31 July - After the adventures of the last few days, and with foreccast gales off Cape Mendocino for gales for the next few days, we decided it was time to explore Mendocino a little.  We also determined that we could anchor off instead of having to pay for dock space so that was another positive for my (yorkshire) frugality! 

Today though our scope was fairly limited to getting the dinghy reinflated and getting ourselves secured on the anchor in the middle of the river, with current reversing every 6 hours.  We did manage to walk around the tonw as well and found that the historic old town has been well preserved with some beautiful buildings..

The Carson Mansion - apparently an inspiration for the disney castle - or is it the Munsters?

We also wandered into a gallery owned by the artist (Stock Schleuter) who was a wonderful guy with a great attitude to life.  

This was all accomplished by 5pm though and we were back at the boat and  able to safely leave hero go an attend an open air free concert downtown.  It was wonderful to see the town turn out for hte Rush tribute band, part of the town's summer concert series - a really friendly introduction to the town,  

01 Aug - (Our wedding anniversary).  Today we decided that we should make sure we had stocked up on essentials as well as visit the Fort Humboldt State Historic Park.  Although cloudy when we set off, by the time we had walked there, via the Eureka waterfront trail the sun had come out and we had an interesting time learning about the history of the fort and also about the logging industry that took off here in between the 1850's and 1950's. On the way back we dropped into the Bayshore Mall and were quite shocked at how emptoy it was; there were very few stores and a bit of a ghost town atmosphere.  We then went into Walmart and we surprised when we couldn't find any fresh veg or fruit for sale - all just pre-packaged food.

To round out our shopping, we had spied a Costco on the way and so had to drop in there to restock a couple of items that we were getting through in bulk (including alcohol!) 

We had heard that there was a Friday Market in the old town later  in the day so around 5:30pm we headed in and were really pleasantly surprised to find several blocks humming withe activitiy, live music, entertainment and lots of food trucks.  It seemed that most of the town had also turned out and there was a real party atmosphere with Eureka showing off it's eclectic side in the variety of people out dressed in their most flamboyant best

More live music at the Friday Market

Street entertainment a plenty