Our general travel route for this week...
Sunday was our first and probably last baseball game of this trip. The Philadelphia Phillies visited the Oakland A's who are battling for one of the American League wild card spots. The Phils are well out of the playoff chase but every such team likes nothing better than to play the role of the spoiler so we expected a good game. We estimated that it should take about an hour to drive from Petaluma over to the east bay and the Oakland Coliseum. Well, make that about an hour and a half in much heavier traffic than we expected on a Sunday morning. The game started at 1:10 PM and we got there about 12:45 so thought we still had time to grab something to eat. After finding where our seats were, we decided on a pizza. Stood in line for a couple of pepperoni and philly cheese steak pizzas which took much longer to make than we hoped and were too messy to take back to our seats so we decided to find a table on the mezzanine instead. While eating, the game started but we were able to catch the action on TV. We watched the entire first inning there and saw the A's ahead 3-1 at that point so we missed a fair bit of live action (drat) and hoped that there would be more scoring after that. We were not disappointed (whew) as there was plenty of scoring in a see-saw game with the score being tied 6-6 at the end of regulation 9 innings. Oakland ended up winning on a 2 run Josh Donaldson home run in the bottom of the 10th and the home town fans went nuts. Nobody cared to thank us for bringing our home team mojo to the A's park (we'll have to look up our record but the home team wins most of the time when we attend a MLB game). The A's have been in a bit of a slump lately and have dropped from a sure playoff spot into a tight race to the finish. Sitting in front of us were some season ticket holders who are clearly "fair weather supporters"; for one couple she read her e-reader and he read a newspaper pretty well the whole game stopping only to criticize and bitch about something an A's player did; "what's he doing swinging at the first pitch"; "why is he playing- he can't catch anything" etc etc etc. Ironically, Donaldson was one player they sniped at and his game winning home run was on the first pitch he saw in the 10th inning.... they weren't bitching about that one :-)
Anyway, it was an excellent game and we had great seats...
... and the closest we have come to snagging a foul ball when one landed about 4 seats over and 2 rows up from us :-(
The drive back to Petaluma was even heavier traffic than coming to the game and it took over 2 hours to get back. By this time it was early evening and the light was starting to fade so we just stopped at Trader Joe's for a couple of their excellent pre-made salads and bought a six pack of wine (30% discount if you buy six or more) at Raleys and headed back to the KOA for a pleasant evening out. The salads and discounted wine meant an excellent dinner, with a good California red blend, for all of $12 total. Nice.
Monday we headed back over to the east bay to Berkeley for the day. Main stops were Stone Mountain and Daughter where Kris picked up some great sewing patterns and fabric for one of them; lunch at the very nice Poulet on Shattuck Ave; Earthly Goods (just browsing today); Peet's Coffee for an iced latte; and Hida Tool where Brian can always find some cool tool and a new Hida Tool t-shirt. Leaving Berkeley we drove north on San Pablo Ave into Cerrito to a Home Depot where we checked out some sliding door hardware (a brand not carried in Canada). By that time it was back into the heavy rush hour traffic across the Richmond Bridge and back to Petaluma where we stopped at the Petaluma Market (super market) for a
nice slab of backed ham and some 5 bean salad for dinner. Before heading back to the KOA we stopped in at McNear's for some wine and to catch a bit of baseball action on TV, this time it being Kansas City against Cleveland both teams still in the playoff hunt so pretty exciting.
Tuesday was our designated "Petaluma day". First thing in the morning Brian took the car into the Petaluma Nissan dealer to see if we could get an oil change. They were booked for the day but as luck would have it a customer just then phoned and cancelled his 7:30 appointment so they took our car in straight away. Sweet. Afterwards we drove into Petaluma for a Starbuck's Americano, sat and read our Kindle's for a bit then wandered the main drag. Turns out Tuesday is closing day for many of the stores so not much "in store" browsing, just window browsing for the most part, BUT, Kris did find a fabulous yarn store, Knitterly. Very high end yarn, very tempting, but nothing came home with us. Looks like they have a nice website with patterns and a blog. For lunch we had planned to go back to Aqus but decided we should try someplace new so picked Food Bar on the main drag downtown. The service and food was pretty good but be forewarned... they have no restroom... they send you across the plaza to a very public disgustingly dirty place with no water in the sink and nothing to dry your hands with even if there was water. We wondered how the restaurant was able to pass health codes and asked the waitress but she didn't have an answer for that. We are unlikely to return to this place. To finish off the day we stopped in for a wander around the Petaluma Factory Outlets where Kris found a couple of nice tops at Banana Republic. For dinner we stopped at Raley's and picked up a BBQ chicken and some salad fixings. This evening marked the end of our southward journey for this trip. Time to head north towards home.
Wednesday morning we packed up and headed out of the KOA. The traffic heading over to US-101 on North Petaluma Blvd was at a complete standstill so we drove south through the town a couple of miles and found we were able to get onto US-101 northbound easily from Washington Ave and found no problem with the traffic. A bit further north we saw that the hold up there was all to do with the work being done on the interchange and the traffic there was still backed up so we did save some time going the round about way.
Shortly after leaving Petaluma it started to rain and it rained all the way to Benbow, just south of Garberville, where we stopped for the day. On the way we stopped in at the Safeway in Willits and picked up some deli meat and salads for lunch and a steak and veggies for dinner. Due to the rain we decided to just drive through to Benbow and have a bit later lunch when we got there. The Benbow campground recently changed to a KOA so our KOA card got a discount this time (last year they were an independent campground). It was still raining so early evening we decided to just walk over to the old historic Benbow Inn and have some wine and munchies there instead of grilling the steak (it'll keep). Walking over to the Inn we saw just how much they need the rain. The Eel River, which last year had a good robust flow going, was not much more than a small creek with a few slightly deeper pools. Very sad looking! No salmon run on this river at this time.
At the inn, we found a table, ordered some wine and a nice large cheese platter and sat back and watched the baseball game on TV and the crowd in the room. The lounge at the Inn was about half full with a rather eclectic crowd of younger folks (lots of piercings, tats and dreadlocks) and a table of 'older' looking hippies (probably made their fortune in the local agricultural product for which Humboldt County is so famous). And a table of older people, obviously out to the inn for a country weekend, dressed in their 'spiffy' outfits. Think expensive Friday casual. They get called through to the dining room for dinner and shortly afterwards a rather dippy looking young lady arrives. Lots of dyed blond hair, puffy jacket and sorrel boots (I mean, what the heck will she wear if it gets cold??). Within 5 minutes she has struck up an intense friendship with the pierced/tat/dreads group at the bar, has ordered a bottle of champagne to share and they are all best buddies. A couple of minutes later another older well dressed couple arrives, sees the group at the bar and takes a route through the room to keep them as far away as possible from the group at the bar, chose a table way in the corner and sat there looking nervous. Perhaps they thought the piercings/tats/dreads were contagious?
Other than the walk over to the inn and back in the pouring rain it was a pleasant evening. The rain continued well into the night but stopped by morning. There was over an inch of water in a basin we had set out on the picnic table. These folks really needed that... and a lot more.
Thursday we stopped at the North Coast Co-Op Food Store in Eureka for some nice looking deli lunch fixings then at the North Coast Knittery for Kris to pick up a knitting project. For lunch we stopped at the dock in Crescent City and had the salmon cakes and salads we picked up earlier in Eureka. Our destination for the day was Brookings, Oregon where we stayed at the Portside RV Park. After checking in we drove around Brookings for a while stopping at the Harris Beach park for a view of the seashore... awesome...
In the evening we went across the street to the Blue Water Cafe and Lounge. A bit dingy (nary a window in the bar part) but we did have a decent dinner of tempura fish, coleslaw and fries.
Friday we got away a little later (11ish) than normal and were headed for Yachats but after a stop at the Wool Company in Bandon and a lunch stop at Fishpatrick's Crabby Cafe on the dock at Winchester Bay (hard to resist their grilled oysters and crab cakes!) it was turning into a bit longer day than we like so we elected to stop back at Mercer Lake. They put us in site #5 which we said would be a good test because that is the site they have booked us for Labor Day weekend next year. Sort of a good test because we discovered there is a rather large bright yard light right on the corner of the site which confirmed, for us, that we need to get some black out curtains for the wee trailer. It was like daylight all night long! Anyway, nice relaxing evening sitting overlooking the lake, with a glass of wine or two, before grilling the steak we bought a couple of days ago.
Saturday we awoke to a beautiful morning...
This was a short day as we only drove for a couple of hours to Lincoln City where we stopped for the day. Lots of time in the afternoon to drive around the town and see parts of the shore line and ocean view most people just driving through miss out on. Very nice. For dinner we walked across the road to the Inn at Spanish Head for some wine and dinner in their 10th floor lounge overlooking the ocean. The crab and prawn cocktails were good but the highlight was the fabulous sunset views out over the Pacific...
Great way to end this week.
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