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A week up north

We went away on vacation a couple of weeks ago. It was our first real vacation since 2007! Yikes.

We headed north on Saturday, driving up the winding Sonoma Coast. That road is pretty treacherous. But now we can say we've driven every mile of Highway 1 from San Francisco to where it merges with 101 in Humboldt County... all 220 winding, twisty, carsick-making miles of it.

We stopped in Jenner at the Timber Cove Inn for caffeine. This is the view from out back, behind the lodge.

The next morning, as we drove north out of Eureka, we stopped into a seemingly random visitor center staffed by a single volunteer. We were just looking for a bathroom and maybe a map with more detail than what we had. But we got much more than that.

The volunteer (I wish I had gotten his name!) asked us what our final destination was that day and what time we had to be there. Supplied with this information, he planned out our entire drive for us, gave us exact arrival times at each stop along the way, and even told us where to pick up snacks. He told us where to park and hike and how long the hike would take. He told us about an 11-mile-long dirt road that would take us through ancient redwood groves whose bark we could touch by reaching outside our car window. (I never would have noticed it on the map, much less taken it without being reassured by a local that our car could handle it.) He told us how to get back on the highway from the dirt road and gave us a scenic shortcut that let us avoid the interstate entirely. And when we arrived in Ashland, we were exactly four minutes ahead of the schedule he had given us. Hooray for insider knowledge!

We had plenty of time to check into our hotel and grab dinner before seeing the first of four plays at the Shakespeare Festival. It was an awesome day.

July 5, 2009 9:41 PM