Redwood HIghway

Today was the day that road trips are all about.  You don't get to see trees and coastlines and mountains and vineyards all in one day when you travel by air.  If we were avid bikers, we could have experienced all of this in one day, but what a lot of planning and fitness that would have required.

We hit the road at 8, as is our custom, and almost immediately we got our first close-up view of the Pacific Ocean.  First time in four years.  We spent a good part of the day near the ocean.  Steep cliffs reminded us of Hawaii, some nice bays and coves and sandy beaches, lots of big waves.  Now and then we would see signs alerting us that we were entering/leaving a tsunami zone.

We also got right back into the redwood forest.  Jon wondered why those huge, perfectly straight trees make me so happy.  First of all, they are gorgeous. Second, they are old.  And they are so out of scale with anything we normally see.  They just thrill me.

We made a detour on a scenic road that looked like the Old Pali Highway with different types of vegetation (lots and lots of ferns as ground cover) and stopped at the Ah-Po Interpretive Trail.  Again we had the entire forest to ourselves, which is usually not true in the areas closer to San Francisco. The trail followed the path of an old logging road that was removed so that the forest could go back to its former condition.  Without the signs along the trail we would not have been able to understand all the un-doing they did, taking out culverts, unflattening areas (road removal is near and dear to my heart, so this was all interesting).  The trees, of course, were magnificent.  By 9:20 in the morning I was satisfied with our day of touring.

We saw lots of signs warning us about elk, and finally we saw some elk lounging in large groups.  So are there elk in the west and moose in the east?  They certainly seem related.

Our kids will be interested to know that we finished the Serial podcast on the way to Seattle (fascinating and disturbing) and we listened to Invisibilia as we swooped through Northern California.  It does make the day go faster somehow, although I would not say the days go slowly anyway.  But it gives us even more to think about.

We saw the most amazing lumberyard we have ever seen.  Piles and piles and piles of trees -- it was impossible to capture the vastness of the inventory.

When we stopped to get fuel, there was one of those automatic car wash machines -- and the price of fuel was twenty cents less per gallon if you took that option.  We have never gone to a car wash at a gas station before, but our vehicle had about 4 layers of salt adhered to the paint, and the effective price of getting that scrubbed off was $4.  So we spent the big bucks and pushed the button.  Lani always says if you wash your car it will run better.  Such a deal for $4.

We were transporting a cooler full of frozen smoked fish to Lisa and Alan in Berkeley (Laura and Stuart have always had a source of Alaskan fish, taken it to the butcher for processing, and some of their friends benefit from all that industry...not unlike our venison process).  So we climbed up into the Berkeley hills, practically to the same neighborhood that Laura's grandparents used to live in, and delivered 40 pounds of still frozen salmon.  Lisa and Alan live in a beautiful house with a view, Alan is an avid beekeeper in his backyard, it is always interesting to see where people live.

Then we plunged into the traffic and went across the bay, across the city, and up to the top of Twin Peaks to Sarita's apartment. We have been here many times before. The view is stunning every single time.  I am sitting on her couch looking out her big windows, waiting for the sun to appear.

We had a lovely dinner with Bruce and Anne, Jon's best friends from Dartmouth, and Anne's husband Rick. They are all crazy athletes (I can say that because I am related to some crazy athletes) who have spent all of their California years skiing and biking on the weekends.  Extreme distances.  Bruce was just on the cover of some Nordic skiing magazine, looking like the super athlete he is.  Anne and Rick live in a big old Victorian rowhouse on Dolores -- Anne told the story of how their neighborhood was saved during the Great Fire that came after the earthquake.  All the rest of the city had no water but there was one hydrant in their neighborhood that was fed by a spring from up on Twin Peaks. The neighbors rallied to stop the fire at 20th St, and that is why their 1880 house still stands. Their house is made of redwood -- 6x6 posts that are 44 feet long. In an earthquake it just sways but does not suffer damage. It is a house to love.  Anne says they feel like they are the stewards of this beautiful building. I think we forgot to take any pictures at all there, alas.

Rick now works as a production manager (not sure if that is the exact description) in a food-making facility for a really high end store that specializes in real food with real ingredients.  They make everything as if it were being made in a home kitchen, making pie dough, rolling it out -- they made 1500 pumpkin pies by hand for Thanksgiving.  He has 24 employees working in this one kitchen.  They make 900 gallons of ice cream a week, using two small ice cream machines.  His personal goal is to make some of the ice cream flavors out of only cream from Jersey cows (I can understand his love for Jersey cows, we had a Jersey when we were growing up and Rob Moutoux has Jerseys).  One of the challenges for him is what he will do with the skim milk that is leftover -- they have no use for skim milk at all.  This sounds like a store/business that we would love if it were near us. Maybe we will get a chance to go see it today.  This business started a long time ago so it has a very old-fashioned and not sparkly name for such a cool place:  Bi-Rite.  I mean, really.