Crescent City or bust

Not.

Don't come here.
If you have to come here, do not eat or sleep here.
If you have to eat here, don't.
If you have to sleep here, try the backseat of the car.

On our drive into Crescent City, we passed two arrests going down (this is a Tuesday at 8pm--not the Friday not got the paycheck let's party crowd). Guys hanging on the corners and Asha is saying, "we are staying in the HOOD!!!!" Just kidding. We are staying in a decent (well, if you overlook the falling down garage, rotting steps and welcome (ha) mat and the smell of mold and old dog) apartment, but the best part of the apartment is it overlooks the ocean (but, since it's dark we aren't really getting a lot out of that view (tomorrow maybe!)

I didn't intend to start at the end of the day, but it seemed the most vivid.
Let's go back to the beginning:
We left on time (8am) and headed North for our first food stop in Healdsburg. Vive and I had been to this local farm to table favorite before, and I'd hyped it to Mom and Asha. For me, Bavolo was a disappointment. The wait staff seemed half alive and mostly dead and barely spoke to us. The breakfast pizza was like a frozen pizza with chopped up (local!) bacon and an underdone fried egg. I couldn't even taste the sauce on the pizza (and what's up with tomato sauce on a breakfast pizza!). The granola sounded great--ginger cashew with Greek yogurt. But it was soggy as if it hadn't been baked (or worse and probably more likely old and stale).

If you think all I'm going to do is slam everywhere we go, let me move onto our next food stop (at this point in the trip, all we've done is eat and drive). We were unable to stop at our second stop because it was closed for roof repair. But our third stop was a winner: Nacho Mama in Garberville. This little wholein the wall taco stand serves up organic, fresh mex food that you can eat in this refreshingly cool patio off the street. We ordered the daily special--veg tamales which were great. Mom hadn't ever had a tamale and was pleasantly surprised. She thought a tamale was corn husks so this was a nice treat. We also had a taco salad which was superb with very fresh lettuce, guacamole and beans. Clear winner of the day as far as food is concerned.

It's getting late, but I do want to mention that we did do something in addition to eating--we found a great hike in Humboldt State park: gould loop. We inaugerated the summer bridge that was literally being finished as we walked up and we added the 3.5m grasshopper trail to the Gould loop.

I think I can say that a good time was had by all!!!!

Some of the funny things (well, we thought they were funny): Asha is VP of refrigeration (she did not like cooler queen); Mom likes to drive so close to the passenger side of the car that we could pull the weeds on the side of the highway (yes, this is what passes for humor on a 360 mile day)