Late reveille on Sunday morning gave Suzanne a chance to decompress a bit after her all-day S.O.A.R! Workshop, but it wasn't long before she was ready to drag her hubbbie out for a run. Then we got on the road heading north to the Redwoods. Before leaving the SF Bay area, though, we had to trudge through this SUNDAY traffic in Berkeley. It was slow going for about 20 minutes until it finally opened up to 50+ mph. Let's hope Morse Blvd. in The Villages doesn't look like this in a year or two!
Soon the terrain was changing to more rural and hilly. Ranches with cattle and vineyards in Marin and Sonoma counties gave way to big hills and rocky outcrops, and deer crossings morphed to elk crossing signs. The towns are getting smaller, the roads have gone from twelve lane to four lane, and the traffic has diminished by 90%. Sadly, we passed a terrible accident on this stretch of road where a car was t-boned on the passenger side, and the whole right side of the car was pushed in two feet. We prayed that the driver was alone in that car.
Finally, more Big Trees! This sign proves we're entering Giant Redwood country. On the way into this small town, Suzanne looked at a couple of guys walking and said, those guys look like druggies. Sure enough, we found the town has a distinctive "flavor" to it; "head shops" selling drug paraphenalia, medical marijuana signs, beat-up cars, dopey-looking scruffy people, etc. I went online to look at the Willits, CA, on-line newspaper; the buttons included "Home", "Regional News", "Entertainment", "Opinion", "Marijuana News"... again, "you can't make this stuff up..." Turns out that dope is the biggest cash crop in this part of California. Not only sad, but also stupid.
We stopped in Leggett, a small town in the redwoods, for the night. This morning after breakfast I found Gretchen sitting like a statue, watching as a campground-based Siamese cat walked around our kayaks on top of our car just in front of The Bus. If that had been a dog, she would have barked, but she seemed mesmerized by that cat. Good thing, because Suzanne was meditating at the time.
We arrived Monday afternoon in Eureka, California, a pleasant seaside town near Humboldt Bay, to visit our friends Linda and Matt Morehouse. Linda is a superb book editor and designer, and Matt runs Paradise Cay Publications, publishers of two of Suzanne's early books,
Living a Dream and
It's Your Boat Too. Suzanne had spoken by phone and worked with Linda for years, but we wanted to meet them in person. They have a beautiful house in Eureka, and graciously hosted us to a gourmet dinner of wild boar, with a delicious salad, home made bread and butter, and peach cobbler. Matt cooked the wild boar in a great smoker/BBQ called The Big Green Egg. The meat was amazingly tender and tasty, totally unlike pork. (And I seem to remember some fine local northern California wine... but that part is a bit hazy...). We hope they will one day visit us in The Villages, but they seem pretty attached to No. Cal. and Oregon... and we can see why; it's beautiful here. The high temp today was 73F, the low about 58F. The coast is beautiful, and the woods magnificent. This could be a bit of heaven!
Late reveille on Sunday morning gave Suzanne a chance to decompress a bit after her all-day S.O.A.R! Workshop, but it wasn't long before she was ready to drag her hubbbie out for a run. Then we got on the road heading north to the Redwoods. Before leaving the SF Bay area, though, we had to trudge through this SUNDAY traffic in Berkeley. It was slow going for about 20 minutes until it finally opened up to 50+ mph. Let's hope Morse Blvd. in The Villages doesn't look like this in a year or two!
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