kept things short and sweet with a 1-mile loop along the headlands to the sinkhole named Devil's Punch Bowl. It was really cool to see this sinkhole again--it was much greener in March than it was in June last year. On top of greener spring grasses, the sun was out; this made for some beautiful photographs of the water and the wildflowers! See those after the jump.

This was a return visit for me to Van Damme State Park. I had a quick stop there last summer to walk along the small beach near the entrance to the park after I had already completed a longer hike at near-by Russian Gulch. I finally had a chance to explore the Pygmy Forest!

This trail is located off Little River Airport Road instead of in the main part of the park (although you can hike to it from inside the main part of the park). Per the state park's website: "check out the bonsai trees in bog-like conditions on soils so old they are nearly bereft of nutrients." The trail is handicap-accessible and the entire thing is on a raised boardwalk, which was great for us because all of the heavy rains this winter had turned the area into a very swampy area. This Louisiana-native very much enjoyed seeing some impromptu wetlands in this ecosystem called a coastal terrace.

One of the highlights of the walk was seeing the Mendocino Cypress (aka the Pygmy Cypress). It is found only on coastal terraces between Fort Bragg and Anchor Bay. Normal coastal cypresses can grow to be over a hundred feet tall, but the leeching of the nutrients out of the soil keeps the Mendocino Cypresses from growing more than about a foot or two--even at the age of 100+ years!

I stitched together three different loops at Los Trancos Open Space Preserve in order to make a 4.4 mile hike. I was rewarded with a stunning vista of the entire San Francisco Bay, a beautiful waterfall, lots of sweet little white wildflowers, a few critters, and some new knowledge about the famous San Andreas Fault, which intersects the park!

This was a return visit to Edgewood County Park to see their spectacular show of spring wildflowers. I went last year too, at the end of April, and saw a whole different set of wildflowers. Read more below to see what blooms in early-mid March.