I have just spent three nights in Eureka in a cottage in my friend's backyard. This is the second year I have stayed there and I guess I've been a good tenant because she gave me my own key this time to keep. It's so nice to have a kitchen and I can walk down to Old Town, where I seem to spend a lot of time. Eureka was a bustling lumber town when I was young and it was a very hip place to shop. Those days are gone as are all of the clothes and shoe stores that I haunted. Old Town, however, if full of interesting shops including some great used book and clothing stores. Yesterday I walked down at 9:30 and didn't get back to Vicki's until 4:00. I had halibut cakes and eggs at the Waterfront Grill where there was live jazz. I found a lightweight sweater because I was COLD in the jeans, turtleneck, socks and jacket that I had at the bottom of my suitcase for a month. Of course, as soon as I put the sweater on the fog burned off but it was back a few hours later.
On my way back I stopped at the Morris Graves Art Museum in what used to be the Eureka Public Library, a beautifully restored building up by the Eureka Inn. Morris Graves lived in Humboldt County during his final years. He donated a great deal of art to this organization, some of which was his contemporaries that he collected and some of his own. Two other exhibits were equally interesting and I came away with new list of artists to explore.
Hwy 101 north of Ukiah is a very fun ride: lots of hills and curves and it was probably built for a 75 speed limit originally before the energy crisis and all. The Jetta proved to be a great vehicle up and down and around. It was early evening so it was balmy from the afternoon sun and I had the sun roof open and the music playing. Every mile north I grow happier as I near the Humboldt County Line. I got a call from a friend just as I was coming out of Richardson's Grove so I pulled off at the Benbow Inn to have a good chat. Naturally, I hung out there for awhile to enjoy the surroundings. It has been restored since the 70's, when I might have stopped by before, and I was very impressed.
My first day in Eureka I drove over to Arcata and Trinidad to visit my cousin and stopped at two different beaches, Moonstone and the dunes at Manila. Both times I was in full sun, at least for awhile, and it was glorious. There are 4 dune areas between Eureka and Arcata on the coast that are being preserved. An incredible number of plants thrive there and several were in bloom. When I can't identify a plant I photograph it so Bill and tell me later. He has quite a collection to go through from this trip.
In Eureka I have had some good visits with dear friends and three times have sat down and showed them my pictures, which total almost 1,000 at this point. It has given me a chance to review where I've been, who I've seen, what I've done - I'm at the halfway point of my trip and I can only hope that the second half is as good as the first because this trip has been fantastic so far. In my sights are Eugene, Portland, Seattle, Spokane, Missoula, Harlowton MT (where my father grew up), Dayton and Sheridan WY (near where my grandmother and great uncle homesteaded), Minneapolis (where my mother grew up), Milwaukee and Columbus. And, don't you know, I sometimes wish I was on that last leg home to D.C. except, then I have to go back to work! We'll see if I can wash the road off and get back to it.
My photos are reversed from how I chose them this time. The top picture is at the dunes in Humboldt and you know where the other one is. As soon as I drove across the bridge I was in full sun and got off at Sausalito to explore houseboats and marinas. Bill...... I have a new place to share!

San Francisco Here We Come

.... right back where we started from" My family always sang that song as we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. We visited this city a lot as I was growing up and I continued to come to San Francisco on my own. I thought someday I would live here, I suppose. It still thrills me to see a highway sign saying San Francisco and it still thrills me to cross either of the bridges into the city. Yesterday I came in on the Bay Bridge (East Bay freeway traffic does not thrill me) and the sun had burned through the fog, which you could see hugging the coastline. This is very typical weather in the city - warm jackets are always advised.
I began traveling by myself during middle school. I would take the Greyhound down 101 to Santa Rosa, where my sister lived. My parents were very naive about what kind of folks were on buses or in bus depots along the way. I did not clue them in, knowing that they would have stopped those trips altogether. When Nancy moved to Sacramento, I had to change buses in San Francisco and my cousin lived there so I would stay a night or two in SF before going on. My parents were also naive about my cousin's lifestyle and, again, I did not share. Once I got my license, I was driving up and down 101 with ease and my love of the road trip was set for life.
This particular visit to SF was only for one night and I used Priceline to bid blind for a hotel. I was trying to get close to 5th and Mission, where James Graham, a dance partner of Katy's would be performing at the SF Mint. Well, I totally scored. I ended up across the street and can see the Mint from my window! Praise to the universe. It is the Pickwick Hotel, old and charming and a block from the turnaround for the Powell St Cable Car. If I was staying, I would be able to walk to SF MOMA, a really fine art museum.
Travelin Light, the performance that I attended in the Mint, was wonderful. We first went down to the basement and they had the dancers in tableaus in all of these vaults. When the show started, we were taken up to our "area" where there were bleacher seats. I think we moved through 5 areas altogether and so we got to see a lot of the building as we watched the performances. The pieces had a loose theme of wealth and poverty and the dancers were wonderful. Joe Goode is the choreographer and Jay Cloidt the composer. James told me afterwards that the dancers were given a lot of freedom in the creation of the pieces. It really was so very good. Through Katy, I have learned to love modern dance and can appreciate that I was witnessing something very special.
But, I must say goodbye to the city and head up Hwy 101 to Eureka and Crescent City. I have changed the blog slide show to North Coast shots from a few years back. You'll see the house I grew up in on the beach and the river where I learned to swim. Enjoy!

Music On the Road and Kiva Beach, Lake Tahoe

What am I listening to as I travel, you ask? The Jetta came with SiriusXM, I have a 6-CD changer, AM and FM and and an iPod connection that charges it while it plays. Need I say more? The hard part is choosing and the easiest choice is satellite radio. I have 24 presets and I motivate around them a lot, although The Loft is my absolute fave. On that station I kept hearing this new song from Marc Cohn. Well, it's a cover actually, from the Dead.... New Speedway Boogie with Jim Lauderdale, who I am totally a crazy fan for. So then I'm in a Starbucks in Tahoe and there's Cohn's CD..... all of the songs are from 1970 and, naturally, I bought it. Pretty darn good, although Speedway Boogie sort of turned out to be different from everything else and Lauderdale is only on that cut.
In Nashville, I visited Ernest Tubb's Record Shop and picked up some bargain bin oldies of Emmy Lou, Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash and John Hartford. I'm pretty sure we don't have them at home but Bill buys so many CD's I may have a double.
In Memphis I got King & Queen, a duet album of Otis Redding and Carla Thomas and some very nice, young ladies gave me free CD's at the Folk Alliance center - to my surprise, a friend from Eugene was on it!
I started out the trip with one CD: Darrell Scott's Crooked Road. I saw him at The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville and told him I drove the Crooked Road of SW Virginia listening to The Crooked Road and it was transcendent. He signed my TShirt that I had gotten for Bill when I got Scott's CD but it fit me.
that Buster guy from NYC has a really ecelctic show on The Loft on Sundays and I heard Mahler's Death In Venice and Neil Young's Fork In the Road back to back. I was just driving into a big, black thunderstorm near Flagstaff. Again, transcendent.
Hope all of you are listening to some good sounds. My next post will be from San Francisco, where I am attending Travelin' Light, a dance performance in the SF Mint that one of Katy's friends is performing in. I scored a hotel on Priceline that is right across the street. Sweet.

I'm attaching a photo to this post that should have been with the previous onebut, that's OK, because I'll be at the same spot everyday I'm in Tahoe.

I have come to the point in my annual trip out West where it gets tricky. It takes my being in Tahoe or Crescent City or Eugene for a few days and then I am so wanting to move back. I see cute, little houses for sale (anyone interested here in Tahoe - I've found a really sweet deal) and shop at really great grocery stores that are not Whole Foods. I begin to have a longing that doesn't go away until sometime in October when I am far too busy to think about it and by December I am back to loving my 100-yr-old house on Capitol Hill and all of the friends that I made over the past 8 years. I think it's official that I lead a bi-coastal life and this year I just filled it in a bit.

I talk to Bill every day, maybe twice and exchange messages with lots of friends and all of that LOVE ENERGY just fills up my heart. Now it's time to head to Bill's favorite tacqueria and bring lunch back to Don and Ellen at the house. I'm starting to get into my summer novel: Infinite Jest. Anyone out there read it? I could use a Dummy's Guide. I do have a companion book with an interview with David Foster Wallace that gives me some kind of sense of who this wild man was. It's kind of like reading Proust but sort of sci-fi.

If you are reading this blog, post a comment. I do not wish it to be in vain.

This house, This home

I am writing from the Alpina Cafe, my coffee shop of choice in South Lake Tahoe for many years since my in-laws have no internet at their home, which is somewhat remote from the tourist bustle of the south shore. We drive over the mountain to Fallen Leaf Lake and hike in to a "secret" beach to swim. Didn't see another soul yesterday. We sit on their deck and watch the thunderheads form over the mountain peaks. It is the hottest I can remember - Don says since 1985. Ah, yes, the summer I was here with baby Maggie.
I think Bill brought me to meet his sister, Ellen, in 1974. We lived in Carson City the summer of '76, when he had a temporary job with BLM. That was the year Ellen laid the foundation for her house. We watched it being built and came often to stay over the years, especially when we lived in Bishop, CA, just down the Sierra skyline. Amazing country that I have grown to love so much; the Sierra Juniper, the granite, the atmosphere of 7,000 feet.
Maggie and Katy grew up coming to that home and Don and Ellen are their second parents. When the house was totally destroyed in the Angora Ridge fire in 2007, we were all emotionally devastated. I came to stay for a few weeks as they moved into a rental nearby and tried to make sense of a life with everything they owned gone. Bill's mother was living down in the Carson Valley at that time.
The next summer I came to help with hospice for Ellenor in the same, rented home but now a new home was rising out of the ashes and the past two summers I have been staying back on the same property looking at a very different landscape but knowing that Don and Ellen are healing and life moves on for us all.
I will be in Tahoe until next Thursday when I am attending a dance performance in San Francisco that one of Katy's friends is a part of and then I am off the the North Coast - the true home - via Hwy 101. I just can't put all of my experiences in the past month into this blog but I am also writing in a travel diary so, somewhere along the way, I will give you the condensed version.
Hope you are all enjoying the full moon wherever you are.

Central Coast

Two years ago I made my first drive south of San Francisco in many, many years. I remember wondering why it had taken me so long, because I was really taken by the beaches just below San Luis Obispo (where I am writing this before I head out for Sacramento and Tahoe). It's really all about family for me in California and, at that time, everyone was up north. My nephew had lived in the Napa Valley or the East Bay of SF for years. My in-laws have been in Tahoe forever and my hometown is so far north you could call it Oregon. Now that Phil has relocated to Orange County (OC to the locals), I am going to be spending a lot of time in the area that I have just been visiting during the last few days - the Central Coast of California.

Spend the day at the beach or do a winery tour. Enjoy some fine dining ( I ate at one the restaurants used in the movie Sideways). A highlight for me was hiking on the Sedgewick Ranch, a 6,000 acre area that has been deeded to UC Santa Barbara for research. Google it. I'm sure that you could also get the lay of the land on horseback. I went into an old feed & grain in Santa Ynez that made it pretty obvious that a lot of folks are into horses and chickens around here. It's all rolling hills and oaks and it can get pretty warm, but the marine flow is nearby and tempers that heat. Take a drive on a curvy, mountain road and watch vistas of the Pacific. It's great!

I'm missing Bill. He knows what I mean about the light. Last evening I was in Santa Barbara at their waterfront with our old friend, Paul Rail, and he and I both felt like we were looking at a scene from a French Impressionist painting. I'm not sure that I captured it on my camera but at least I'll have a memory. We had been at a beach a little farther north for the afternoon watching people hang gliding off of the bluff. Oh, those teen-aged, bikini-clad surfer girls.

Once again, I am spending time on this blog when I should be getting on the road. Today I am driving up to Sacramento where I will stay with Bill's old college roommate and his wife, dear friends that we try to connect with every time we are close. Good cooks, too. Their son, Alex, and our Katy were born a few days apart. I suppose their house was built in the 50's, maybe older, in a typical Sacramento neighborhood with lots of big trees for shade because it is so frigging hot all of the time, although they might poo-p00 that. I can take a day or two of the valley heat and then I need to climb to a higher, cooler altitude and commune with the Sierras. That's where I am heading on Friday and will hang with Bill's sister and her husband for several days. I will read, cook, go to Fallen Leaf Lake for a swim and see the latest work on the landscaping at their new home. I'll share my latest tunes from my iPod and we will dance in the living room. It is my second home and I can already smell the pines.

If I Could Just Get Off Of This LA Freeway

I-5 to 605 to 210 from Laguna Niguel to Pasadena on a Sunday afternoon proved to be somewhat harrowing plus I needed diesel and ice and it's not like being out on the open road where you can see the gas stations well before the exit. My first try proved nil on both counts so I kept driving until my wonderful information unit in my car said that I only had 30 miles to empty and I was trying to keep up with the traffic and starting to maybe worry a little bit when I saw this really faded Mobil sign and I took the exit and got lucky. I don't even know how many towns I went by on that drive but I ended up at my Aunt Zella's sister's house in Altadena and all was good in the world. Yvonne and I are in-law relatives but I have know her since childhood and I have known about her house for almost 50 years. What a pleasure to finally visit this incredibly lush and beautiful place. I am amazed by the succulents in Southern California and Yvonne's were no exception (I took this photo from my bed when I woke up this morning.) If I hadn't just been swimming at my nephew's that morning, I would have jumped into her pool immediately it was that inviting. She cooked a delicious dinner and we played Tile Rummy, which I used to play with Zella, who I grew up next door to. I could write an entire blog on Zella and Yvonne who are icons to me. Let me just say that you would be amazed to find out Yvonne is 90 years old.

This morning I set out for Santa Barbara thinking that it would be straightforward because it was just up the coast aways and I could do it on my own without my GPS lady and I don't even have a map of California except for my road atlas because, hey, I'm a Californian. Oh, man. First I got turned around in Pasadena but that was cool because it is a tremendous old city with the most beautiful architecture and landscaping. I finally found the freeway ramp and I was off... kind of like playing a video game. Fast and furious, lots of lane changing, lots of splitting off to different freeways on the right and the left and I mostly was on the wrong side for where I probably should have gone and then I'm going north on 2 and I'm pretty sure that's wrong so I turn off and then there I am on the Glendale Freeway up on this hill looking down on the San Fernando Valley on one side and the very smoggy skyline of LA on the other and I am like in Los Angeles and I could go to Beverly Hills or Sherman Oaks or all kinds of places just like that. I am driving where Bill grew up. That's when I saw the Ventura Freeway sign and I thought that rang a bell so I took it and then decided to get off and look at my map and call Bill so I took the Forest Lawn exit. Forest Lawn? There was a sign that said Zoo so I turned in to find a parking lot and it was Griffith Park. Amazing! When I got Bill on the phone, he told me he fell out of a tree there when he was a kid and that his grandmother was buried in Forest Lawn. They used to go there on Sundays. He also confirmed that the Ventura Freeway would become Hwy 101 and I would be in Santa Barbara in about 90 minutes.

Oh, yes. Soon I was looking at the coastal mountain savannah of brown grass and oaks that runs all the way up California and a big smile was on my face. When I came around a bend near Oxnard it was suddenly all fog - I was home at last. Farther up the coast there were a lot of surfers out and the scenic beauty just got more and more tremendous. I went to summer school at UCSB in 1966 when I was still in high school and I have not been back since. I had forgotten how lovely a town it is and how stunning the scenery is with those mountains as a backdrop. I also had reunions with two brothers that I went to high school with and I will relate more about that later because I am going to bed now, ladies and gentlemen. I am in Santa Ynez at my friend Jolie's and you will read about this spot, too, in a later edition.