• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

Watch the fog roll into the Mendocino Headlands from your own balcony at JD House.   (Photo: courtesy of JD House)

Find postcard-worthy ocean views at the Glendeven Inn and Wine Bar (from $116), the nineteenth-century inn perched atop a bluff in rustic Little River. Sleep facing the ocean in the Garret Room, then have your three-course breakfast delivered to your bed.

Check in to the clapboarded J.D. House (from $130), a former captain’s quarters in the heart of Mendocino village where a fireplace and the in-room Jacuzzi tub counter the chilly Pacific air. Upgrade to the Romantic package; it includes dinner for two at nearby Moose Café and a bottle of Anderson Valley crush.

Sit before your gas-burning fireplace at the Brewery Gulch Inn (from $210), a former homestead rebuilt with salvaged virgin redwood. Look out over Smuggler’s Cove while enjoying the complimentary happy-hour spread's pepper-seared scallops and Dungeness crab cakes between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m.

Published on Nov 5, 2009 as a web exclusive.