Holiday USA West Coast Road Trip in Aug 2022: Day 10 – Arcata to Fort Bragg

We decided to leave early this morning. There’s another 240 odd miles to do today.  Just under 4 hours if we take the direct route; 6 hours if we head down Highway 1.  So we were up and on the road by just after 6am.

Our Thoughts on the Hampton Inn & Suites, Arcata

Not the best Hampton Inn & Suites we have ever stayed in; no upgrade available and no particular view.  Service was pretty good though and I was recognised as a Diamond member.  Another hotel that we would consider good as a stopover. However, it was pretty expensive.

Our Thoughts on Arcata

Based on what we saw, Arcata was an expensive stopover.  Nothing much for a tourist here.

Arcata to Eureka

First stop on our road trip this morning was a Starbucks at Eureka about 30 mins down the road.  There was very little traffic on the road and in fact, I can’t remember coming across any vehicles on our side of the road in that time.  Bit weird really.

When we arrived at Starbucks, it was obviously another new store and it felt like another new business area had recently been established in an area that is clearly expanding fast. That’s pretty impressive in this new post-covid world! 

Eureka to Fort Bragg

Next stop was Fort Bragg, over 2.5 hours down the road.  The plan was for breakfast at another Starbucks. Sad that we base our holidays around Starbucks! What can we do – we love it.

On the way we turned off onto the Avenue of the Giants. Even though we have driven this road a few times in the past, you just can’t ignore it. The trees are just an amazing sight and one that you can’t just drive through without stopping and taking in the smell of the forest.

We also briefly stopped off at the Visitor’s Center to use the facilities, although it wasn’t actually open! Much too early for tourists to be around!

All was good on the road until we reached Leggett and the turn off onto Highway 1, when (as we both had failed to remember), it became seriously bendy.  For 30 mins, the road was all over the place: up/down and left/right with turns one way then the next really quickly.  Vick didn’t like the bendy road that much.

Once we hit the coast and the road stretched out more, we stopped, took some time and then got back on the road.  We still didn’t come across anyone else on our side of the road – amazing. But the views of the coast were fairly impressive. Makes all of those bends in the road worth it.

We finally reached Fort Bragg and we found that the Starbucks we had selected was effectively shut: they blamed the Starbucks payment system being down, but they were not allowing customers in the store and they had closed the restrooms due to “health concerns”.  So we ended up at Safeway, directly opposite Starbucks, and we bought gluten-free bread, cheese, ham and guacamole.  We made sandwiches in the car.  Not exactly what we had hoped for, but we made the best of it.

Follow the whole story here: Holiday USA West Coast Road Trip in Aug 2022