Victorian Village of Ferndale

This is the Victorian village of Ferndale, what I like to call "Vampiredale," but I'll get to that later. I really love this little town, and how charming it has still remained after all these years. It looks exactly the same as when I was going to school up there close to 30 years ago! I'm sure a few stores have come and gone, but there is one that still has remained, and I'm so happy it has.
The Golden Gait Mercantile is such a darling shop filled with items of days gone by, as well as a few more current food items and of course antiques.
When you walk in there is a distinct smell of a tea that they have been selling there as long as I can remember. It is a licorice and sarsaparilla smell. Hard to put into words, but it smells so nice! A lot of people buy it just to perfume a room with the scent instead of actually brewing it. I bought a couple packs. If you are reading this Nicole, one is for you, but you know what you have to do before you get it :)

Click on this picture and you can laugh at the baby item, that will sooth a baby with colic!
The reason why I call this town Vampiredale, is because back in 1979 they filmed Stephan King's novel "Salem's Lot" here. There is a real great you tube video that goes around the town, with eerie music playing, and showing all the locations in town that they used. They chose the perfect town to film this in, because as darling as this town is, it also has a very unsettling feel to it. Every time I visit, there is hardly a soul walking around, except maybe a few tourists. You can tell, because they just don't look like they are from the north coast. The other odd thing is, you can walk around the neighborhood a block off the main street, and you never see anyone in their yard or any sign of life. I noticed the visit before this one, that nearly all the homes had their shades drawn(cue eerie music) as you can see in the photos that I snapped of a few homes.

Why would you have all the curtains shut and shades drawn in the middle of the day? It is like this every time I have visited this town.
That church was used in the movie, and the Victorian home in the foreground is a B&B. I would be a little scared to stay there I must say.
I wandered around this graveyard last time I visited, but not this time. It still is scary looking and feeling.
These gum drop trees are shown up in the movie as well. They are so cool in person, and always meticulously groomed.
This is the underside of them.
I really miss the rampant blackberries that are all over Humboldt county. I use to make pies all summer with them, and all I had to do was go in my front yard!

I was going to combine this post with the university pictures, but I think the school deserves its own post.

One last factoid about Ferndale, is that they also filmed "The Majestic" here, as well as "Outbreak."