The gazebo at the Elk Cove Inn
Elk is the smallest, nuttiest, loveliest Northern California town you’ve (possibly) never heard of.
To be fair, it’s not easy to reach and the downtown’s about a block long. But together, we’ve travelled there faithfully for the last 15 years.
It’s where Adam’s dad lives, both in another universe and across the street from the blustery Pacific.
Elk’s got some history on it.
A redwood logging settlement three hours north of San Francisco that started up in the mid-1800s, Elk was originally known as Greenwood. The four Greenwood brothers were the town fathers, themselves the sons of Caleb Greenwood, one of the rescuers of the ill-fated Donner Party. The brothers were busy building an empire and were slow to register their already-taken name for the town post office; herds of elk roam the hillsides here and inspired a second-choice name.
Elk’s greatest boom came after 1888, when an enterprising lumberman got tired of being shut out of lumber chute traffic at the next town over, Cuffey’s Cove, and built his own wharf, steam sawmill and railroad in Elk. The fine old houses in Elk are remnants of this era’s former glory days, before the Depression and later, the collapse of the Northern California logging industry turned it into an economy based on B&Bs.
My father-in-law, Joel Waldman, is in many ways the de facto historian of Elk, and typically eccentric in a town where the 1960s long ago picked up and moved north. A round and only half-heartedly gruff gnome of a man with a woolen cap, bum knee, and flair for theatrical melancholy, Joel is a fixture behind the counter at the said-same Elk/Greenwood post office. For many years he was a salmon fisherman with his own boat, then an English teacher on Navy ships, and always a homesteader and poet. Like many men in these parts, he can tinker with a septic system and chop his own firewood, but just as soon eloquently quote from Gerard Manley Hopkins.
His flower-blue house, smack in the midst of town on Highway 1, is rarely empty. You can follow countless shimmering abalone shells stuffed with soil and succulents to his front door and find a veritable salon of local sages, seers and anti-teetotalers inside. Amidst a haze of smoke, you’re likely to find more flowing beards here than in the Bible, and as many opinions about local politics as you’ll find on the Gaza Strip.
Joel’s wife, Jania, grew up in a remote part of the Philippines, and while she’s never learned to read or drive, she cooks up a storm and never turns away a visitor. She is almost never at rest, her Rapunzel-long black hair tied in a knot on her head, her laugh high-pitched and her fingers flying, her gnarled pit bull-chihuahua mix, Buddy, at her heels. Her flaky pies have won awards at the Mendocino County Fair in nearby Boonville, and she could put commercial fisherman to shame with her patience and skill down by the cove. Before a skin ailment confined her to her own kitchen, she was head cook at local breakfast hangout Queenie’s Roadhouse for years, then chef at the Greenwood Pier Inn across the street.
When the local party threatens to be larger than their home can hold, it’s thrown a few doors away at the Greenwood Community Center. It’s got a soaring wood ceiling, enough room to sit the whole population of 200-some-odd-folks down to dinner, and acoustics fit for a drum circle or communal rock-and-roll jam.
For a bit of quiet, we tend to lay our heads across the street at the beautiful, cozy Elk Cove Inn & Spa, which boasts comfortable beds, an elaborate buffet breakfast, and impossibly romantic views of the cove below. We’ll put our feet up on the edge of the gazebo for awhile, then climb down the winding wooden stairs through a bit of jungle to the gravel path that leads to the wide, kelp and driftwood-tossed, black-sand beach. The huge rocks here are shot through with caves and tunnels, and kayak tours come through when the weather’s fine and the tide low. If we sit still long enough on Joel’s “couch,” a huge natural bench of piled driftwood, we’ll see herons and ducks in the marsh and sea lions in the ocean.
The bigger tourist draw in town, the Harbor House Inn, is truly elegant but twice as expensive as anything else in town. Its polished appearance has little to do with the rough-hewn comfort of Elk, opting instead to vibe like a set-piece from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Don’t get us wrong, we’d eat there (special dinners at their restaurant are a county-wide draw for anyone who can actually afford them), but for a home away from home, we’re faithful to the Elk Cove.
Near town are ocean lookouts, rocky beaches, riverbanks, swimming holes, lush dairy farms, sublime backcountry drives, redwoods, and some lovely wine, but our favorite thing to do in Elk requires little effort and no money.
On a dark clear night in this remote village, we pull over to the ocean side of Highway 1, step out of the car, lean our heads back, and drink in more stars than you’re likely to see at a planetarium. Here, precious little light competes for airspace with the heavens, so it’s the perfect place to try your hand at constellation recall and sigh deeply at the wonders of California.
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See also
Elk, California – How To Get There
Tasting the Anderson Valley
If ionfmrtaion were soccer, this would be a goooooal!