Headed to Ferndale, Day 1(Friday, October 5th)
Early last winter, Tobia mentioned a link to me she knew I’d love- californiacoastline.org. I actually clicked all 8000 or so images as I traced the entire California coastline. When I came across Punta Gorda Lighthouse, I thought- what a depressing place, desolate as hell, out in the middle of nowhere, who’s crazy enough to want to go out there. Take a look at this, and click on some of the northwest and southeast links and it won’t take you long to see how “out there” this place is. A couple months ago I changed my mind, and decided I wanted to go out there.
After my trip with Tobia to the North West Coast of California (around 4th of July) and in particular the Lost Coast, Tobia declared that she did not want to trek the “Quick Sands Beach” again. Of course, her reference to Quick Sands Beach is really the Black Sands Beaches around the Lost Coast. The trip was extremely tough and we failed to reach the westernmost point in California. She mentioned all this to our friend Marc over dinner in SF shortly after our trip… and unbelievably he volunteered to join me on this Lost Coast trip!
So… Friday came along and we picked Marc up in SF right before 3pm. We started driving through the slow afternoon commute traffic up through the Golden Gate Bridge, and Santa Rosa. Once past Santa Rosa, traffic was finally smooth.
Right around sunset we pulled in to eat dinner at Boomer’s Fine Dining in “laid back Laytonville”. It was like a scene from a Wild West Saloon, forks dropping, everything going quiet as everyone looked at us out-of-towners. There was one guy at the bar and one lady serving the entire huge room of hungry folks. We took a seat at the bar and a random gentleman started talking to us about how Laytonville was really laid back and how all they did was grow weed there. I found the guy entertaining.
After sitting at the bar for about 10 minutes, we were told it’d be at least 45 minutes until we got served, and given the environment, knew the bar-man wasn’t lying. At best, we figured we might eat in an hour. Deciding to move on, we drove all the way out to Garberville, never really seeing any food along the way. Right off Garberville we continued to Redway where Mateel Café served me their delicious tofu sandwich; Marc and Tobia had steaks.
This was the 2nd time for me at this Café, having been there roughly 3 months earlier when headed to Shelter Cove.
Following dinner, we zipped through to Ferndale where we reached our very nice suite at the Fern Motel around 10:15pm. It was a great place to stay at and very conveniently located. We wound down and hit the bed in preparation for a tiring day to follow.
Well, it's good to know that you're alive! I tried calling over the weekend to check, but you were out of signal range.
Fulling knowing I'd have no reception, I just turned off my cellphone.
No really related, kinda interesting- Ferndale, which by far is the most civilized of all the 'towns' nearby, had a blazing 28.8k internet connection in their library.