Bob-Kats on the Road 11-22 -11

Trinidad

We had been in Trinidad nearly two months.  We loved every minute of it.  We explored the forests and beaches nearly every day.  We joined a church and met wonderful people that we will never forget.  Bob’s sister Barbara lives in Arcata, so we very much enjoyed reconnecting with her.

If there is any downside to this place, it is that it is so incredibly beautiful that even driving to the grocery store you feel compelled to stop and take a picture in case you do not have that view in that exact light.  I mentally calculate the number of pictures I will have of these two miles of beach over a year’s time should we ever live here.

Life Happens

Then I got a call from home.   It was clear that my 90-something year old mother could no longer care for my father.  We must find care for him in an appropriate facility immediately.  Bob cleared the jeep of backpacks and hiking boots while I packed and we were home near San Francisco six hours later.

We found a beautiful place for Dad and were wading through paperwork when I got a call from my daughter.  My daughter needed her mother and my mother needed her daughter.  What to do?  Well, both, of course.  We got Dad moved and I flew to North Carolina.  My brother and Bob stayed with my mother.  For light relief the two of them cleaned out my parent’s house, making trips to Goodwill, the county landfill and culminating with two huge 4x4x4 bags from the local refuse people for whatever was left over.   This sounds like something from the hoarding show, but it’s a big house with many hiding places.  Apparently my dad had things he liked to collect over the past 50 years– odd pieces of wood, rusted tools, broken small appliances, and all those things one might use again (not!).   Holy cow, this was every bit as much fun as it sounds.  There is general agreement in the family and in my parent’s neighborhood that Bob is wonderful.  (He is.)

I, meanwhile, helped my daughter move into a lovely little house on a beautiful horse farm in Chapel Hill. Actually, I am of no help with the real moving part.  My function was more a mom-is-here-everything-will-be-all-right sort of thing.  She has trees, ponds and horses outside her windows and many great friends nearby.  She will be just fine in her new solo life.

Both she and my mother have had burdens lifted from them and are breathing much easier now.

Dad, too, is settling in.  In our first visit with him in his new home, my mother said, “Missy is here.”  (My childhood name)  Dad has not known me for some time now, but he said, “My Missy?” and turned toward me and put out his arms.  What a sweet, sad moment.

Hutch and Max – Circa 1995

Bob-Kats on the Road 10-19 -11

Closing in on Nirvana

Garberville

We bid adieu to foggy Bodega Bay and headed north to Garberville.  101 winds through some tourist areas featuring trees.  Well, they are not just trees, but rather trees that have been tweaked to make them appealing tourist traps.  They are living trees that have been cut out so that you can drive a car through them, trees that have been hollowed out and kitted up with furniture so that they could be called a real tree house and so on.  Oy.  I guess you stop to see these oddities (and I admit to doing that myself 20 years ago) and then  presumably go buy some of the forest-kitch available – a statue of Big Foot for your yard carved with a chain saw out of genuine redwood perhaps?  Oy again.

There are trees that have been left more or less in peace such as the magnificent Grandfather Tree.  This is a coastal redwood that is at least 1800 years old standing 265 feet.  It is not a tall tree compared to others, but rather, it is massive.  What makes this tree worth stopping for is that it is isolated from other trees.  This means the trees that stood by it for much of the 1800 years of its life have fallen to the saw, for no redwood can live alone.  Ordinarily redwoods exposed in this situation fall in storms or simply die, but this one still stands and you are able to see it in its entirety.  It has limbs the size of entire 100 year-old oaks and many of the remarkable structures of a coastal redwood of this age are visible from the ground.  More on all that later.

We stayed at Benbow Valley RV Resort and Golf Course.  La-tee-da.  Well, it is quite lovely and adjacent to the absolutely wonderful Benbow Inn.  I stayed there once and would recommend it.

We set up and went into Garberville seven miles away to the grocery store and found……all the hippies in the world.  I’m not kidding.  If you are wondering where they went, they went to Garberville.  Going into the grocery store was like stepping back into the 70s.  It was great.  And, you know, they are not so dumb.  They live there in sunshine and warmth and beauty and, if their brains are a bit addled by recreational pharmaceuticals, their brows are not furrowed by stress, their eyes unclouded by worldly cares.  One could do worse.

We were there for two days as it was an exhausting drive -- of all of three hours -- from Bodega Bay.  Actually, it was hot and sunny, so it was good to dry out a bit.  We watched people pulling in across from us and realized they were the same people who were across from us in Bodega Bay.  So, a brief but fun friendship was forged.  A shout out to Carolyn and Mark and the pups!  We ended up traveling up the road together to Trinidad and it was a very good time.

Eureka

This town has an unusual feel to it.  Is it hippy?  Pioneer?  Some of  both?   It has very charming areas.  There are some of the most beautifully kept and elaborate Victorian houses I have ever seen.

And it has a nice little harbor.

But there is something I can’t quite put my finger on.  There is a kind of end of the line feel to it.  Maybe it’s the hitchhikers.  I have never seen so many hitchhikers of such a ...what?...different character.  Dreadlocks, bare feet and a dog.  Hmm.  Do you think you might be limiting your prospects?

But there is something else.  There are service businesses such as auto repair places.   There are more furniture stores, both new and used, than I have seen in a 100 mile radius of Marshall.  Food, fuel and housing are very expensive here and, while there is no in-your-face affluence, the residents seem to be doing okay.  Logging and whaling were industries of the past and though there is still a saw mill there, it seems to have a lot of cut lumber, but few people in evidence.  I have had a chance to consider this since we have now been here six weeks – more on that later – and I believe I have found the answer in one of those free local papers.  There is between $250 million and $1 billion worth of marijuana produced in Humboldt County per year (apparently it’s somewhat difficult to pin a basically illegal industry down exactly).  And it is harvest-time right now. 

Many things now make sense.  There are some feed and seed places here, but there are far more with horticultural supplies.  Horticulture?  One look inside one and you know this is not your father’s Tractor Supply Company.  And the influx of transients on the road?  They are coming in search of high-paying trimming jobs.  At least $25 million a year goes into the economy here from those jobs alone.  At $20 an hour, (Uncle Sam free) these jobs are coveted and protected by residents who have been doing them for years. That explains the forlorn, disappointed look of the still-unemployed hitchhikers moving on through, destinations uncertain.  Many cardboard signs say simply “north”.  The kids break my heart, but to the adults (who are referred to as “down on their luck”), I have three words of advice to apply: sobriety, hygiene and industry!

I have one more thought.  Friends of ours here have a son who is border patrol on our northern border with Canada.   One would think they have a lot of time on their hands, but no, they are in fact quite busy as they say the northern border is being flooded with drugs – yes, from Mexico - just as the southern border.  So, north, south and here in the middle: maryjane up to our hip pockets.  Are we becoming the united states of Cheech and Chong?  Is anybody sober?  (Hmmm. This could explain some recent decisions of our government).  And could this be a cause of global warming???  Somebody, look into that.

Arcata

A college town, home of Humboldt State University.  It’s a pretty school and the town has a lot of charm in that bit-of-grunge, lots-of-kids-everywhere kind of way.

Trinidad

Then you are on the road to Trinidad.  And … holy cow … what is that?  It’s the ocean, the Pacific as far as you can see.

And then trees, huge trees on both sides of the road.

Finally, you are in Trinidad.  There is a grocery store and restaurants.  What else really do you need?

And scenery, lots of scenery.

A narrow, bouncy road along the ocean leads to our RV Park.  It’s a 10 minute trip, but it is breathtaking.

The park is small, but very nice.  Sounds of the Sea is its name and indeed there are sounds of the sea.

You can hear the surf when the ocean is wild and you can hear the sea lions nearly always.  AR AR AR.  And in case you have ever wondered about it, they do that all night, too.  Oddly, it is not annoying as with barking dogs, but rather nice and somehow comforting.  

We immediately moved from the traditional RV area to a place way up on the hill.  I have no idea how we got this thing up here.  I just remind myself that if it went up, it can also go down.  But it is wonderful up here.  We have the woods to ourselves -- complete with deer at no extra charge.

And we can see the ocean.

Across the street Patrick’s Point State Park, a beautiful place with towering Sitka spruce, tide pools and agate beaches.  Why would we leave?  So, we didn’t.  We became the people who came and stayed….and stayed….and stayed.

A few of the neighbors:

Harbor Seals

Black Oystercatcher

Pacific Green Anemone

Ochre Starfish

Roosevelt Elk

End of the day . . .

. . . Bob is cooking.

.

Bob-Kats on the Road 10-2-11

Looking for Nirvana

The Wine Country

We left Monterey and headed for Napa, the heart of “the wine country”.  We were not especially excited as we both harbored feelings that the wine country embodied everything that is annoying about California – that pretentiousness, the smug superiority that says sorry for you living in Michigan.   But we went.  And it was lovely.  Napa was charming, the vineyards beautiful.  It is exactly like you think it is.

We went to a winery – Threfethen.  I had not heard of them, being a low brow Yellow Tail girl, but it was pretty, of course, and the vineyards were marked “Cabernet 1987”, and so on and that looked interesting.

We did a tour and tasting.  I can paralyze you with wine facts, e.g., the best wine is made from vines that are 125 years old, oak casks are used four times only, the price of vineyard land is $800,000 an acre, (and the Trefethen family owns 500 acres),  stressed vines = good grapes  and to that end, they work hard to make the soil really bad and vines are never ever treated with fertilizer, and so on and so on.  The tasting was also interesting.  This is a nice winery and the wine is pricey.   I tried a red called Dragon’s Tooth that was listed at $139 on the tasting card per bottle, though available for about $80 on the internet.  I found it to be rather an acquired taste, one that requires some cultivation.  It is not “easy drinking”, so to speak, and one should pretty much devote all one’s attention to it and not be snacking on Cheetos.  I think there is not a great chance I will be cultivating a taste for it.  But it does linger in my mind all these weeks later, so perhaps there is something to that Dragon’s Tooth.

 I love the cork tree!

Grass Valley

We went to visit my brother and his wife.  It was good to see them and we enjoyed our time there with them.  Grass Valley and its neighboring city Nevada City are nestled charmingly in the mountains and surrounded by the tall pines. The downtown areas are rather preciously western, but there are great shops and quite nice places to eat.  I did not think it was possible to have a more expensive dinner than at Bobby Flay’s American Bar in NYC.  Wrong.  You just have to put your mind to it and decide now is the time to try that absinth, perhaps some port, etc.  Thank you to our hosts and next time, our treat.

Tahoe

We went to Tahoe for the day as Jason and family were there in the cabin.  It was an unexpected treat to see them and such a nice day.  How lovely to see my darlings in such a beautiful place!

Bodega Bay

If Texas taught us about wind, the coast of California taught us about fog.  Of course, we all know what it is – kind of whitish cloud stuff.  Well, on the coast of California, fog is an entity.  It can come over you in a wave and blind you.  It can break off into little pieces that waft down the street very like a ghost.  If you leave your door open, it might come in and have dinner.  It can act with such speed that you can look outside and see the beautiful sea sparkling in the sun, put on a T-shirt and go outside and find it all gone, invisible behind a white wall.  It is a presence -- and nowhere quite so much as Bodega Bay.

Bodega Bay was the scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” and it is much the same.  You feel the film crew just left and, any minute Tippi Hedren will come running out of the fog with birds in her hair.  (And, as an aside, Tippi Hedren Day occurs every year in Bodega Bay.  Tippi always shows up for it and she looks wonderful!)

There were days – or moments – when the fog magically lifted and Bodega Bay was revealed as the beautiful place it is.

And there were birds.

Least Sandpipers

Marbled Godwits

One day, nearly driven mad by the fog, we went up the coast to Sea Ranch and Gualala where it was very lovely and sunny.

The ride there was a bit harrowing.  They have an interesting road theory there.  It is the only place where I have found the combination of narrow winding road on an 8% grade bordered by a shear drop on one side, vertical hillside on the other and free range cattle.  I don’t know much about these things, but I don’t think I would put those things together.  I’m just sayin’.  Add Labor Day traffic and a few 40-foot motor homes and you have a heart-stopping trip indeed.

So you are driving along…

Driving, driving . . .

What?