Friday, June 27, 2008

on the road again

goodness gracious.....
sorry for the lapse in our blog posts...the longest lapse in the history of the blog....i hope we have not lost all our readers, and it's time to resurrect our adventure story!

adventure it has been, as our car we were going to drive to CA broke down while we were still in portland, leaking scarily large plumes of blue/gray exhaust, oil-inspired smoke into every intersection we cruised through in SE Portland. the car was parked, we lamented about our many (expensive) (inconvenient) travel options for hours, had a delicious meal at por que no and shared a margarita, got home, checked craigslist, and found a post from a sweet woman driving down I-5 AT THAT VERY MOMENT! what!? yes, we were already packed and ready, gave her directions to the house, and spent the next 10 hours in her car cruising down the freeway under the light of the full moon, dosing unsuccessfully in intervals in the back seat and having conversations about "kismet" and fate and things happening just as they are supposed to. we saw the sunrise over mt. shasta and i drove the last leg through the northern trinity alps, a new part of CA for both of us, into junction city where she droppe
d us off near her house and a pristine powerful gorgeous tibetan buddhist sanctuary in the hills. we made a cardboard sign "ARCaTA or MeNdociNO!" and stood by the side of the road for an hour and a half before a woman and her two little kids picked us up. what a pleasure, hanging out with Izzie Mae and Bowen, 1 and 4 years old, winding through the highway and the trinity river mountains, stopping for a while to skinny dip in the south fork of the river under the sun, washing off our night of travel, enjoying our new friends. we stopped in Willow Creek, got nourishment at the health food store, and stood by the side of the road for nearly 2 hours before Tara picked us up and took us to Arcata, where we went to the food co-op and promptly ran into my massage school friend, Jana (of course, the kismet strikes again!) . Jana invited us to stay at her house for the night, and our sleep deprived selves agreed, and we spent the rest of the afternoon playing banjos and guitars at Wildw
ood Music and cooking dinner with Jana and her sweetie Tom. The next morning we got a lift to the edge of Eureka, and waited for another hour and a half until our awesome new friend Brent picked us up, Carson's new inspiration and dream-job holder. Brent is a visionary Green Architect, with his own firm in Oakland, and has so many neat projects going we couldn't stop being in awe of him. Carson hopes to work with him in the future, we'll see! (Brent's current intern is a man he picked up hitchhiking in the exact same spot!) Oh what a joy it was to drive through highway 101 again, up through Garberville and the Heartwood region, one of my favorite spots in the world!

Brent dropped us off in Willits, where we only had to wait for 10 minutes until a sweet woman picked us up in her plush rental car and drove us all the way to Mendocino! She told us tales from her past year, being a nurse on a Disney cruise ship in the Caribbean. We ate delicious burritos at Lu's Kitchen in Mendocino, maybe the best burritos we've ever had, and waited for Sarah and Adam to pick us up! From then on was a lovely weekend of spending time with all the treasured Heartwoodians at Max and Nishkama's powerful, perfect, touching, beautiful wedding at Old Mill Farm. We also spent time at the beach in Mendo, and cooked some tasty meals at Eric's house (a friend of NK and Max who let us use his house for the weekend!) The community here is so vibrant and generous. Josh and Steve brought tasty chocolates for us to taste from the city, and we all shared stories and successes from our past three years since graduation. We danced to the Hot Buttered Rum string band at the w
edding, camped under the stars, drank wine, ate figs dipped in local goat cheeses, and congratulated our favorite bride and groom.

Oh there's so much to say, but dinner's ready and we're having lots of fun at our friend Jessa's house, a dear friend we met in Bali! The adventure continues, we're still not sure when (or how!) we're coming back north, but we'll just see what evolves! Once you get bitten by the travel bug, i don't know when the adventures ever cease!

Your faithful explorers,
Melissa (& Carson!)

follow this link to pictures from the wedding! (thanks to josh, the photographer!)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/josh_a/sets/72157605830697642/

No comments: