Day 5
We got up early and left by 930 to go to the Samoa Cookhouse. In Samoa, this cookhouse was used back in the logging days to feed all the loggers. Large, long tables and one big cooking area are trademarks. They cook one meal and it is all you can eat. For us it was biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, pork sausage, toast, and hash browns. Also included is orange juice and coffee. It was pretty good. They also have a bunch of pictures from the late 1800s to mid 1900s logging stuff. At the time there were cutting down the redwoods. Which is too bad really, but I am sure at that point in time they were thinking about it from a save the environment, old growth kinda way but rather a holy shit these trees are huge kinda way.
After breakfast Caroline headed out to a prenatal appointment and Rebecca and I drove around Samoa for a bit. Not that there is much to see, but there are a bunch of little, old houses on the peninsula there, presumably they belonged to the loggers families back in the day. I like old stuff. You can still see the old train tracks that were at one point FULL of train cars... cool.
Then we headed down the peninsula and eventually caught back up with the town. We stopped at the babby resale shop and Rebecca bought Mason some clothes. We got back on the 101 and continued south to Fernbridge/Fern-something... Fernbridge is a birdge that is ~100 years old and actually pretty cool looking. Although narrow and has poor visibility... evidently CalTrans wanted to tear it down some years ago and it created quite an uphevel... when you are on the bridge it doesn't look that interesting, but it is pretty from most other angles.
Fernsomething, the town, is a cute little town that has a nice little downtown stretch with shops, etc. Some old painted lady buildings, an old theatre, etc. We walked up and down it and poked our head in the shops.... Rebecca found the A-You're Adorable book and bought 2... and she found another pair of shoes. It is the kinda of downtown that is totally cute and you can walk around it, but has lots of tourists, for better or worse.
From there we headed out the 5 miles to the ocean, and since the weather was still nice and sunny, we went out onto the beach and I tried to fly the kite. If you recall, Rebecca got me one of those 2 string kites, and I was really excited to be able to use it. The learning curve is kind of steep, but I was getting the hang of it... the first hard part is getting it up in the air... you unwind all the string, with the kite laying on its back... when the lines are taut, pull it up so it is aiming at the sky, rocketship style... and pull back and down... and up it will go... It took me a few times to get that going... partially cause I didn't realize you needed to be standing a certain way based on the direction of the wind... partially because I kept getting the lines tangled... partially because I would set it all up, and while I was walking away from it to tighten the lines... the wind would move the kite.... There were a few times I would get the kite up in the air, only to not be quick enough with the next step, which is steering the kite... so I would get it up there, be all excited, only to not pay enough attention and have it loop down into the ground. Doh. But there were a couple times it was up there for a little bit of time... It was cool. But since Mason and Rebecca weren't having as much fun watching and helping, I packed it up...
We headed back up to Arcata and met Caroline at Ramone's as she was getting ready to close up shop... we decided to make dinner and as Caroline was finishing up, Rebecca and I went and got some lentils for dinner. Unbeknownst to me, you can cook lentils in the rice cooker. It makes sense, I just didn't realize it. We put mason to bed as Caroline made a dinner of lentils, greens, and salad. It was pretty good, albeit a bit bland, but it was another reminder that you can eat healthy and cheap without much work. I think most of the greens if not all came from the garden here at the farm.
We hung out for a bit, jump started Dulce's car and I drove it around a bit to make sure it had a chance to charge the battery. We chatted a while in the main house and then eventually went off to bed.
Day 3…
This morning rebecca got up and ended up in the main house with caroline for a while while I got to sleep in a tiny bit. It ruled, I like sleeping, and I was really pretty tired. After I got up and ready to go, we ran to target and I got a bathing suit, then we went up to downtown arcata and were planning on going to the crepe place, but there were a bunch of people waiting, as it was sunday AM brunch time... so went 3 doors up to the Golden Harvest.
There slogan was something like 'carnivore or herbivore, we have you covered', and it was true. As a vegetarian, I am used to having like 3 or 4 options on a menu from which to choose, which makes life simpler...At Golden Harvest, there really were many more options, as they had tofu/sietan/fake whatever stuff for nearly everything. It was a bit crazy to find what I wanted... I ended up with a breakfast sandwich, 2 eggs on sourdough toast with tofu bacon, avocado, and tomato... it was pretty good. I agree with dylan, fake bacon is good. And that was hardly something that I couldn't make at home... I'll have to get on that... We also ordered nacho french fries, which I actually enjoyed more than the sandwich. Oh, and I got hashbrowns with the sandwich...I always think I want hashbrowns, and then they come and they are so greasy that I know I won't feel good later with all that grease sitting in me so I don't eat them. I should have gotten a different side.
After lunch, we headed up to Blue Lake to the fiddler thing... not too far up the road was blue lake, (think 6 miles?) and oddly enough, the weather went from cloudy to sunny in those six miles, as well as got warmer. We parked, got mason ready... which was funny because he spit up so we changed him and while caroline was changing his diaper he peed all over... thankfully the car remained clean, as did caroline, but mason and his little changing pad got all wet. Thankfully, that has yet to happen to me. (knock on wood).
We went past the little craft fair and headed over to where they were playing the fiddle... we watched that a bit and met Dan, Philip, Emma, and Roxy (philip and emma's baby). We hung out there for a bit, and when I thought I couldn't take much more fiddling, we headed up to the river. The river was a normal mountain river with lots of rocks and a river that sets a new course each year. With the sun, the water was really a nice temperature. We changed into our bathing suits and fjorded the river... then we walked upstream a bit and found a nice swimming hole and swam and hung out for a while. For the most part it was rebecca, mason, caroline, dan, and myself, although philip and emma and roxy showed up a bit later.
We headed back to the car and headed to a mexican restaurant for dinner. Oddly enough, it was the same mexican joint that rebecca and I had stopped at when were were coming back from oregon a few years ago, and it sucked this time too, we just forgot about it... I ordered a bean and cheese burrito, a cheese enchilada, and a chile relleno...oddly enough, the chili relleno came and looked a lot like a cheese enchilada... when I told the guy that this is not a chile relleno, the conversation well went kinda like this, when he came with only a bean burrito and what appeared to be a cheese enchilada:
dude: everything ok?
me: ummm, I think I am missing the chile rellano
dude: what did you order?
me: chile relleno, cheese enchilada, and a bean and cheese burrito
dude: oh, they must have not gotten the cheese enchilada, I'll go put the order in now
me: you mean chile relleno
dude: no, that is the chile rellano
me: no, this isn't
dude: trust me, it is
me: a chile rellano is a pepper stuffed with cheese, battered and fried
dude: we don't do the deep frying thing, we start with a block of cheese, put canned chiles on it, wrap it in floor and bake it. look at his :point to dan's plate, who evidently had a chile relleno too, as it I were going to be convinced because they made it wrong twice?: there are chiles in there
me: really? ok I guess...
And it was exactly as he had described... which is to say, as far as I am concerned, wrong. Oh well. I think we came to the same conclusion we had last time we ate there, this place sucks. Oh well.
We went back to the house, changed clothes, and headed out to the marsh to walk around. We loaded mason up in the kelty backpack and hiked around. He seemed to like it, and it wasn't hard on me at all. Caroline was teaching us about various plants that all look alike: poison hemlock, queen anne's lace, and yarrow... Evidently, yarrow is neutral... poison hemlock will kill you... and queen anne's lace, when you eat enough of the seeds, will prevent your egg from implanting and thus keep you from getting getting pregnant. Not that we are sure on what % sucessful that is, or how much to eat, nor are we positive about how it works, but there you go. So now we know which random white flooring plants to eat and which to avoid. Although I have already forgotten which is which. So I will just avoid eating random white flowering plants altogether.
The other thing we learned is that the George Allen Marsh here in arcata is ACTUALLY a natural sewage treatment plant. Awesome! That would explain why, in certain places on the hike, it smelled like shit. Evidently, from an ecological point of view, this particular facility is very impressive, or so we were told. Personally, I was more impressed by the fact that they were able to take a useless marsh, make it more useful by making it a treatment plant, BUT THEN make it a place where people want to walk around in. Amazingly enough, I have never considered a waste treatment plant a place where I would want to hike, but hey, it worked. Good for them! It wasn't even that bad, aside from the occasional aroma problems.
By the time we got back to the car, it was dark so we headed home and off to bed...We were in bed before 11, which was nice, as we got to catch up on some sleep...
Day 2….
We woke up this AM at the Day's Inn, and mason was up bright and early for god knows what reason... I ended up feeding him and eventually put one of his DVDs in the laptop and put him in front of it. It was funny though because I put the laptop on a chair, and put him in his car seat in front of the chair (on the floor). I went back to bed (since it was WAY too early...) rebecca and I awake a bit later to mason making noise, just normal noises, no distress kinda noise... and we look over and Mason had squirmed out of the car seat onto the floor and was sitting there on his belly. Odd...
I was also excited to find that the hotel had free internet, which was nice, gave me a chance to grab me email... needless to say, there was nothing that exciting.
We stopped in town before we got on the expressway at Ellie's Mutt Hutt and Vegetarian Cafe. I had an openfaced sandwich which was essentially 1 inch thick cornbread with some black beans and sour cream and cheese on it. Although good, I found it lacking in flavor. It was just bland... nothing that a little bit of seasoning or a healthy dose of salsa wouldn't have fixed, but whatever. Rebecca had a chicken and pasta salad.
We hit the road and drove up towards arcata... there were a number of places where the road narrows and winds through the red woods, which made me glad that we hadn't tried to do the entire drive on friday night... between me being tired, the wallowly suspension on the Magnum, that darkness, and the narrow winding roads, I would not have been too happy. Not to mention it was just prettier during the day. I was trying really hard to NOT push the car in an attempt to see how good of gas mileage I would muster...(I later found that, when I filled up the tank, we had only averaged ~21mpg. Weak).
We made it into arcata and headed over to Ramone's Bakery where caroline works... She wasn't getting off of work until 5 so we had a snack there and headed over to the Coop to get some baby food for mason (since I wouldn't allow us to buy an extra food at walmart). We picked up some baby food, some fruit, and I got some vegetarian beefless beef jerky. We got gas and as the tank filled, I watch a crunchy granola hippy and her toddler pick up change off the sidewalk and wander around the parking lot. awesome.
We headed back to the bakery and although it was 5, and the bakery was closed, people kept coming up to the door and actin all confused, since we were sitting in there but the door was looked. PART of the problem is while they have an OPEN sign, they have no CLOSED sign... and the hours are not posted on the door... thus the absence of an open sign is the only indicator that the store is in fact closed. Not such a good plan.
While waiting I was reading the arcata eye, which had a number of interesting reads. The main headline was about a bike trail that was being built by the local group of bikers along with the proper and normal city and municipal groups. A good story, but it was poorly written. For some reason the author really enjoyed using "-" to interrupt his own story... but he would do it like 2-3 times in a sentence, making it difficult to read. A headline below the fold on the front page said "Oh Boy-A Real City Council Election". Ok. I flipped to the back page to read more on the bike trail article and found a great people piece where they talked about these 2 teenage girls (sub 18) that were hanging out on the plaza. 'Sure some kids hang out in front of Hot Topic in the Bayside Mall, but Tina Jones and Ellen Johnson are hanging out on the arcata plaza in a old refrigerator box that they found, sharing some led zepplin (or something equally as lame for a 15 girl to be listening too) on an ipod. They informed us that they WOULD be recycling the box when they were through with it'. And the picture accompaniying the blurb literally was of the 2 girls, laying on the ground, half in a refrigerator box, listening to an iPod, just as described. It so reminded me of the local teenagers in mount vernon who were SO trendy-ish. Oh college towns.
We followed caroline back to her house and got settled. The apartment Doulcee (sp?) has is a very nice space... It is the top of the barn that has been converted to living space... While just a wide open space, it has all the trappings of home, including a cat named Frita. The bathroom is actually downstairs, not much unlike my wabansia house. The land itself is like 20 acres, albeit narrow and deep. There is the barn where we are staying, and then the main house. I guess Sam (the owner) build the main house himself. It has an open main floor with a kitchen and living room area, and 4 bedrooms and 2 baths upstairs. He has some cows, some sheep, a lamb, some geese, 2 peacocks, and lots of plants. He also has self contained sewage and solar power that gets them most of their electricity. They aren't off the grid per se, but they are getting there. It is interesting.
We had dinner with caroline, Sam, and Beth. Caroline made a great meal that was like a stir fry on rice. I forgot how easy and awesome rice is. We need to get back on that. We also had boiled artichokes, and we dipped the leaves into vegan mayo, which was outstanding. We ended up putting mason to bed and we hung out for a bit at the main house and chatted. We eventually made it to bed...
Day 1….
So we flew into oakland without issue... we got to the airport early, had some food, and got on the plane... all the preboarders with kids sat around each other, (southwest) and for the most part, all the kids were good. Mason was fine for the most part... he ate and napped... all went well... all of our luggage made it too...
We went to get our rental car, which we reserved as a midsize... we ended up with a black> dodge magnum since they were all out... which is cool, cause I had wanted to check that car out... it is ok... the interior blows... the V6 isn't that impressive... and while the paint is a nice color, it isn't awesome quality... The shifter surround looks like it came out of a car from a 70's american car... all chrome'd plastic... weird...
We left the oakland airport and got into a nice 3:30 pm friday afternoon san fran traffic pattern... which is to say we were going no where fast... although with Mason, we counted 3 people, so we did enjoy the car pool lanes... It did drive home the number of people on the road with 1 person per car. It is kinda insane. Like if everyone carpooled with 1 other person, traffic would effectively be halved. Sure you could argue that the carpooling would actually increase the number of miles put on a single car since dropping off/picking up would actually be slightly out of the way... so I will suggest traffic would be reduced by 40%, which would be a welcomed change...
So we started driving north... we ended up stopping in Pedaluma at a little mexican taquira we came across... it was pretty good, although my chile rellenos weren't the best I have ever had... we also were getting far enough away from san fran that we were no longer getting radio stations that well... so we decided that we were going to take advantage of the aux plug on the head unit and plug rebecca's new iPod in... so we stopped at the hardware store near the restaurant and checked, but no cable was there. We drove a bit north in town to find someplace else, and all we found of any potential was walmart. Needless to say I wasn't too thrilled, although they did have the wire, and rebecca got some food for mason, although I did put up a stink the entire time and complained a bunch about being in walmart. grrr.
Put it was nice to have music again... we kept driving north on highway 101 and ended up stopping for the night in ukiah, ca... we could have made it all night, but we decided to not bother.... we ended up at day's inn that was only so so... the room was about 109degrees when we got there... and by this point, mason was about 5 hours past his bedtime and you could tell, he was NOT happy.
I did run out to a gas station and grabbed something to drink... when the young guy asked for my ID for my credit card...
dude: IL, what are you doing out here?
me: visiting some friends up in arcata
dude: do they grow weed?
me: I dunno, she hasn't been up here that long, but I am sure she know's someone.
dude: I just say that cause everyone in arcata grows weed
word up, ok then.
It was hard to get mason to go to sleep... but he eventually went down.... and in such a small room, rebecca and I also had to go to sleep too...