Camping on the Clifftops

The biggest change in my life this year was the acquisition of a truck and pop-up camper. I have always enjoyed traveling around the west, primarily as a backpacker in my 20's, then a car camper, then I got an SUV, and finally a van. You get the pattern - increasing comfort and convenience. The camper is the latest stage, befitting a couple in their 60's.

On one of our first trial runs we climbed over the coast ranges and dropped to the Mendocino coast just at sunset. There is a stretch of Highway 1, the coast highway, just north of Westport that has been relocated inland a bit because it was eroding into the ocean. The remaining discontinuous stretches of the old road have been made into a campground, each site right on the low cliff tops.

It was a wonderful campsite, the sound of the surf all night was mesmerizing. In the morning it was steely gray overcast but not raining, a brief break in a series of storms. But just before we left there was sunshine for an hour and I got this panorama. That's my wife, Nora, and our Ford F-150 pickup and Four Wheel Hawk camper.

USA-Canada / USA-California

Lat: 39° 40' 57.08" N
Long: 124° 48' 29.58" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: Unknown / Undeclared.

Photographed with a Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR with a 15mm Canon fisheye lens, on a Nodal Ninja VR mount, Really Right Stuff ballhead, and Gitzo carbon-fiber tripod. Stitched with PTGui Pro 9.0 on a Macintosh Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, retouched with Photoshop CS3.