Travels with The Rayman

She was big.  She was strong.  About 800 pounds?  Not sure about the weight, but she was a big girl…elk.  An elkess!!

Heading South of 101 thru Oregon, there are plenty of places to see elk.  Signed are posted.   Locations are designated.  And for a good reason, as we found out.  

Moi was at the wheel, weather was clear if you ignore the smoke in the air.  We have seen smoke almost the  entire day!  We were entering a small berg, not sure which one.  They dot the coast line.  Some are quite quaint, some look like havens for down-and-outers.  There was a man standing on the other side of the two lane highway and as I started to give him a glance, our elk came out from behind some trees and into our vision.  We looked into her eyes.  She was terrified.  I was terrified.  Swerving to the left and into the lane where the man stoically stood, I started to break and the car finished the job.  Our Honda CRV has brakes with brains.  Somehow, f it senses the need to stop, it stops on a dime.  Between the breaks and my swerve, disaster was avoided.  Yippee.  Last seen, the elk was prancing around unharmed.  She had headed straight across the road, toward the man.  I don’t know if he moved or not.  

Gathering our wits, we sally-forthed!!  Or is it sallyed-forth?  

This is not her. Took this in 2019.

Next bit of news was that we stopped in Eureka for early dinner as our night was to be spent in Fortuna, CA and there isn’t much there so we knew a restaurant we had eaten at before.  It was already a long day.  5 :15 p.m. we arrived.  We needed food and wine.  They had both.  The only thing that I had that was good, was the wine.  Ordering a half bucket of clams and some garlic bread, I was sure it would be a fine meal.  It was not.  It was so bad, I wrote a review in Yelp and Trip Advisor.  Just as an example, the garlic bread came out.  It was sourdough with clumps of garlic thrown on top.  There was no color to the bread.  Did they forget to toast it?  No matter, I sent it back.  It came back with a tinge of color.  I choked down one piece as I was famished.  The cook who committed this grave offense, did not have a clue about cooking food.  And I will leave it at that.  Oh, and this was on a Friday during happy hour   You would think the A team was at the grill. 

Unhappy with the meal, we left and drove on to Fortuna to the Redwood Riverwalk Inn.  Smitten by their charm on the computer, I booked it for the wrong day.  So, we double paid and may I say, the hotel matched the meal.  The bed was lumpy and thin, there was a Shell station out in the back, the wall heater so prevalent in many hotel rooms sounded like a DC3 taking off every time the temperature reached 60 degrees.  It also had a holy bible which gave me pause.  There was a chair to sit in that was covered in faux cowhide.  It was, clean.  Clean, uncomfortable, worn, with a disk from a cross section of a tree hanging on the wall in the bathroom.  

 I asked as we were checking in to the cute lobby if there were glasses in the room.  She said, glass?  I said, yes.  She said, “we provide paper cups.  I can sell you some wine glasses.”  That was a tell.  We drank our port out of paper cups.  

And that was that.  

This a.m., I took in the keys to the lobby and spied some water in a pitcher.  Filled up a paper cup and took it out to the car and poured it in to our “thermos”.  And off we went.  I do not recommend the place.  

The drive South from there would have been fab except for the smoke.  It obscured the view of the mountains.  We did go thru the Redwood Avenue of the Giants.  The best part of the trip today.  

We are now in Healdsburg and off to see our friends, Margaret and Bob!!