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.
After our outing with the Oakland Women's Rowing Club and lunch on the Lake, we wandered Downtown Oakland a bit. The pictures near the fountain are in Preservation Square. The other group shots were taken in Kaiser Memorial Park which has a huge sculpture dedicated to Humanitarians and also some other art installations. We also made a stop at Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe a quirky diner-inspired place. Linda indulged in her annual root beer float whole Jim did a quality check on the blueberry pie.
Downtown Oakland has a lot of fabulous old Art Deco buildings which are now being restored. Wish I had taken a few more pictures, but this is one I did get:
Wednesday we got together with Jim and Toni. We started the day with the Oakland Womens' Rowing Club. You might picture tall young, buff women in sculling shells, but this was something very different. The average age was probably 70 and some members are in their eighties. They gather every Wednesday to row on Lake Merrit (except for Christmas, New Years or significant rain). It's a very organized affair - we arrived after the line up in boat teams had occurred and I got a little flack for breaking ranks to kiss Jim hello ( but once I told them he was my brother and I hadn't seen him in more than a year, they agreed that was alright then).
The coxswain on our boat was very business like and thankfully Linda and I each had a translator assigned to make sure we knew what the commands meant so we could row in the correct direction, hold oars steady in the water or out of it, put the oar straight up in the boat or slide it across to a neighbor (they put us in the middle and on opposite sides of the boat so we couldn't screw things up too badly). We learned that there is a three year waiting list to join and it requires quite a commitment. If you don't keep your attendance up, you don't get a star on your scarf for that year. Some members had been rowing for more than 20 years.
The weather was again perfect - warm and breezy, clear enought to see the lovely lake and appreciate the birds and buildings of interest. The group made us feel very welcome and we got in a fair amount of exercise before noon. Afterwards one of the ladies adopted us and negotiated a motor boat ride from the park staff (”It never hurts to ask"). He took us right to our next stop - the Lake Chalet restaurant (I've always wanted to arrive at a restaurant by boat) where we had lunch out on the dock that juts out into the lake. A lovely aquatic morning spent with an inspiring bunch of women. And thanks to Jim for bidding on it in his company's charity auction.
Woke up to another spectacular weather day. Clear, pleasantly warm with a light breeze and clear skies. Couldn't have ordered better weather. We ventured out to Solano Ave., one of my favorite streets in my high school days here. We started at the top of the street in Berkeley and made our way down to the Albany end. Our breakfast stop was at Talavera where Linda had a breakfast burrito and I had chicken machaca tacos. Wished we had a fridge in our room. So sad to leave the uneaten part, but there was just too much on the plate.
Along the walk, we saw some spectacular succulents and flowers. One of the things I like best about this area is the blend of exuberant colors and chapparal plants. Not manicured like at home. Just bursting forth in the glory of the sun.
Later we came back to the hotel and enjoyed the pool, jacuzzi, and sauna. Chris, I thought of you, both because you would have loved it and also because I thought you'd approve of us getting our full money's worth out of the facilities.
This evening we went out for Vietnamese food and then tried out Uber, the new app-driven taxi service (well new to us anyway). It finds you via GPS and matches you with a cab nearby, bills your credit card automatically, with tip included. And at least here, it's no more expensive than a regular cab ( I think in NYC that might not be true). Worked well. We'll give it another whirl tomorrow.
We actually arrived Sunday night, but were still pretty blurry yesterday so just sitting down to write a little something this morning. The usual morning fog is starting to burn off (and now I'm talking about the literal fog) and the Marina is brightening. Off in the distance San Francisco is lit up in a way it wasn't yesterday. But this trip we're going to leave San Francisco as the backdrop and spend our time in the East Bay.
Yesterday we had a layabout morning at the hotel and then ventured out to the Fourth Street neighborhood of Berkeley which is a formerly industrial area that then became studio space and is now a trendy shopping and eating area -a trajectory familiar to Brooklynites. Even since our last visit a few years ago, the increased affluence is apparent. Will have to ask Jim where the artists have relocated to. Dinner last night at Skates On the Bay - which really is right on the bay, built on pilings in the water. Arrived just in time for sunset over the Golden Gate. Not a lot to report because we're not doing much. Focusing on the R&R aspect of vacation.