Hamer Village, Omo Valley, Ethiopia

In this round hut made of sticks and straw, smoke stirs the smell of a contintent. I’m sitting cross-legged atop a dried goatskin, its hard edges sharp and curling away from the packed-earth floor. A few inches above my head, a rack of horizontal sticks holds the dark bases of kalabasha gourds, the only household items. Through the suspended shelf’s cracks, beyond the gourds, I see the underside of the thatch roof. The blue smoke swirls against it.

The smoke rises from a small wood fire smoldering without flame on six inches of coals piled between three angular rocks, also blackened. The coals heat a round jug of fire-darkened clay the size of a beach ball. Steam curls out of the black hole at the top. The steam comes from the boiling coffee pulled by a ladle into this hut’s twelve-foot-diameter circle punctured by gray, slanting light.

Milio, age 35, holds the ladle, moving it quickly and smoothly through the kettle’s narrow opening and tilting the dark brown brew into a halved gourd that is textured and black like the tops of the father’s hands that take the gourd and turn it up to mouth then place it between bare feet planted on hard, orange-tan dirt at the edge of a goat hide. Two men, both elders, share the skin, their knees bent, wrapped in arms as straight as bone, the dark skin tight across the top and sagging slightly below from gravity and time like damp, fitted sheets on a clothes line. The smoke moves and crosses their faces, dulling the oily glow shining off the cheekbones and foreheads that pull away from the golden-gray eyes in wrinkles like desert geology seen through a plane window.

They drink again from their kalabashas and spray the last bit of saliva and coffee onto my face, their countenances serious and unchanged. I sip my coffee and spray back, attempting the same exaggerated spewing sound. Their faces break and they laugh with straight, white teeth. Milio’s hand keeps moving the ladle, stirring the coffee and refilling gourds. Smoke expands behind her like a white screen of pulled cotton around her head of braided rows that fall like a hundred bracelets of beads colored red-brown and glistening with the rock powder and animal fat paste used as decoration by Hamer women. Her right shoulder faces me with its pattern of small vertical scars in horizontal bands that cross from the back of her arm onto the upper back and over the shoulder blade. She doesn’t smile. She squats, her short goat-skin skirt’s tail blending into the goat-skin mat below her. This is her house and she sleeps where she cooks.

A toddler, naked below a necklace of white shells, crawls over her bent legs, his dusty bottom round, his soft thick legs pumping upward as if climbing an invisible ladder, trying to push the chubby, dust-colored face closer to a nipple that falls low and to the side. The ladling motion disrupts his progress and he slips down then angles for another attempt. His lips grip and his body stills for a few swallows before sliding back down to goat skin and bare feet and blackened gourds and dirt packed with coffee, sweat, semen, corn, cow shit, breath, blood, and ash. All in this ribbed, circling hut that exhales smoke into the world like a breathing fossil in raised relief.

Interior, South Dakota

So There I Was…

In the front seat of a jolting pick-up truck bouncing through an immense expanse of South Dakota grasslands. Clint, the slightly hung-over rancher, was driving, one hand on the steering wheel, one on his plastic cup of powdered iced tea. A black calf the size of a Doberman stood shakily in the back seat. Clint had just lasso’d the calf, a stray wandering dangerously behind a small herd of cattle.

I’d arrived in Rapid City, SD twelve hours before on assignment to check out Badlands National Park, one of my selections for a summer story on five lesser-known national parks. Prior to becoming a salaried travel editor with a little company called Time Inc. as a backer, my travel experiences had trended toward the dirt-bag side. The central component to such travel is avoiding the costs of hotels and motels: $60-100 on a hotel room, or use that money for an extra three days of food and gas? I’ll take the extra time everyday.

So when the mandate came down at work to “spend your money like it’s yours” I took them literally. This national park trip would break single-season lows for expense reports.

Perhaps that explains how I ended up in Interior, SD’s Horseshoe Bar looking for something to eat and drink. I’d planned to eat at a tiny cowboy saloon in a tiny town that could hold only one tiny cowboy saloon, but everything in Scenic, SD was closed by the time I arrived. By 10pm I had a diminishing pack of Twizzlers and no water. The place I’d planned to camp, a beautiful bluff overlooking the South Unit of Badlands National Park, seemed a bit dicey with the thunderstorms seen forty miles away threatening to wash out the dirt access road. So I drove through the darkness to Interior and found a grassland lighthouse: three letters shining in bright, fluorescent yellow to spell B-A-R.

That’s where I met Clint. He wore tight, faded jeans, a glittering rodeo belt buckle, and a torn blue button-up cowboy shirt, the kind that sells for 25$ in hip vintage stores. His buddy and the only person in the place other than the bartender and me was Mitch, a Lakota Sioux Indian. Mitch and Clint grew up together, Clint as part of a ranching family and Mitch a member of the Lakota tribe on Pine Island Reservation.

At some point in these random travel encounters I get around to telling the folks that I’m a travel writer. This can have the hit-or-miss effect of opening the door to a myriad of article suggestions, usually centered on “the cutest little Victorian B&B with a fascinating history.”

Tonight Clint offers to show me his ranch, “to see some of the country.” He’s considered opening a horse ranch for tourists and wants my opinion. A half hour later I’m following him in our trucks out dirt roads to the trailer where we stand outside and sip whisky from a small bottle: “Here, you need some of this.” Overhead a domed, moonless ceiling of the thickest blanket of stars I’ve ever seen makes the night look silver. As my eyes adjust to the darkness I make out the soft shape of rolling hills covered in tall grasses. Clint’s long, dark trailer is in front of us as we stand by his diesel pick-up. After talk of property rights and life on a large-scale family ranch, Clint points me to my room then heads to the other end of the trailer to sleep on his sheet-less mattress in the master bedroom.

Morning comes bright in the grasslands. I wake up from my sleeping bag atop the bed and lie still for a few minutes remembering exactly where I am. It’s not that I’d had too much whisky the night before, it’s just that I hadn’t expected to wake up in a bright room of peeling wallpaper with miles of grasslands outside a trailer full of cowboy boots, hats, empty potato chip bags, and a nice man named Clint still asleep fifty feet away.

I wander out the squeaky screen door into the sunlight and sit at the warped, homemade wooden table nearly buried in the tall grasses that extend out over hills broken only by random clumps of juniper trees. Eventually the open door space fills with Clint, wearing the same shirt and squinting into the light.

“Damn, you’re up and at ‘em,” he says. “I’m lazier’n hell this morning. Drank too much last night.”

He goes back inside, pours himself some instant tea mix and comes back out.

“Wanna see some of the country?”

We hop into his truck, the two dogs on the flatbed in back, and head down a gulch and back up, taking the direct route to the edge of the gently rolling grassland plateau. Suddenly the sage and light green grasslands curl under like the lip of a wave seen from behind. Below the curl it’s like the skin has been peeled back from the landscape. Badlands fall out in sharp spires and gullies chiseled by the minimal rain that’s been falling out here for thousands of years. The soft clays and muds wash away easily, leaving slopes of cracked, crumbly grays, reds, pinks, and tans. The mad drip castle of a slope finally levels off into a lush green carpet at the valley floor. In the distance I see the southern edge of Badlands National Park’s North Unit. Between here and there, Clint and his family ranch thousands of acres, breeding cattle and bison and growing hay to feed them. My hamburger last week in Birmingham may have come from here.

As we drive toward the herd of cattle where we’ll eventually pick up the orphan calf, Clint tells me about the ups and downs of the ranching business and life. It’s all he’s known and all he will know, though he has dreams and ideas like the trail horse outfitter service for tourists. I realize I can visit national parks like Badlands and I always will, but I’ll never have the native knowledge of someone like Clint. All I can do is take a chance and go home with an honest drunk rancher offering to show me some of his country.

Clint drops me off at his trailer and drives away to take the calf to his mom’s house. She’s good at nursing them until they can be independent within a herd. I climb into my shiny truck and follow him out, taking a turn at the state road toward Badlands National Park where I’ll look for a story.

Dolores Hidalgo ice cream

The small town of Dolores Hidalgo is a suggested day trip from San Miguel de Allende. With its classic cathedral-adorned town plaza and a booming community of artisan potters, the town feels completely authentic. The dusty streets have a slow-motion bustle of push carts, bicycles, and taxis; the pottery warehouses double as studios with artisans painting and shaping clay in the back; the food market steams with cooking rice, boiling beans, frying tortillas, and brewing coffee; and on the corner of the grassy, bench-encircled plaza a large wooden cart sits quietly, selling perhaps the world’s best ice cream.

The only advertisement appears on the front of the cart. Hand-painted white letters spell the flavors: avocado, pine nut, rum, rice pudding, tequila, cerveza, cheese, mole poblano, pistachio, lemon, strawberry. We approach, hungry but more curious. The owner of the cart pulls out a handful of little wooden spoons and begins scooping little samples. Each one is perfectly creamy (avocado, pine nut, pistachio) or icy (tequila, lemon, rum). We begin asking questions about who makes it. The cart owner tells us it’s his brother and we can learn from him if we want. His name is Salvador and he lives just up the road from town and may be making some flavors today.

Our personal tour guide rolls his Suburban to a halt on a street a few blocks off the plaza. We’d been told Salvador lived on this block, right hand side. I ask a woman sweeping her patio, “Buscamos a la casa de Salvador Torres.”

“Aqui mismo,” she says, pointing next door to the little house that matches the others on the street: brightly painted but chipping, a little concrete wall, and a front door just a few steps up from the sidewalk. We knock.

A short. lean man in his late 30s answers wearing a pair of old, torn jeans, and a hooded sweatshirt on this chilly morning. We introduce ourselves as visitors who just met his brother and tried his delicious ice cream. Can we ask him some questions and learn how he makes the unforgettable flavors? A smile opens Salvador’s face and a few teeth poke out, not many: a good sign for an ice-cream maker.

“No mixing today, too cold this morning,” he told us. “But you can come in and see the equipment.”

We sat in the recently hosed-down interior patio/living room under an odd pale light diffused through the green plastic panels overhead. Salvador Torres tells us his story. He’s been dancing with ice cream for over a decade. His father began churning after tiring of the risky police work in small-town Dolores Hidalgo of Mexico’s Guanajuato state. Father Torres decided to bring ice cream to the town so he started simple: vanilla and lemon out of a pushcart wheeled through town. He made it well and well-made ice cream is not hard to sell, so he got creative with his flavors. And then he taught his son, Salvador, to dance.

But sitting with gringo guests seems uncomfortable for Salvador, so we ask about the process. His smile returns. He jumps up and shows us the 30 liter steel tubes into which he adds ice, sugar, fruit/tequila/beer/mole, and milk brought fresh each morning from a nearby farm. He brings the tube over to a wooden cask that looks like a Mayflower relic.

“You fill this with ice, put the steel tube down in it and start shaking. After a while you stop, grab the stirring rod and stir the ingredients in the tube. Then you scrape the rod to remove the built-up ice back into the mix. Do it again,” he tells us.

For 1.5 – 2 hours Salvador shakes, stirs, and scrapes. Then the product is complete and he begins another batch, usually working eight-hour days. In the states we’d call the operation a work/live situation; we might even feature Salvador as a Cottage Industry in this magazine. We ask him about modernizing the operation. Has he ever wanted to hire helpers or take advantage of mechanical aids or electrical mixers?

Not really. Salvador is a one-man show partially because he is an admitted control freak (he won’t make avocado ice cream if the local open-air market does not have ripe avocados) and partially because his former assistant ran off after meeting a lady and his one-time-assistant nephew ran off to start his own ice cream cart. It’s no competition, says Salvador, because the kid didn’t learn the art of the process. We asked Salvador if he ever thought of using a hand crank or an electric shaker. No, electric stuff breaks and, frankly, he likes the activity of it all, the dance.

We leave with a carton of strawberry and one of vanilla, a bag of hand-rolled sugar cones, and a heap of thanks for coming to his house and sharing in his passion. We thanked the greatest ice cream maker on earth and drove away.

Finland, MN

So There I Was…

Sitting at the Abazs family dinner table in their hand-built home in the North Woods of Minnesota eating penne pasta covered in a chunky tomato sauce made from ingredients harvested from the fields outside the living room windows, now brown and gray, ready for winter’s snow cover. The steamed cauliflower on the right quadrant of my plate has been frozen since its harvest a few months ago, again from the land outside. The red potatoes came out of hiding in the root cellar and their topping of ketchup is homemade from the same tomatoes as the pasta sauce. Finally, I wash it all down with goat milk from a mason jar. If I look out the window at the right angle I might see the goat near the barn.
The independence and self-reliance of it all is overwhelming. I taste it in the potatoes, smell it in the wood-smoke from the stove heating the house, hear it in the easy, honest, stress-free conversation around the table, and see it in the fields and barns outside the window.

This isn’t my kitchen in Birmingham where the ingredients for the ubiquitous evening quesadilla travel as far as Willy Loman in a year to get to my neighborhood grocery store: flour tortilla with wheat from North Dakota, cheddar cheese from a dairy farm in Vermont, tomatoes from north Alabama, an avocado from California, and hot sauce from Louisiana. Instead, I’m at the home of Lise and David Abazs and their two boys, Colby and Tremayne in Finland, Minnesota. It’s December, thus the fields awaiting snow, and I’m working on a Try Your Hand story about making balsam wreaths for the holidays. Lise and David are instructors with the North House Folk School located an hour up the nearby western shore of Lake Superior in Grand Marais, MN. Tomorrow a group of fellow wreath novices will arrive and we’ll spend a half-day collecting materials and assembling our wreaths from the woods of northern Minnesota. I came by a day early to check out the scene and Lise and David invited me to dinner with them, as informally as if we were old friends.

David and Lise’s story begins like many married couples: meet in college and decide together where to go upon graduation. However, that’s about where the similarities end. Rather than move to the best job offer in a big city or choose the transient lifestyle of seasonal work while figuring things out, David and Lise got married and took their honeymoon on a research farm in New Mexico. The couple researched places to live that would allow them to eventually be completely self-sustained – no grid connection to public utilities, very little need for trips to the grocery store, and a stimulating and safe place to raise the children they planned to have. Lise’s family lives in Minnesota and David, after looking at maps and books, decided the Sawtooth Mountains of the Finland area would be the spot.

“Sawtooth” might be a bit of a misnomer for these mountains that border the northwest shore of Lake Superior. Relative to the gently rolling, glacially subdued surrounding terrain and the vast expanse of Superior water, perhaps the sub-1,000 foot mountains do warrant such a striking name, but the landscape is more subtle than sublime. The 40-acre Abazs farm, as do most things built with care and quality, began slowly. This part of the country is deeply rooted in Scandinavian culture, plus it gets real cold so the first thing the Abazs built was the sauna. The couple lived in a small cabin as the farm expanded to a stone and timber frame barn for the goats, sheep, and other livestock, then a stone chicken coop, a woodshed, and finally construction of their current house – Abazs children were appearing.

After almost two decades of late 20th century homesteading, including a recent conversion of their shiny new Volkswagon coup into a biodiesel vehicle, the Abazs live that rare life of progressive regression: new technology such as wind and solar power, enhanced through a purely modern system of batteries and converters allows them to live simply, pulling energy from passive sources like the sun and wind and pulling food with their own hands from the ground around their home.

It’s impressive and refreshing though I’m not getting carried away; I don’t plan to return home and plant a row of potatoes, two of corn, and tie a goat to the little dogwood tree behind my apartment building. But even in Birmingham, as in most cities and towns, I can find food that requires far less transport than the average 1,500 miles an American meal travels before reaching our plates. A good friend here, in fact, manages a 4-year-old urban farm with two sites, both less than a mile from my downtown loft. I can dump my compost in the Jones Valley Urban Farm’s pile then stop by the outdoor food market on 29th and 2nd, right in the heart of the half-abandoned industrial/railway zone of downtown Birmingham. With pocket change from the week, I spring for a bag of arugula from the Jones Valley, or a basket of tomatoes as red and shiny as Christmas ornaments from one of the numerous growers who bring their fresh produce from surrounding farms to this Saturday market six months a year.

Almost every town I’ve visited, and I travel frequently as the travel editor, touts their seasonal produce markets and many places now have revived the food co-op institution in which local food producers and growers have an outlet to sell their wares year-round (see the Web sites below to locate one near you). Of course, buying from these local markets lacks the all-in-one convenience and year-round food presence of the average grocery store, but it has more character and reality to it. So maybe I don’t get squash in May; it tastes better in October anyway. The tomatoes definitely aren’t the same in February as they are in July, so I’ll wait on those. Like the excitement of pulling out the wool sweater on the first day of fall or feeling the sun on your legs for the first time in April, the seasonal changes in food keep life interesting. A slow walk through an outdoor market or community co-op, just like a slow-cooked and enjoyed meal with family and friends, can be a giant step in developing a sense of community.

As I mop up the last of the tomato sauce with a cauliflower leaf I can’t help but laugh at the apparent paradox of the Abazs lifestyle. A 21st century family living such an independent, slow-paced life seemingly devoid of all the technologic advances of the common house. Yet technology is the reason they live this way. That and hard work, dedication, creativity, and a committed sense of responsibility to leave a small footprint on the earth. It seems so old-fashioned and radical on the surface but on a daily scale who wouldn’t want ultimate freedom (from utility demands, bosses, fluctuating energy costs), leisure time to wander in the Sawtooths, travel to the Rockies, enjoy a Friday night matinee in the living room, and an enduring self-reliance founded on diligent, quality work. Isn’t that the American dream?



For info on locally sourced food and where to find a market near you, check out:

www.foodroutes.org

www.localharvest.org

Lake Mysteries Below the 101

Highway 101 wanders up the west side of the Olympic Peninsula as if curious to see this rugged coastline being torn apart by each violent Pacific wave. It gets pushed away from the shore, however, by the longest stretch of wilderness beach in the country, the 73-mile-long Olympic National Park section.
In Forks, the 101 slows down for a few traffic lights. There's an odd energy to Forks - it has a great location a few miles inland from the wild coast and a few miles out of the old-growth-laden National Park interior, but it's economy depended on logging for decades. That industry has diminished, leaving a recession vacuum. And the weather can be downright miserable - about 30 miles inland, Mt. Olympus gets 220 inches of rain a year, most in the continental US.
After Forks, the 101 gives up trying to reach Neah Bay and Cape Flattery, the northwestern-most point in the lower 48. Instead, 101 veers east, crossing the Sol Duc River and its hot springs resort, then hugging the edge of Lake Crescent.
I used to live on Lake Crescent, commuting on the 101 or by boat from one side (my house) to the other, four miles away (my job). I am certain it is one of the most magical places in the world. Over 700 feet deep with a crystal-blue clarity of over 60 feet - I've measured it as a science experiment. One should put the following on their life list: Jump into Lake Crescent on sunny day, open eyes under water and look up.


Crazy mysteries abound below the surface, like the Soap Lady, a missing woman who reappeared years after here disappearance by floating to the surface near some fisherman. Due to a specific chemistry of the water and depth, her flesh had turn to soap. It is an actual scientific process called saponification. The soap lady story... And then there's the recently solved mystery about the young couple (pictured above) who disappeared on their way back to a mountain cabin. Just disappeared and never heard from again, until 73 years later when their car and remains were found hundreds of feet below the 101 on a submerged cliff edge. See that story here

Hwy 101, Foreground

Some shots directly from the Highway 101 (or, in one case, the Hwy 1). Straight from the source, no messing around...

At some point in the geologic future, this forest could be left alone as a dying island off the now-further-east coast, like this forested sea stack...

Oysterville

Oysterville, WA and Apalachicola, FL are like long-lost cousins. Apalach has an actual town core and Main Street, while Oysterville is much smaller, really just an historic village of second homes passed down through generations of the same family. But the oysters and the sense of old and salty and crusty connect these two distant towns.

Banana Yellow and I detoured from the 101 on the final morning of our journey. We took the county road up the narrow spit that points north off the Washington mainland like a thin splinter. To the east, Willapa Bay extends flat and marshy, a perfect environment for oyster growth. Mounds of discarded shells brighten the green, wet landscape with their smooth white interiors. Most of the oysters on menus from northern California and through Oregon boast their fresh Willapa Bay oysters. In Oysterville, the men and women still collect the bivalves on foot, using small metal rakes, different from the long tongs of Apalachicola. They go out at low tides, including sometimes at night. I will return to photograph this process, another great old industry.

The Mouth of the Mighty Columbia

Astoria, OR has had a major revitalization in its historic downtown. The massive stone buildings have been renovated to house a handful of good restaurants (Clemente's, Baked Alaska, Bridgewater Bistro), a few hotels (the Elliot), cafes (Columbian Cafe), theaters (Liberty, Columbia), and shops. One old bank is now a luxury spa (The Banker's Suite).

Dominating the whole scene is the massive Astoria-Megler truss bridge that spans the Columbia River and connects Washington and Oregon. Those who grew up with an Erector Set will be especially impressed. The Columbia River brings water from as far as Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and Canada into the Pacific. After 1200 miles, it hits the Pacific with an average of 275,000 cfs. That volume makes it second only to the Missouri-Mississippi output into the Gulf of Mexico.

So much water coming down the pipe frustrates the Pacific Ocean and the two forces battle it out in one of the world's most powerful marine environments. Pacific swells traveling from the coast of Asia slam into All-North-American freshwater in mountains of waves and freakish currents and hydraulics. Early seaborne explorers searching for an inland passage passed right by the Columbia, unable to see the river behind the waves.
The Coast Guard Station at Cape Disappointment on the Washington side routinely performs daring rescues in these conditions. They have a boat that can completely capsize and flip back around. I have always wanted to do a story on these badasses. For now, I walk onto the jetty in rain that's slapping me sideways. The waves slamming into the car-sized boulders of the jetty are terrifying. I'm too scared to take a picture and Banana is getting worried.

I did not take this picture.

Scenic Overlook

The rain came to the Oregon coast about midway up, just past the dunes. Banana and I charged through, stopping less and less until the day ended at Astoria, the town where Goonies was filmed.

Beerquarium

In Newport, there is the Oregon Aquarium. The country has many new shiny aquariums in big cities like Atlanta and Seattle and the one in Monterey, CA is the most highly regarded.
But none of those fancy fishbowls has a Top 5 brewery almost sharing the same parking lot. On a family trip to the aquarium Mom or Dad could slip away from the seahorse tank for a "bathroom break." Depending on your gait, you could be smelling the hops emanating from the Rogue Brewery within 70-90 seconds. In under 4 minutes, you could have a taster tray of four delicious brews in the Tasting Room above the brewery. Back just in time to catch the tail end of the porpoise exhibit.

Here, meet a beer brewer in his natural habitat:

Mark Coon, 37
Lives in: Lincoln City, OR (born Kuna, ID)
Profession: FIlter at Rogue Brewery
Favorite part: Just the beer. The good, natural ingredients.
Least: No, this is a pretty cool place. Most people are nice.
Free time: Fish and hunt and camp. Outdoor stuff.
Travel: Germany: my brother lives there.
Book: It'd be about outdoors. It'd be kinda like that Into the Wild.
Last meal: Hamburger and corn and my wife made some potatoes au gratin.
Religion: Mormon

1pm, Rogue Brewery, Newport, OR

Hot Love for You, Fried Eggs for Me

Banana Yellow does not mess around. When he sees a foxy number, he pulls right up, smooth as theater-pumped margarine. Pamela, Banana later told me, is from Junction City, a medium-sized town inland near I-5. She's a 2003 and enjoys frequent trips to the coast though the salty air can be corrosive and troublesome in the long run. She does not normally hang around with a stranger in the parking lot.
I left them to their business and went to my favorite breakfast spot on the coast, Yachat's Landmark Restaurant. It's old, round dining room sits on stilts over the Yachats River's mouth into the Pacific. Sea gulls swim and fly.
I once saw a salmon swimming up from the ocean. It struggled for fifteen minutes in the inches-deep Yachats flow before finally succumbing. The gulls were on her in seconds. I ate my pancakes and eggs and bacon and drank my coffee just like I do today.
Jazz plays and a lively spirit runs through the place, even with the nighttime lounge behind my table darkened and closed at this morning hour. There's no one else in here. Just me, the tall waitress who's friendly but just barely, and the cook who speaks spanish and makes good bacon.

Elevator-Accessed Sea Cave

The billboards proclaim, "World's Largest Sea Cave" for the massive opening beneath Hwy 101 south of Yachats. But their silent yell should boast, "World's Only Elevator-Accessed Sea Cave Full of Moaning Water Beasts That Smells Like Fish Food."
I reluctantly pay my $11 in the roadside shop that is exactly the place to go if looking for small dangling sea-lion paraphernalia. The elevator leaves from a small deck platform and looks just like any office elevator in the city. It only goes down and the lights above the door measure the feet from 20 to 200. 200 feet down to the cave. The doors open to a black hallway with some displays cut into the rock walls, a carpet, and a reak of fish. The older gentleman who is the cave's guide, says he doesn't mind the stench, though his wife wouldn't be caught dead in there.
The scene in the 125-foot-tall cave is impressive. The lions fit into every corner of exposed rock, occasionally wiggling off into the rising and falling surf that enters through an unseen opening to the right. It looks and sounds like hundreds of angsty teenagers lounging about in the senior lounge, being whiny, chirpy, and moany.
I normally stay away from caves with carpets and lighted displays, but it's not often you see, hear, and smell 180 sea lions beneath your scenic drive.

Best Run Ever Run

I wake up in the Winchester Bay Inn – owned by the same family for over 30 years – and head into the pre-dawn. It’s that bright, almost neon blue light you get in wet environments on cloudy dawns. North of Winchester Bay and Reedsport, lives what I consider the greatest six-mile coastal run ever created. I loop it every time I pass here and it is always empty and amazing. It’s got wet, dark, soft spruce forests, massive dunes, stubby beach forest, and a mile of wide, isolated wide-open beach before it climbs back into the dunes and through another few miles of forest single-track. I’ve never seen another person on it. Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you exactly how to find it.

After the Grease in a Biscuit

The redwood forest, when left un-kitsched, is great for a nap. The Avenue of the Giants parallels Hwy 101 north of Arcata for 31 miles. It weaves in and out of dark redwood corridors, each dedicated to redwood supporters. The groves have that light, energy, sometimes smell, of sacred, ancient cathedrals. Or, of course, it could be the other way around...
For naps, nothing can beat the soft ground under a redwood on a warm day. Looking up from the source is the best way to see these beauties.

Three Ingredients

It ain't complicated, the road trip. Not everyone can have a banana yellow ride that burns up the road like a silver DeLorean in a microwave, but the following three morning essentials will set the charge to the day...

Cozy roadside lodging, vintage fonts preferred.



A brisk morning walk to a scenic vista.



Grease in a biscuit, half-good coffee in a short, thick mug, and internet in a laptop.

Perspective

I met Charmaine at the Grandfather Tree extravaganza of stuff that surrounds a giant redwood. She is from South Carolina but has lived west for years and worked here for two. I asked her why all the kitsch down in these trees...
She said it was because the trees are beautiful and it was a way to draw attention to them and let people enjoy them. I believe her. We take pictures of one another under the Grandfather Tree.

Might I Suggest

As a trained professional, I have the industry know-how to recommend the very best. For the NorCal coast, I offer the following suggestions...
Buy taffy and a beach activity at Candy & Kites Shop in Bodega Bay.

Send a postcard.

Look at this church south of Gualala and The Sea Ranch community.

Walk out and watch waves explode.

Let the Kitsch Begin

Many stories have been based on what happens when you go into the dark woods. About 15 miles north of Fort Bragg, the coastline becomes too rugged for the Highway 1 so it takes off east into the forests. The last trickle of Bay Area weekenders have petered out miles earlier, about the same time all those cute cottages disappeared.


The redwood forest seems to swallow everything. But the people have fought back with the most damning weapon of all, Kitsch Americanus.

Hunters, test your wits with the Chipalope, it is rare AND elusive. It should not be taken lightly.


The onslaught begins in Leggett with the Drive-Thru Tree and does not end until the Last Chance Liquor store at the Oregon border. As you'll see, the redwoods win in some stretches of road and lose badly in others...


For a complete guide to this area of endless superlatives, visit roadsideamerica.com

Just Charming

Mendocino on a sunny spring day is the end of the search. There are a lot of tourists, a few of whom take photos outside the front gates of private homes, but it doesn't matter. The wide-open feel of the grasslands and the little streets and the big ocean and the Big River down the way to swim in as the tide reverses its current and it flows upstream... it's a tough town to leave. And there are all these water towers that look like backyard treeforts of the luckiest child in the world.

A Silent Suggestion

The Yellow Existential Experiment

It is often difficult to pull oneself out of the present situation and take a big-picture look. From within the Banana Yellow, the world seems glorious: the northern CA coast streams by, the wind flows through my ample locks, Michael Bolton is cranked. But at one tunnel of cypress trees on Point Reyes, a little voice told me to think about the other people for a second. The innocent road-trippers passing me on perhaps their only chance to cruise Highway 1.

The tunnel of trees provided a perfect testing ground. The comparisons left me slightly ashamed of my own shadow.

Honk If You Brake for Scenic Pullouts

Raw and Slimy Does It

It doesn't take long for the scenery to pick up north of the Golden Gate in Marin County. Stinson Beach offers the first temptation to halt the northward momentum and bang some rays, especially since it is Saturday, 75 degrees and sunny. It seems the Marina and Pacific Heights neighborhoods of San Fran have been evacuated and sent to this beach and beyond for the day. Beautiful people and their beautiful children walk with great posture toward the water and set down baskets full of cheeses, salami, sliced vegetables, and spritzers.
And oysters are everywhere. I eat 6 bbq'd in Inverness, a tiny town on the edge of Tomales Bay and the north side of Point Reyes. They come from the nearby Drake Bay Oyster Farm. They are salty and delicious.

Further up, I inspect a few oyster grill areas on Tomales. The Tomales Bay Oyster Company is packed with 20-somethings that look and sound sufficiently lubricated for this noon hour. I continue to Marshall where the energy calms a bit and the Hog Shack Oyster bar's outdoor picnic spot looks appealing. I lurk around, wander among the picnic tables, and snap some photos, the lone, creepy ranger of Hwy 1.

My Wheels, Banana Flavored

What a great car for a road-trip. The Mini Cooper. Classic, stylish, zippy.

That is not my car. I shot this picture from inside my car.

I roll a Chevy Aveo. It was accidentally sent through the Crayola factory car wash on banana yellow day. It is special.

My car.