Off the Grid

I am punching myself back in after a number of days of trying to take it very easy after experiencing some rather uncomfortable muscle spasms around my left rib cage. Some of you may recognize this as the area where your heart lies. The spasms started in the shower at Cousin Marc's in Crescent City as I was getting ready to drive to Oregon on Friday. I did not have a clue what was happening and the spasms just got closer and closer. I have never actually experienced labor contractions but it seemed similar except NOT. Long story short, I went to the emergency room at Sutter Coast and got completely checked out, things are good inside and it really was muscle spasms.
Consequently, I stayed in Crescent City one more night and then slowly made my way up the Smith River Canyon over the next two days. No cell phone, no email, etc. but I was in the river as much as possible. Let the healing begin. On Sunday I spent almost the entire day at the spot where I spent my summers at the family cabin. I tramped around the river rock and found where we built forts and hid out in the canyon. I swam across the river twice and had no pain. I also spent one night at Patrick's Creek Lodge up near the border, a place that I have often wished that I owned. I'd put the grand piano back into the dining room.
Monday I drove up to Eugene and checked in to the Ward Hotel - our friends new apartment above their garage. It is probably the nicest place I have ever stayed and I would like to stay forever. I am telling all of my friends in Eugene that if they want to visit they have to come to me. Except, right now I am at Ann's because she has wifi and her husband, Louis, pours me really nice Spanish wines. Katy went to their Green Frog preschool and I became their music teacher in 1990. We are discussing morals and rules while I am blogging. Hey, I didn't make the rules!
It is time for me to face the music and start heading back East. I have a great trip ahead through Washington, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio. I will end up with Katy and then a days drive to DC and the very patient hubby. If I could just book a flight and go home for a few days and them come back and resume this sojourn? But, no, I chose to do this and I must perservere.

Grandma Harper's ring

The best part of being in the Humboldt Bay Area is visiting with my cousin Barby, daughter of Aunt Zella, who I have written about earlier. Barby lives up in Westhaven above Trinidad and Moonstone Beach and usually has sun in her yard with the fog drifting down below. This year nobody escapes the gray mist unless they are several miles inland. It is thick and relentless. Yesterday at Pebble, where Zella's son Marc lives and where I grew up living next door, we had about 15 minutes of burn off from the East creating a false sense of summer only to have the fog not creep but blow in from the West to end all hopes of seeing a sunset off Castle Rock.
Anyway, I was at my cousin's and she gifted me with my Grandma Harper's ring that Aunt Zella had worn for many years. It was a rectangular black band with diamonds encrusted and it fit me nicely on my right ring finger. I was delighted to have a family heirloom. Mabel Harper grew up in Eastern Montana and I will be visiting that area later on in the trip.
From Barby's I headed for Crescent City in what I will simply label a Humboldt state of mind. I stopped at Dry Lagoon State Park near Orick because I had never been to that beach before and I have been trying to hit the beach at least once a day while I am on the coast. I pulled on a sweatshirt, grabbed my camera, took off my shoes and headed for the water. It proved to be a nice beach - pebbly, a lot of miner's lettuce which turns out to have a bloom like a petunia and Dry Lagoon was not necessarily dry. I tramped for awhile and then headed back to the car.
Back on Hwy 101 north, I noticed a very nice young man walking whom I had seen earlier before I had turned off so I stopped and offered him a ride which he was most happy to accept. He had a guitar on his back so he couldn't be too bad, eh? Turned out he was going to Crescent City and only a few blocks from my destination, the mother of the family he was visiting worked with my cousin's girlfriend, he was from Richmond, VA and we had a splendid time visiting along the way. Synchronistic, we both thought. Blessed was the word he used for the ride. Not many black men hitch the North Coast.
I was excited to get to 148 Pebble Beach Drive and to tell Marc and Connie about this adventure. However, in the middle of telling them I looked at my right hand and realized that the ring was gone. So gone. Tragedy! I went through all pockets and bags that I might have used, I looked around the car but I knew where the ring was. In the sand at Dry Lagoon, probably as I pulled that sweatshirt on or off. The ring was just loose enough that it fell off and I wasn't used to it being on my hand anyway and I did not notice until it was so too late. I am bereft and still have not told Barby. Did Grandma Harper deem me not worthy?
I am going to chase sun with my friend, Louise, today and see if that will cheer me up. I would rather have lost the key to the car, the iTouch, the phone (but definitely not the camera) than this beautiful ring. Woe is me.

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.