Jo's friend John and his mom, Claribel
The trio of old friends
Yesterday was another laid back day. Jo had some business to do so we wandered around the square in Arcata. Lunch at Cafe Brio was very good. Their food is all locally sourced and the bread is baked fresh. Linda had a kicked up grilled cheese sandwich on sourdough with jalapeño corn chowder. I had a tuna salad platter that was way above the usual with lemon cucmbers, heirloom tomatos and pickled onions as well as fresh microgreens and a really tasty tuna salad with huge chunks of tuna. The pastries in the case looked fabulous, but we had no room left by then.
Dinner was an adventure of a different sort. We had dinner with Jo, her friend John, and John's 96 year old mother. We ended up at The Alibi, described by Jo as a "dive bar with good kitchen". The atmosphere lived up to the description and so did the food. Dogs playing cards (and other games) on the walls, loud juke box, but surprisingly good pork and lamb chops with fresh vegetable sides. Jo said all their meat is all from local farms as are the vegetables. John's mother, Claribel, a graduate of Swarthmore '40 was quite a character and told stories of her youth at Swarthmore and growing up in a Chicago suburb. Four of the five of us had lived around Chicago, as had our waiter so that was one shared theme for the evening.
After being shorn, the sheep wear a variety of fashionable wraps. Who knew?
I wondered if this one felt left out
After shearing a shower before donning a snappy paisley number
This morning's adventure in the north country involved a trip to the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale. Pretty exciting stuff for these city gals. Cows, pigs, goats, sheep, chickens, and PIE. Also a chain saw juggler(!?!?!?), live music, and a food court with some scary huge corndogs and baskets of curly fries bigger than your head (for those who are old fans of B. Kliban). Here are a few of the sights:
After the Farmer's Market, we drove over to Eureka (not Trinidad as previously reported). Jo had some business to attend to so Linda and I wandered around the town and stopped for coffee and a little something sweet.
Today we visited the excellent Farmer's Market in Arcata. It's kind of a market/community picnic/outdoor concert all rolled onto one. Not as manicured or fancy as the one in Berkeley, but equally fabulous produce and definitely more relaxed. JoAnn says Arcata is the last protected zone for the American hippie and they were also present in abundace. We bought figs, tomatoes, nectarines, sugar snap peas for later and sampled some Ethiopian and Mexican prepared food for a tasty lunch. Everywhere you looked there were kids munching on huge juicy peaches. There was also a hula hoop station and a crew of jugglers. The band was of an age with us, doing a great job on the American songbook with a jazz inflection. Quite the event and a lot of fun.
What to post about a day that's mostly travel? Well maybe a couple of plane shots. I don't know why, but my ipad camera slows the propeller of the plane - before you actually hit the button to take a shot, you see the freeze frame propellers moving slowly. Don't understand the physics, but thought it was cool. We arrived in Arcata's tiny airport via a two engine plane and had the car rental all processed by the time the worker had manually unloaded and dragged the cart with our bags over to the very small and only baggage carousel at the airport. Definitely a different lifestyle up here.
Excellent to see our old friend Jo from College days. Today we plan an outing to the Farmer's market, some other sort of outdoor festival, and perhaps a wander around the neighboring town of Trinidad, famous for its Victorian houses in the Northern Californian style. The morning fog is starting to clear, but the weather forecasts a blistering high of 68 today. Jo's dog is standing (well actually lying) guard. Life is good.
Yesterday we had the kind of day that was very interesting to us, but perhaps not as interesting in the telling. You can decide. We started out at La Note, a French restaurant on Shattuck Ave in Downtown Berkeley. They have a lovely garden out back which was a wonderful place to enjoy breakfast in the continuing perfect weather.
We had a Zipcar so we were able to drive around various neighborhoods that were favorites of mine when I lived here. We visited Rockridge and Elmwood and took a drive up in the hills to the Lawrence Hall of Science to admire the spectacular view of the Bay and then along the top of the hills on Grizzly Peak Blvd. with a stop at the Rose Garden on the way down.
Next we hit a farmer's market in the Gourmet Ghetto section where they had the most beautiful bags of salad greens with edible flowers, gorgeous produce, live jazz, and a brilliant bouquet of flowers to bring to that evening's dinner. I also had a 20 minute Tui Na session for a little energy top up. It was interesting to lie there with my eyes closed and detect all the aromas wafting by on the breeze (hmm cheese, oh that's the cinnamon bread, there goes some basil...)
After a rest at the hotel, we went off for dinner with our old College friends Denise Brergez and Frank Farris and Denise's partner Caleb at the fabulous house that Caleb designed. After a gourmet vegetarian dinner thoughtfully prepared by Caleb to avoid all the foods on my quirky forbidden list, we looked at Frank's wallpaper designs that are born out of mathematical formulas (don't ask us to explain it, but they're beautiful - more info and a look at the designs can be found here: https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/viz/exhibitions/white_spaces/seeing_symmetry
After dropping off the Zipcar, we took our new favorite mode of transport -Uber-back to the hotel to get a good night's sleep before starting the trek to Arcata.