We took the people mover and went to the automobile rental office. I managed to get us a Malibu (rather than an SUV). I also made sure that the car was good. While we ended up driving through the city and over the bridge about three hours later than anticipated, I was glad we were on our way.
One of my kids told me to wake him when the fog went away. At the Robin WIlliams Rainbow Tunnels that started to happen, but then he had fallen asleep and I couldn’t get him up. The other boy, however, I noticed does this thing when we’re driving where he just looks straight ahead into the air while the other sleeps in the car. I noted that it is like his way of napping— but he’s not asleep, it’s kind of just a dead stare. I checked on him and remembered that he has not changed in all of the years since infancy. I just haven’t been driving very much lately, so it never occurred to me.
I learned that the Malibu has a lot of power, but it didn’t matter much until Novato at San Antonio Narrows. After that the freeway was much more crowded and had to manage traffic. The boys were both awake by then but they zoned out again. They had trouble with their devices around then too.
We stopped in Cloverdale and got a coffee before riding through the Russian River Canyon. I pointed out bitsin maca and the tunnels I had gone through (it is in my blog post about Frog Woman Mountain). Later, I pointed out where the Mayacama mountains transitions into a fault in Hopland and again in Ukiah. I pointed out the Laughlin Range and the red and green gravels, which show up everywhere in Mendocino.
We stopped at the Skunk Train for pictures after tracing the tracks underneath the freeway. Once we got back on the road, I explained that the Mayacama Fault fades away near Laytonville and that the rails we had been following went over bridges below us in Outlet Creek.
I also explained that north of that point is where the San Andreas system transitions into the Juan de Fuca subduction zone. I kept thinking of it as the Juan de Fuca plate, but it’s actually the Gorda plate. I explained that the continental shelf changes so the earth north of the South Fork of the Eel ends up causing the local landscape to vary greatly. As we headed north from there we started to make jokes about the towns we saw, such as “Ben bro,” “gooberville” and “rude way.”
We stopped at a mineral shop I know near Fortuna where we looked for examples of Garnet. I noted that there was red and green garnet. We found some pyrite and some obsidian and some Jasper. After that, we went through Eureka and Arcata straight away, and I noted that the bike path on the bay and the rail to Blue Lake were both the same rails to trails project and the boys kind of understood.
I had been trying to send my North Country contacts updates and once I got to Trinidad the road cleared out enough that I was able to call both of them. After that, we headed through the Humboldt Lagoons and Prairie Creek. I took a picture of the golden bears on the Klamath River Bridge. The boys kept ignoring me in favor of their devices. Several times they tried to go to sleep, but couldn’t. They also couldn’t drink soda because of the G-forces from the turns.
I made it to Crescent City just before 6pm, which was 10 minutes later than I had predicted. However, I had wanted to be there at 2. When we dropped the rental car off at the airport they told us the plane from the Bay Area was four hours late because of operational issues. That was good news for me because it indicated that the one-way car rental was actually the better investment. For the week prior to our trip, I had been doing many calculations in my mind over whether to take a bus, a car or the airplane. So it turned out that the morning’s delay was not so bad.
My older brother showed up around then and he took us to the only sushi place in town. We discussed our plans for the week. I was very concerned about “dumping the boys“ on my brother but he takes them from me every year so they were used to it. The problem I realized I was actually having was that we weren’t going do any processing about our day and that I was going to miss them.
The boys understood that I wouldn’t be seeing them for a while and did what they could to smooth things over. My brother then left me at the KOA in Jedidiah Smith Redwoods saying goodbye with a sad face and the three of them drove off to Oregon for five days.
I walked over to site 603 at the campground they had left me at, where my old college classmate was hosting the half of his extended family who couldn’t fit in his house. There were about twenty people there, most of whom I knew.
My old classmate was sitting with a few people I knew pretty well but then I started to recognize his mom, brothers, all of his aunts and a few of his cousins and uncles. I said hi to each one as I saw them. I noted that there were a lot of kids. Some of his family had already left but others were staying another night.
While there I got to know a friend of his family, a geologist, who was new to me. My host had been specific that I should talk to him. We said goodbye to everyone at 9:30 and the geologist and I followed our host back to his house. We stayed up really late looking at rocks and learned how to use a loop and the different tools needed to test rocks. We actually talked about all sorts of stuff.
Our host did a lot of talking and eventually I slept in the lower bunk of the same room as another guest – my host’s brother and his nephew. I woke at 5:45 and got up with the six family members at the house who were headed to the airport. We shared pleasantries and farewells.
After that I was basically just sitting around the house for a few hours. I had brought my work computer. So, I logged in and made some emails. I also did laundry and dishes. I fell asleep too.
When my host showed up again with groceries, We went and got our mutual acquaintance, a nurse, to go to the river. We all rode in my host’s tiny Tacoma and, after a brief stop at the KOA to say a final goodbye to everyone, headed out to the Smith River in the National Park a short distance from highway 199.
We put out a cooler and chatted about river rocks, etc. My companions had snorkels but I wasn’t any good at using the one that they gave me. I could only use the goggles and I ended up hyperventilating. We remembered old times while floating around. The water was amazingly warm. Both of them had visited me several times in the last decade in SF and each of those experiences revealed themselves to me like they were only yesterday.
We swam back to the car and chatted a bit before driving to town. We helped get our nurse acquaintance’s tire off and then we went to the gas station for air and then we had some beer. We also visited a property they discussed buying. There had been a bevy of new auxiliary dwelling unit laws passed which made the investment worthwhile. I found a rock in the backyard.
At that point we considered going surfing but only our host decided to go. Waiting for him to return we sat in the kitchen chatting. When he got back, I started writing. They were making fish for dinner.
This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.