Vacation 2005 – Wednesday, August 24

There were more guests around this morning, but breakfast was again fantastic. It was not “cooked to order” but was a buffet instead. We checked out right after breakfast and in the fog and gloom drove north. The last stretch of Route 1 was not fun. Very, very twisty and Cheryl got nauseous from the drive, so we stopped at a little store to use the restrooms and grab a snack and some water. We then split off of Route 101 onto the Avenue of the Giants, which went through a forest of redwoods. Very cool! We got some neat pictures and even stopped for a short hike at one of the groves.

We stopped at Scotia next, a lumber town. The buildings were made out of redwood trunks, so it was pretty neat. We went through their museum and then headed out to Ferndale, which had some neat Victorian homes. We had to cross the Fernbridge to get there and back, and we got some neat pictures there as well. Fernbridge seemed to be up-and-coming (or maybe they have already come up), with lots of renovations on homes and lots of people and stores and shops. Then we went into Lolita, which is known for a cheese shop/factory. We ate a lunch of cheese and crackers in their park. Lolita was looking pretty run-down.

Finally we made it to Eureka, and our second B&B. Mary showed us around and let us know that we were the only guests for the night. We settled the bill, placed our drink orders for breakfast, loaded the luggage into the room, and settled in for a couple of hours so Cheryl could catch a nap. I read. We then walked into town to the Lost Coast Brewery and Café. The food was average, the beer pretty good, and the service pretty crappy. They had a serious logistics issue going on where once you got into the door you could not tell if you needed to seat yourself or wait or even where to go to talk to the hostess. Finally we wondered over to the bar where there was a sign facing away from the front doors telling us to put our name on the list. After a 5 minute wait we got a table, and after another 10 minutes we got a waitress. And they were out of fried oysters, which is what Cheryl had her heart set on.

Afterwards, we walked around “downtown historic Eureka”. What a mistake. It was desolate. No-one was walking around. As far as we could tell, people drove in to eat, then immediately drove out. We saw a handful of people on the street, and we walked pretty far from the B&B to the restaurant and back. We tried to go down to the boardwalk by the ocean but an incident ended those plans and we returned to the B&B. Here is what happened. While nearing the boardwalk entrance area, a woman exited a store to head for her car. A cyclist flew by on the sidewalk, nearly striking her and she briefly screamed. He then circled her for a little while, saying he was sorry and asking if she was ok. He didn’t sound too sincere…not threatening or anything, but kind of like, “Whoa…sorry man…didn’t see you…you alright?” As we (across the street) passed by this exchange, the woman (not responding to the cyclist) got into her car and the guy then spotted us and rode over to us. “Got any change?” he asked as he circled us. I replied, “Sorry, no change.” He then continued to do a slow circle around us and said, “Come on, can you help me out?” I went into New York mode at that point, and rather gruffly I raised my voice and said “I don’t have any change!” We continued to briskly walk towards the boardwalk and past him. He then shouted out “I’m only kidding!” which we ignored. But now he was between us and the abandoned boardwalk so we turned away from him and headed up the block back towards out B&B, done for the day. Very annoying. We plan to ask Mary tomorrow at breakfast if downtown is always so desolate or if it picks up on weekends or if everyone just drives everywhere and no one walks.

Anyway, we were back in the room by 8 PM or so. We did have our fist vacation aggravation (due to us) when we realized just before dinner that we could not find a sweater (the only sweater) that Cheryl brought with her. So we called the Elk Cove Inn when we got back but they don’t think they have it. So we are going to have to search our luggage, but I think we may have left it on the bed. Tomorrow we may be taking a trip to Target to get Cheryl a replacement maternity sweater.