Northern California is a hidden gem, filled with small towns, lush vineyards, and towering redwoods. In Mendocino County, about 2 and a half hours north of San Francisco, lies Ukiah, Boonville, Mendocino, and Willits – charming towns waiting to be explored.
Gabriel Morris takes us on a journey through these small towns, showcasing the history and beauty of the area. From murals depicting the hippie movement of the 1970s to the rich Hispanic heritage of California, each town has its own story to tell.
As Gabriel drives through the streets of Ukiah, we get a glimpse of small-town life – quaint shops, local businesses, and that classic American town center vibe. As he makes his way towards the coast, passing vineyards and open fields, the stunning natural beauty of Northern California comes into view.
The drive to the coast takes us through winding roads and lush greenery, with the promise of the Pacific Ocean at the end. The weather may be unpredictable, but on this brilliant sunny day, the possibilities are endless.
Exploring Northern California’s small towns, wine country, and redwoods is an experience like no other. With Gabriel Morris as your guide, you are sure to discover the hidden treasures of this beautiful region. So pack your bags, hit the road, and get ready for an adventure in Northern California.
Watch the video by Gabriel Traveler
Tell me mama when did things go wrong tell me mama when did things go wrong mama when did things go wrong well I’m Hur now but I won’t be Hur long you may me leave you and now hey there how’s it going this is Yukaya Yukaya is the county seat of
Mendocino County county seat is kind of like the capital of the county mesino county here is in Northern California about 2 and 1/2 hours Drive North of San Francisco Sonoma County and Napa County to the South famous Wine Country there in Napa County Humble County to the north famous for redwoods green stuff
Beautiful Coast speaking of Coast that is where I’m going soon so this here is a mural very well done which depicts the history of the area here you can see some hippies The Love Generation back to the land mosino County or bust flower power that is
Exactly what my parents did in the 1970s moved from Los Angeles came up here to Willet the town north of here about 20 minutes which is where I was raised and where I pled plan to drive through today and then down there as I was showing the
Wild west past the Native American and also the Pioneers Etc arriving in this area back in the 19th century and there is somebody on this mural that you might recognize not exactly sure what all this is but of course here the Hispanic culture that was here in California of course the reason why
There is San Diego Los Angeles San Jose San Francisco Santa Rosa etc etc part of the uh Spanish and Hispanic heritage and here that’s me and my younger brother Christo somehow my mom knew the uh artist who painted this and she was looking for specific people to include
In the mural as part of the history and as I said part of the you know hippie back to the land movement in the 1970s people leaving the city and heading for the mountains and the hills and the forest to establish themselves and so my parents and myself and brother
Came here to Menino County in around 7677 and moved onto the land about 5 miles outside of the uh town of Willets there so pretty uh awesome job that she did here all right so here’s my car Honda CRV 2000 and the plan is to get out of
Here and uh go see more of mosino county so let’s drive through through show a little bit of uh the town of yukai here and then get out of town and go see more it is a pretty area tucked away here kind of little known not especially
Touristy but a very uh pretty and peaceful spot let’s do it meno County there you can see a bucking horse Pioneer settlers Native Americans and then going further back than the animals prehistory so it’s a chronological account of the history of the area and then here
Is School Street which is kind of the main uh shopping street the classic American small town Town Center which is the older part now and then here is a new park on the other side is Main Street except that it’s actually State Street is the main street and one block further
Down other side is actual Main Street okay let’s see how the construction is because there was a lot of construction going on but uh looks like things are Flo better now just uh show a little bit of State Street and so this is the town that we would come down to from Willet
Because it’s the larger town to go shopping at certain places and to go to the movie theater which is up ahead you can see it’s the old sign the same sign sign that was here back when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s so our movie theater in Willet only had
One actual theater whereas here they have multiple I forget four or five or six or something and so they would have better selection I remember seeing so many movies here Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc The Gods Must Be Crazy I remember watching that and my brother and
I were just like literally on the floor literally on the floor we were laughing so hard and then maybe popey and uh speaking of which I visited the popey village in Malta this last year here you got the Safeway the Yukaya Natural Foods Co-op Wells Fargo my bank
Up ahead Chase Bank okay this is a good point at which to stop filming pay attention get out of town and then start making the drive over to the coast about an hour and a half A&W just say no to crappy root beer get the good stuff instead virgils oh yeah cane
Sugar just filled up the gas tank $4.50 a gallon it was a lot cheaper in Oregon like a buck and a half cheaper all right this is the South Edge of Town continuing down here and then turning off of the main 101 Highway which goes south down to Santa Rosa and then Petaluma
Novado San Rafel and eventually San Francisco not taking that route going highway 128 over Boonville and then to Menino the little town on the coast going to see the Pacific Ocean the weather can be different over there than here we shall see it’s more often like foggy and cloudy and stuff
But uh brilliant sunny day so maybe we’ll get some sunshine over there as well so there you can see 101 to Santa Rosa and 253 West of Boonville and then the 253 connects to the 128 there you can see some Vineyards this is also Wine Country and I think most of you know
Already but I will mention uh for those who don’t that the reason that I’m here and yukai is my mom and stepdad live here I’ve been staying with them for the last couple of weeks visiting hanging out and trying to decide where I’m going to travel to next still no idea yet but
Man what a brilliant day look at that classic Old Barn part of the old uh Wild West Pioneer Days there you can see Booneville 16 1286 Mi and Highway 1 in 46 miles that is the Pacific Coast Highway that kind of more refers to it further south but it is the same Highway
1 and we’re now going down the uh mountains SL Hills into the Anderson Valley where Booneville is and the Anderson Valley Brewery they make some good beers boomed Amber ale and where where they had their own language sort of back like I guess in the pioneer days or something they kind of developed
Their own uh I don’t know if it would be considered a dictive English or something but they had kind of their own words or whatever a uh remote Community especially back uh you know long ago when it was even more remote out here Anderson Valley Brewing Company 420 ft
Ahead did you see what they did there they could have said 400 ft 450 they went with 420 not a coincidence I’m sure I’m not going to stop but uh there it is Tap Room Anderson Valley speaking of beer my beer falling over root beer CIA and I highly recommend this one the
Virgils it is delicious I got it at that uh Co-op that I showed in Yukaya so you can find it at health food stores and various other places okay so that sign says California 128 turning right here end of 253 Highway Cloverdale 27 mil to the left it
Is on the 101 route so that would get you back on track going to San Francisco but heading west Booneville population 1,44 elevation 400 that is 400 ft so like 10 and something M and about 30 Mi over to the coast so here is the town of Booneville it is very
Small Anderson Valley Market 1931 so that gives you a uh idea of when people were settling here although I’m sure that it was long before 1931 that uh the white folks arrived here nice looking uh mural there okay stop for the school bus and that was it Booneville next stop the
Redwoods they’re right along the road here and this is Pho an even smaller town definitely has that wild west feel lots of breweries and wineries around here Navaro Vineyards and Winery Greenwood Ridge Vineyards hard to believe it is February 27th dick is warm Rego Sellers and it looks like it’s probably
Going to be sunny over on the coast as well so that’s great valley Foothills Vineyard Navaro population 142 Navaro store and I believe these are redwoods so I’m probably not going to stop yeah definitely redwoods I’ll just show them from the road I’ve done various hike through the Redwoods before there are different
Places where there are redwood Groves throughout Northern California more famously at Redwood National Park which is north of Eureka and Arcada so several hours driving north of here but as you can see reddish colored bark so I just saw a sign that said Navaro River Redwood State Park so I
Guess we’re driving through it but the coast is very close now looking forward to seeing the Pacific Ocean and I just saw it the Pacific right up ahead here there you go coastal access well maybe we should go for it looks like a short little walk no beach access it says but we
Should get a nice view Navaro Point everything is Navaro around here and so you have this Trail we are here so you could do a loop like that but I’m just going to do this uh short little walk there the weather is definitely different here it is very very
Windy watch for whales gray whale blue whale hump back Rizzo’s dolphin Orca harbor seal California sea lion I don’t recall when whale watching season is it depends on when they’re going north or south so I got a new camera I am currently filming with the DJI osmo action one
They came out with the action 2 which I didn’t get because they totally changed it and I didn’t like the looks of the uh camera that they uh kind of tried to improve or whatever with the two and then with the three they went back to the the same
Design but with improvements I guess I never got around to getting that and then they came out with a four so I am filming now on the one which is a very outdated camera at this point so yesterday then I went uh down to Santa
Rosa bought the DJI osmo action 4 but I am not filming with it because they don’t sell the wind Slayers which is the device a uh piece of styr phone basically which you put around the camera and then it blocks out the wind noise I have that on this camera and so
Hopefully you can hear me and so I wasn’t able to get one of those uh wind uh protector devices at the store yesterday and so that is why I’m not filming with it now is the point that I’m getting to here because as you can
See it is super windy and if I was filming with that other camera it would all be totally scratched out I ordered online one of those uh windslayer things we should arrive in the next day or two so I will be switching over to the new camera in coming videos looking forward
To seeing how it does if it is actually a noticeable improvement with the uh action one which has been an absolutely incredible camera and I will definitely hold on to it either way as a backup camera all right there you go you can see why no beach access because there’s no
Beach and it would be hard to get down there that is some wild Coastline this is classic California all right let’s get out of here and get up the coast to mosino mosino hman State Park Big River Beach you drive down there and park and then go under the
Road here and that Beach right there is very nice and out there you can see the town the church mesino Headland State Park to the left that is where we’re going to turn and get onto Main Street here we are in Menino the town in mosino the county so this is downtown
Mesino as you can see the uh classic old style buildings various shops markets restaurants there’s a health food store right down there speaking of which let check it out and uh see about getting another good R here if they have one lots of stuff going on community concert series first Thursdays various
Uh I guess local bands and probably from elsewhere Kennedy 2024 yoga healing power Lucia light and sound Journey transformational taichi meditation and here is the health food store in this old building that looks kind of like a church wonder if it was natural foods and boom mission accomplished
Boilin root beer cane sugar that’s what I want to see none of this corn syrup aspartame Stevia dextrose yada yada got three of them going to stop by the car and drop them off to lighten the load and then uh get out to the uh headand you’ll see what that means
Soon and let’s walk on down the old Street as you can see with the classic uh buildings mesino Hotel established 1878 there you go some serious history hi there hi there so when I was a kid then we would come here as a family walk around get
Lunch go walk on the Headlands go to the beach and go to the uh mesino Hotel there and uh maybe my parents would get a beer or whatever and we would get uh what do you call them Roy Rogers or whatever seven up with grenadine sauce and a cherry in
It and there’s a photo that uh my mom or dad took of me and my brother drinking the uh drinks and I’m going like this but I’m not giving the peace sign I’m saying we’re having two like we’re having a second one it was like you know kind of
A special thing like we’re getting two of these sweet drinks chocolate house oh man it smells so good coming out of there and it is less windy here I’m actually overheating with this jacket on so time to take this off in life as he did in movies agie lit
The way may his light continue to shine from above Richard agie agular 1931 to 2022 I guess a movie actor so End of the Road sort of and then here the walk out onto the Headlands begin so I will mention another memory from being here with my friend Abram so first
I have to mention my hitchhiking experience as I wrote about in my book following my thumb a decade of unabashed w lust there is a link in the description to my various books it is a collection of travel stories of mine and in the beginning then I tell
My story of becoming a hitchhiker which began when I was very very young around like 8 years old or so and I started hitchhiking up our road to get home so the school bus took us several miles up the road and then dropped us off at the bottom of the dirt
Road out where our house was but it was a mile and a half walk up that dirt road to get to our driveway and then along driveway down to our house out there in the woods outside of Willets which I will be driving to next an hour’s Drive East back into the interior
From here and so some sometimes we would get a ride from my mom or dad if it happened to work out but often times it didn’t work out they were busy working or whatever and so I would have to walk the whole way home and that is a long
Walk when you are a little kid with short legs and so at some point I decided okay I’m just going to stay in one place and wait for Neighbors cars to come along and catch a ride that would happen sometimes I’d be walking along and uh neighbor would come along and I
Get ride but I figured why even start the walk if they’re you know driving the whole thing and so I started hitchhiking very young later in high school then I started hitchhiking from the town all the way up so that I could stay longer in uh
Town not take the bus and then hitchhike home all the way from there it was about like 5 miles or so and so I forget exactly when this was but Abram and I hitchhiked from Willet over to here and I believe that that was the very first hitchhiking Adventure that I
Did other than we did this one uh hitchhiking day we might have cut classes or something I remember being in high school and I think that we were just like you know what let’s just take the day off and uh we hitchhiked straight North up 101 to uh
Garberville like an hour’s drive or so North and then just came back and so I forget which one of those day trips was first but one of them was my first time hitchhiking out of town and so we came over here and here is a photo of Abram and
I I’m not sure if this is actually of that day trip and I don’t recall when we did that day trip I think that it might have been in the fall of 1989 when I was living with my mom in Yukaya and then I went over to uh Willet and met up with
Abram and then we came over here actually it wasn’t a day trip it was an overnight and so we got over here we had sleeping bags we slept on the beach there we tried to make a sweat lodge cuz it was kind of cold which was a total fail because we
Didn’t have at all the right stuff we just like made a Driftwood little structure and then built a fire and then put some rocks in it and heated up the Rocks but then we didn’t have like a tarp or anything which you really need and so it was all you know gapped
Between the logs air flowing through and so it totally did not work at all but it was just a fun little you know thing to do and then what actually uh sparked this memory is that uh we were walking through the town right at the intersection where I started filming in
The town there the main intersection and so right around there we were were walking along and we ran into somebody who I would not have recognized at all but Abram did it was Wavy Gravy now very few of you will actually know who he was but actually almost all of you do know
Who he was if you’ve heard of Woodstock the original 1969 Woodstock festival Wavy Gravy was the host what do you call it like the announcer for the bands like Jimmy Hendrick is next and whoever else I forget exactly who else uh played there but uh Wavy Gravy was the announcer for
Woodstock and he started up a camp camp winter rainbow up uh north of Willets in uh Leonville outside of Leonville there and Abram attended that uh camp like during the Summers but it’s an art camp you know various arts and so he was there doing whatever he was doing
I’ve never been there never visited there but uh Wavy Gravy had started that camp and so Abram knew him from going to the camp so he stopped and talked with Wavy Gravy for a bit there you go a nice uh view of the town a big uh hole here which Abram jumped
Into I’ve even seen the video of him doing it he had it on his Facebook page and for those wondering about my friend Abram then I posted a video a while ago a year and a half ago I think talking about basically he’s missing missing he was
Missing and there was some great news about that which I posted in a community post on my YouTube channel but many of you probably did not uh see that in which because of the video that I posted somebody contacted me confirming his existence basically that he’s still
Alive and uh he’s just doing his own thing and uh that’s all that I’m going to say on that but it was uh very reassuring to get some confirmation of what he was up to and that he was still alive and kicking so all of this stuff is like
Just exactly the same as when I was a kid you know Going Back 40 years ago when we would come out here the same totem things the same must be some kind of remains from uh logging operations or something and so these are the Headlands and so really the uh best
Thing to do for the day especially more in the summer when it’s warmer of course is uh head down to that beach and just hang out there for the day have a picnic have some drinks take a swim the water is not warm even in the middle of summer
But if it’s hot enough out then it’s a great way to spend a day especially if you are lucky enough to have a brilliant sunny day which does not happen all the time that’s for sure okay well that is going to do it I’m just going to uh keep on
Cruising there are various things you can do here the shops and uh whatever events might be happening lots of hiking you can go up to uh for brag the larger Town up the coast more hiking beaches Etc but I have done all this many times before I just
Wanted to show it in the video get out of Yukaya finally and uh go for a drive and so I’m just going to uh drive over to Willet next and show my hometown and so once you jump in there it is a tunnel and so you can get out one way or
Another it goes through that way and then out that way but I don’t advise doing it unless you’re a crazy person and a good swimmer the stairs down to the beach and you can see the tunnel right there and this is where you turn right onto California Highway 20 Fort Brag
City Limit population 6963 Fort Brag is straight up ahead and so it is another Windy Drive over the mountains through the trees an hour or so from here and speaking of that hitchhiking trip I think that Abram and I were standing in right here right somewhere along here and some
Guy went past us and then turned around came back there you can see 33 Mi to Willets and so the guy pulls up to us and we think that we’re getting a ride and then he like rolls down his window or something and he looks all
Angry and he says did one of you guys flip me off and we hadn’t we just had our thumbs out he obviously thought it didn’t look like a thumb and we had to like convince him like no we didn’t flip you off and he was like very doubtful and thought we
Were just trying to cover for ourselves or whatever finally he left and eventually we got back to Willet so 33 miles but it’s going to get very windy and so it gets slow going up ahead you and here we are coming into Willets City Limits population
4,888 it has not changed much since I was a kid here so my original thought was to uh explore around the town more and like talk about a few old stories or whatever from my childhood and then drive out the Sherwood road that I mentioned I would hitchhike out to get home
But this video has gotten pretty long and so I think that I will hold off and if I get the chance then drive back up here and make another video giving a proper tour of the town and uh having more time to cruise around and check things out and revisit the old
Days and all that kind of stuff so uh the town is more to the left so this is Highway 101 essentially this intersection is where the uh main road is going through town which used to be the route that you had to take driving north on 101 but they uh created a
Bypass road for the highway now which uh goes all the way around the town so I’ll just head on down this way a few minutes to get to the uh Main Highway the arch Willets heart of mesino County and on the other side gateway to the Redwoods
So that is going to do it for today a little drive down memory lane here in Menino County Northern California seeing the Redwoods the wineries the breweries the Pacific Ocean the little towns it is a unique beautiful peaceful place with a lot of history so uh that is going to do it for
Now more coming from California see you
Video “Northern California | Small Towns, Wine & Redwoods” was uploaded on 02/28/2024. Watch all the latest Videos by Gabriel Traveler on Gretopia