Sea Ranch Chapel



Sea Ranch Chapel

About 10 years ago I went on a road trip from where I live in Eugene, Oregon with a friend of mine and we drove down to San Diego, California to visit my niece. We mostly drove down the coast and stopped for the night at whatever town we were close to when we got tired of driving for the day. We ate at a lot of really neat roadside restaurants on the coast and inland and saw some beautiful country. We drove through the giant redwoods in northern California, stopped at Bodega Bay where “The Birds” was filmed, ate one of the best hamburgers I ever had at a little place outside of Santa Rosa and we made a quick stop at a winery for lunch in Napa Valley. We took our bicycles along and got to ride them to dinner from the hotels we stayed at in the evenings and when we got to San Diego we would throw them in the back of the car and ride on the beach bike paths and stop at the bars alongside them and eat and drink some very good stuff. One of the most memorable things I saw on the trip was on the third day just after we had breakfast and checked out of our room where we stayed in Fort Bragg. We were driving along admiring the beautiful scenery, we had the ocean on one side of the road and beautiful forests on the other side. About an hour after we had been traveling I was looking at the forested side of the road when all of sudden I saw an odd little place that looked like it belonged in an “Alice In Wonderland” movie. I did a double take but we were by the place in just a minute. I asked my friend if he just saw what I saw and he didn’t because he was looking at the road in front of him since it was his turn to drive. I suggested we turn around and go see I what I thought I saw was as unusual as I thought it was. So we did turn around and drove up to this really cool place that really didn’t look real it was different. It definitely has a fantasy land appearance about it. There was a parking lot outside the structure and when we got out we discovered it was a chapel built as a memorial to a young man who died too young. It also reminds me of the nursery rhyme of the “Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe” because it almost looked like it came out of a fairy tale looking up the hill at it from the main road. Inside it has beautiful mahogany wood and stained glass windows. If you live anywhere near this place I highly recommend checking it out, it is quite a unique place.
Here is the web address: http://www.thesearanchchapel.org/