Now that our adventures in narrowly escaping being a crime victim, seeing nature's ancient giants, and our ongoing access follies are behind us, let's go see what else we can find in this area.
After checking into our hotel, we are ready for a fun break. In the little town of Blue Lake, there are not a lot of options outside of the Indian casino. Just a couple of blocks from the hotel, however, is the Mad River Brewery and Grill.
The food doesn't look gourmet but it's really about the only game in town when we don't feel like driving back down to Eureka or Arcata.
There's a very nifty little beer garden outside. If you know us, you know how much we wish the U.S.A. would have friendly, little neighborhood beer gardens like the biergartens in Munich. Not quite on par with that but it'll do nicely tonight.
It's also happy hour, so a couple of $3 beers and and order of food put into the kitchen and then we retire to the patio with our pager to let us know when food will be ready.
Mad River Brewery is dog friendly. They love the pooches here and many friendly dogs are here. One does a little dance on his front legs everytime someone walks by. Here, he makes faces at Tim.
A band, Wild Abandon, strikes up and plays some music to keep us all entertained and relaxed.
Our food comes out. No, it's not gourmet. It's you typical pub fare but it does hit the spot.
We're feeling very good and sleep very well that night in our room.
In the morning, we head south to the city of Ferndale, about 40 minutes away from our hotel.
Ferndale is a dairy farming community that is also a draw for artistic types and, of course, tourists like us. The current city dates back to its founding in 1852 and many of the buildings along Main Street date back almost that far.
They are also extremely well preserved.
The overwhelming style is Victorian and it just makes a perfect place to pull over and take a stroll, which is exactly what we do. We go south on Main, along the west side of the street, where we'll turn around at the end and come back on the other side.
A storefront hides a modern blacksmith shop inside. A candy and gift shop with an indifferent owner comes up next. An old grocery store serves the residents and the western most bar in the United States caps off this end of the street.
An old butcher shop starts us off on the other side. An old gas station with modern above ground storage sits on the corner (I'm imagining the old underground tank ran aground of this state's stringent environmental rules at some point). A couple of art galleries lead us to a tiny antique mall where the visitor's center sits next to some public restrooms.
We finish off this stroll at an ice cream stand at the other end. The owner, Gary, is also a transplant from the city (San Francisco and Marin County for him, L.A. for us) and we compare notes. He is also the artist at the gallery next door so we go and check out some nice paintings and pet his guard dog.
Gary tells us before we leave, we need to drive to the other end of Main Street, go three miles, and check out the beach. We do.
It's a wonderfully uncrowded stretch of northern California coast where we watch beachgoers get a bonfire started for the coming evening.
We relax for a bit to catch the sunset before driving back to the hotel. One more night and then we'll be heading back home.
Darryl Musick
Copyright 2019 - All Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment