The McCloud Hotel
If you know me from this blog, you will know that we love interesting hotels. The McCloud Hotel is a gem! We are really happy to be here in the Spring, lucky that the roads are open, no fresh snow, the sun is out, Mt. Shasta glistens from every angle.
When we get to the McCloud Hotel, we almost dance for joy. It is lovely! It is a very old hotel, beautifully renovated with a care to preserve many of the old features. The owners love the place, and it shows. We were lucky to reserve a place in the hotel restaurant for that evening, as it was a Friday and the dining room was packed. The food was exquisite, locally sourced, and we can tell that many of the people dining there are regulars.
See the old suitcases? There are pieces like that everywhere, original pieces. The hotel was at one time a hotel, then a boarding house with separate floors for women and men during the time when it was a major timber resource, with a railroad spur to transport the timber cut from the mountainside. They have renovated the first two floors, you will see our room later, but they say the third floor still has the original small rooms, now used for storage. She said three rooms are used for Christmas decor, and I just wish I could see this hotel at Christmas!
This is the lounge at the back entrance.
This is the dining room, although on a weekend night, the dining room actually stretches out into the lobby to accommodate all the people.
This is our bedroom, very spacious, high ceilings, wood trim, huge windows, I am in heaven.
This is the upstairs sitting room, again, a large assortment of very old, original pieces.
This is the downstairs lobby next to the registration desk, next to the dining room. It is beautiful and comfy.
This is the coffee, internet and tv lounge:
We would love to come back here again and again.
Ft. Bragg to Calistoga Springs; A Short Day and a Mud Bath
OK, here it is. There is no point in being “old enough to know better” and not taking any chances. Life is short. It might as well be sweet, and sometimes, you just have to take some risks.
You might say, and we might agree, that life is full of unknown risks, like ending up on California highway 1 through the hilly, unguarded woods in late afternoon. On the other hand, a little adrenaline is the spice of life for AdventureMan and me.
One year, long ago, AdventureMan and I were living in Tunisia and we found ourselves at the beginning of the road General Montgomery took to break the Mareth Line in WWII.
(from Wikipedia:
Battle of the Mareth Line
Montgomery launched Operation Pugilist against the Mareth Line on the night of 19/20 March 1943. Elements of the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division penetrated the line and established a bridgehead west of Zarat on 20/21 March. A determined counter-attack by 15th Panzer Division destroyed the pocket, re-establishing the line by 22 March. On 26 March, X Corps (Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks) drove around the Matmata Hills, capturing the Tebaga Gap and the town of El Hamma at the northern extreme of the line in Operation Supercharge II, making the Mareth Line untenable. The following day anti-tank guns from German and Italian units checked the advance of X Corps, to gain time for a withdrawal. In the next 48 hours the Axis defenders pulled out of the Mareth Line, establishing a new defensive position 60 kilometres (37 mi) to the north-west at Wadi Akarit near Gabès.)
The road was challenging at first, a rocky dirt road, very narrow. “How on earth did they get tanks through here?” I wondered to myself as my 3 year old son went sound asleep in the back seat. The road became dicey, but there was no place to turn around, so AdventureMan gamely drove on. Several times, he had to find a place in the road wide enough for me to get out without falling over the cliff, to guide him around ruts in the road that went 2 – 3 feet deep. It got later and later in the afternoon, there was no other traffic on this pass, and I was beginning to . . . . have a little anxiety, but we never say anything, like to say it might make it true. There comes a point where the adrenaline doesn’t even surge any more, you just want it to be over, you want to be safe. And, as you can see, we lived to tell the tale 🙂
All that to introduce that today is a day of challenges.
First, as we drove down Highway 101, we looked for a winery I really wanted to find, Graziano winery. We had a bottle of Zinfandel from there, a red, complicated zinfandel, which changed my idea about zinfandel wines. We never found the winery, but we did see a sign for it, pointed back the way we had come. Arrrgh.
On to Calistoga Springs, where we check in to the Golden Haven Spa, a quirky motel/hotel with it’s own hot springs and spa, where we are going to have a first – a mud bath.
This is our very spacious room, with lovely high ceilings.
This is in the quiet room, at the entrance to the spa itself.
It’s always fun when you really don’t know what you are getting into. I couldn’t tell from the photos if this place was “nice” or “clean. You can read reviews, and you can’t always believe either the really good or the really bad. I looked at all the places in Calistoga, and this one looked quirky and fun, and I just had to hope it was clean (it was.)
The other thing is that with these mud baths, you can be totally nude, you can wear a bathing suit or underwear, whatever makes you comfortable. There will be an attendant in the room with you to help you, so how does that work? We brought our bathing suits, but once we saw the mud bath (black black mud mixed with peat moss) we figured we might as well just go nude. There were two of us, and we’ve seen each other nude before. It made us a little braver.
The attendant was sweet and modest, explained how things worked and then left us, saying she would be back. Well, the whole process is actually funny; you don’t climb into these big concrete tubs that look a lot like sarcophagi, you are supposed to ROLL into them, which got us giggling right away. And they are very hot, and you are not supposed to put your feet on the bottom, or you could get burned feet, and the mud is so thick you really do float. While you are waiting for the attendant to return, you use your hands to put mud over all the parts you . . . ummm. . .. you know, like want to keep hidden, and that made us giggle more, but you can’t giggle too much or you bend and might start sinking and the mud/peat moss is really HOT.
Then the attendant knocks, and comes back in and puts a special mud on your face and then leaves again for about half an hour while you soak. We were ready when she came back, and we ROLLED out, but actually, I couldn’t figure out how to do it by myself so AdventureMan came over to give me a hand, but he looked so funny I was laughing too hard and couldn’t roll out the right way for a couple minutes.
Then you take this two-person shower, which sounds a lot sexier than it really is, because you have mud everywhere, and it really needs two people to spray each other in places you can’t see for yourself, like your upper back and your hairline, and other places where you can’t see yourself, the other person needs to spray you.
After you’ve sprayed as much as you can, you get into the hot tub, which is also very hot and I forget to mention, sulpher-y. Sulpher doesn’t bother me in hot springs; I got used to it as a kid, Baden-Baden, Wiesbaden, there were fountains where you could “take the waters” and it was always sulfur-y. It’s kind of stinky, but you get used to it. After the hot tub, we were like limp noodles, perfect for having massages, which was our mid-trip treat, along with the adventure of having a mud bath. We slept well that night. 🙂
So was it worth it? Oh yes, it was. It’s not often we are so out of our comfort zone, nor that we laugh so much. It’s a good thing to try something new and different. Would I do it again? I might, but I wouldn’t seek it out. It was fun, and there are other fun things in the world we haven’t tried yet.
Ft. Bragg . . . where??? (California)
Most people, when they think of Fort Bragg, think of a military post in North Carolina. The Fort Bragg we discovered several years ago in California has little in common with the North Carolina Fort Bragg.
Our first time in Fort Bragg, as we left Cucina Verona, an Italian restaurant where we had eaten dinner, we were startled by the loud sound of hoofbeats, and the sudden appearance of two riders, galloping hell-bent down the middle of the road in Ft. Bragg. It was one of those adrenaline moments, when you wonder if you really saw what you just thing you saw, followed by all the things that could go wrong when you mix horses, highways, automobiles and high speed.
This time, one of the first things we saw was this sign:
But . . . it doesn’t say anything about riding horses, skateboards, or bicycles down the center of the street!
Ft. Bragg has a very laid back vibe. The town is full of couples who look a lot like us, maybe even a little older, maybe a little more hip and less retired military than we look, but relaxed, comfortable in their own skins. We love the vibe. My very favorite activity in Ft. Bragg is at the north end of the town, where they have a place called Glass Beach. Glass beach is where the old town dump used to be, a long time ago, and all the bottles dumped there broke and were washed by the waves, tumbled by the gravel and sand, and became beach glass. Most of what you find is pretty small these days; Glass Beach has been discovered, but if you venture out the the furthest inlets and rocks, you can find some larger pieces, sometimes even a green piece. I found one tiny little blue piece, the grand prize of all beach glass.
We love the North Cliff Hotel, where every room has the same view, looking out over the water at the inlet to the little bay.
We love the hot tub with a view.
We love the view. On the morning we were leaving, we looked out and someone had written a huge message on the sand, “Annie will you marry me?” How cool is that?!
Time is flexible in Ft. Bragg. We get up when we want to, we don’t have to drive to any destination, we can be lazy or we can just meander around, which is what we choose to do.
Love this tunnel of eucalyptus trees entering Ft. Bragg from the north:
This yard had no flower but yellow flowers, and a LOT of yellow flowers!
Just a short drive south is Mendocino, one of the most beautiful little California towns you could hope to find. We were looking for special gifts for two special people, and found them, polished carved natural bay laurel bowls, at this shop.
I read a recent article on how California leads the way for the American soul; it gives me hope for the future of our country. California pioneered gay rights, California champions the rights of immigrant children to education and health benefits, and Californians “welcome the stranger,” as all people of the book are supposed to do.
This was in the window of the main grocery/hardware/sundries store in Mendocino. When a woman saw me taking a photo, she asked me why, and I told her, it made me feel welcome and filled my heart with joy to know that it specifically would also make my Arab / Muslim friends feel welcome. She smiled, sternly, and said that they welcome ALL people, that is what California is all about. I was happily chastened. 🙂
I want the United States of America to be a safe place for all people. No wonder I love California!
Well, there is another reason to love Ft. Bragg – they have one of the world’s best ice creameries right on the major through street in Ft. Bragg. 
Cowlicks Ice Cream is never not busy. On our first trip (we went twice in one day!) I had a scoop of ginger ice cream. It was a huge WOW. On the next trip, I had a chocolate which was really chocolaty, but I wished I had another scoop of ginger.
As we sat, eating our ice cream, I overheard a stylish but somewhat-frail looking 80’ish woman tell her daughter that she didn’t want to be bothered being married again, she was just looking to have a little fun without the complications of a relationship. Such is life in Ft. Bragg. 🙂
En Route to Ft. Bragg, California
“Ft. Bragg . . . California?”
We get that a lot; most of our friends have heard of the Fort Bragg in North Carolina but most are not familiar with the Ft. Bragg just north of Mendocino on the northern California coast. We discovered it two or three years ago on one of our hiking and exploring trips, and fell in love. Some places just send out vibes, affinity vibes.
AdventureMan was talking this morning about Ft. Bragg, saying that if we lived there, we’d get tired of eating, even at the places we love, over and over again. It’s a drive to get just about anywhere from Ft. Bragg, maybe two or three hours north of San Francisco. But it’s lovely.
The drive from Bandon to Ft. Bragg is the most challenging drive of the trip.
The scenery is spectacular, the day is beautiful, sunny and windy. The drive as far as Crescent City is a piece of cake on Highway 101, alongside gorgeous scenery part of the way.
In Crescent City, we stopped for lunch at Fisherman’s Restaurant, which looked like a lot of fun. It was:
I had to have the Cali melt 🙂
They had a display case full of so many different kinds of pie!
But on we went. I had taken over driving, and later, we just laughed. As soon as I got on the road, highway 101 changed to a narrow forest lane, with twists and turns, and impatient large lumber trucks coming up quickly behind me and riding my bumper. I think I mentioned before that the rental Nissan Altima drives like a beached whale. It was awful.
I drove for three hours, and most of the time it continued awful, in different ways. Going through some small town, we kept getting behind a piece-of-junk car that had a bumper sticker that said something like “you know I have a sense of humor because I drive this car.” He was a horrible driver. No matter how I tried to avoid him, he kept ending up in front of me.
Finally, things evened out for a short while and I asked AdventureMan if he would drive. Just as he started driving, we got to California 1, an even narrower forested road with steep twists and turns. It didn’t look that bad on the map, it looked like a short stretch, but that was deceptive, it went on forever. By the time we came out again along the coast, AdventureMan needed to stop and stretch and take a breath – it was a stressful road.
Entering Ft. Bragg area
Back to Bandon, Oregon
We forget just how big this great United States is. We look at a map, and we think, “Oregon, piece of cake.”
Not so much.
This day we are bound for Bandon, Oregon. It’s been years since we have passed through, I don’t even know for sure how many years. The last time I can clearly remember is forty one years ago, our son was a baby, we travelled in a Volkswagon van turned into a camper. We had a little travel crib for our son, we slept in the way back with the seat folded down, and we had our famous cat, Big Nick.
When we got to Bandon, lo those many years ago, we bought a Dungeness Crab, had it cleaned, a loaf of French bread and a bottle of white wine. We found a motel, settled in, got our baby to bed and feasted on that crab. It is one of our most fun memories.
The route to Bandon is along the coast, but we are not always in sight of the ocean. There are some times we are, and those times are spectacular.
And my favorite of all, pouring rain and streaming sunshine and roaring waves all at once 🙂
We arrive in Bandon; I’ve reserved at a place we haven’t stayed and it is hard to tell from the online photos how this works. Our reception is less than warm. We walk in and the sole receptionist takes three phone calls before she acknowledges us and registers us. It’s annoying.
Our annoyance totally disappears when we get to our cabin. We discover it is easily accessible (not all are) and we can even take our bags in with some ease. Once in the door – oh Wow.
The cabin is old-timey, but squeaky clean, and with a view to die for. There is a part of me that could stay in this cabin forever.
This is the view from the balcony when we arrived.
AdventureMan walked the beach, came back, we stretched, walked around, napped a little, and then went to Tony’s Crab Shack for dinner. It doesn’t look familiar, but this may be where we bought our crab forty one years ago.
Tony’s Crab Shack is not a large place, like some counter seating, a booth and a couple small tables. The menu is surprisingly varied, and all up on the wall, with lots of beverages.
We ate something, I can’t even remember what, I probably had crab 🙂 and then we walked around Brandon downtown, which was almost entirely closed up except for a couple bars.
But I wanted to be back in our room for sunset.
The beach at Bandon is beautiful.
Bandon is one of my happy places.
Kalaloch Lodge and Creekside Restaurant
OK, I am going to risk boring you. I have a think about lodges and historic hotels. I love the old architecture, the high ceilings, the spacious rooms. I love the restorations and renovations that include gracious private bathrooms (!) and I love the vision that created these lodges in the first place. So I am going to show you lots of photos, because I can’t help myself. Honestly, I have shown restraint, but you may not think so.
This is the exterior of Kalaloch Lodge
These are some of the cabins. Many of them have cabins with kitchens, and people bring their own food for the week.
This is the wedding pagoda; the signs posted say that the pagoda is reserved from like 1 – 4 for a private event 🙂
The registration area and gift shop
Upstairs area
Our room looking out over the beach
Our view – oh WOW. I just wish you could hear the waves.
Sunset at Kalaloch
We ate dinner that night in the Creekside restaurant at the lodge, thanks to being urged to make reservations when we arrived. There is no place anywhere near Kalaloch you can eat without 30 minute drive. Fortunately, the Creekside Restaurant had delicious food, and some great choices for wine and beer.
Restaurant is on lower floor; above it is one of the suites.
We don’t often end up ordering exactly the same thing, but this night we did. A great arugula salad and a big bowl full of clams, and some really good sourdough French bread. AdventureMan had a local beer, and I had a dry red wine. Life can’t get much sweeter 🙂 I am very proud that for once, I remembered to take a photo before we started eating.
He restoreth my soul.
Wake of the Vikings: Breakfast on the Balcony in Montreal
It is another beautiful, soft morning as we dock in Montreal. This is the first time we haven’t been scrambling for the airport at o-dark-thirty; today we have time for a leisurely breakfast on our balcony before we have to vacate our room.
Exactly when we asked for it, breakfast arrives in our room; lovely fresh croissants, eggs, bacon, orange juice to pump up the Vitamin C for AdventureMan. We bask in the luxury of having breakfast made for us and delivered.
The roller coaster across the channel starts running early!
We finish our breakfast, we dress, we vacate, we wait for our ride to the airport. The airport is quiet, even serene, on this Saturday morning, even with all the cruisers coming through to head home.
We get to Pensacola in the early evening, and we barely stop to brush our teeth before we head for bed. It was a wonderful trip, and it’s also wonderful to be home.
Wake of the Vikings: TugBoat Dances to Welcome us to Quebec
It is a joyful morning. The air is soft, the sky is blue, and Quebec shines like a jewel in the harbor.
The sun is gleaming off a smaller white boat – a tug?
The tug starts shooting off water. This is interesting! What is he doing? Is the tug able to use seawater to form the chute of water? Is it also a fireboat?
The boat starts toward our boat, and one chute of the water is grazing the bow! Oh no! Is he going to spray all the cruise ship guests? Is this a security risk?
No! He veers away, just in time to keep from giving us a soaking, but bouncing port to starboard, starboard to port, dancing for us, dancing with us. One of the crew members waves seeing me shooting this segment. AdventureMan joins me, he waves back.
What a delightful and lovely way to start the day. It just keeps getting better!
He is having so much fun. We are having so much fun! The water sparkles off his joyful waterspouts!
He almost disappears in a spray of water. He goes around the back to welcome the other side of the ship.
It doesn’t take much to thrill our hearts. This joyful welcome does the trick.
As we dock, the World Cafe is full of people and their cameras; we are docking in the heart of the old city, and views present themselves for the taking. You couldn’t ask for a lovelier day in Quebec; the temperatures will be in the high 70’s F.
The tug boat harbor:
“Oh look, the local Vikings are coming,” I said to AdventureMan, and looking right at them, he asked “where?”
“That’s them, the local Viking crew, coming to help get people onto their tours and hand out water,” I pointed out.
“Oh, I thought you meant REAL Vikings,” he grumbled.
Hmmm. When I attended the Bayeux Tapestry lecture, the speaker said that the Battle of Hastings in 1066 is considered the end of the Viking Era, meaning exploration, pillage, plunder and settlement. But really, the Battle of Hastings was Norman (Norseman) against Northman, Viking fighting Viking, and perhaps . . . perhaps . . . the Viking Era goes on, hidden under a thin veneer of civilization.
Don’t you like that idea?
We have a tour late into the afternoon, then final goodbyes, dinner, and making sure our bags are out in the hall and ready to go by ten tonight. The good part about a cruise is unpacking and not having to pack and unpack again. The bad part is that a reckoning always comes, and we are stuffing our suitcases, and throwing out old underwear to make room for the few souvenirs we picked up along the way. The Viking Sky leaves Quebec City tonight for Montreal, and from our landing we head to the airport, en route back to Pensacola. I don’t believe I will be able to post again until we are there, and perhaps not right away, as you know what it is like, the deluge of things that must be done, when you get home . . .
So for now, au revoir from Quebec.
Wake of the Vikings: Sunset over Saguenay
Ah, I do so love having a view of the sunrises and the sunsets. Here is last night’s late sunset over the city of Saguenay:
Bonne Nuit!
Wake of the Vikings: A Short Day in L’Anse Aux Meadows
We have a wake-up call for six o’clock; we are on the first tender headed into L’anse Aux Meadows and we are excited. Who wouldn’t be; just look at this gorgeous morning sky to greet us. I’m good with drama if it is a morning or evening sky.
We wait a long time to get clearance; there is one other boat in town, and it is the National Geographic Explorer. Canadian Customs officials have to go through our paperwork and interview a select few face-to-face. Our 0700 departure is more like 0830.
No rain, so we are thankful, because rain is predicted. We are hoping it will hold off until we have visited the L’anse Aux Meadows Viking Site. Or is it a Native American Camp? For many long years it was believed to be Native American, but a team of archaeologists did a re-look and determined it may well have been an early Norse settlement.
The people in L’anse Aux Meadows go all out to make this interesting for their visitors. They dress in Viking costume to welcome us, and the site we visit has people who are “in character” telling us about their challenging lives in the early settlement, which only lasted maybe ten years.
Below is the woman who organized the buses:
A beautiful statue of the Vikings reaching the new world:
Statue detail of the ship:
There are a series of rooms built together, covered with sod. At one end is an outbuilding with a lathe. This may be someone’s imagination rather than something they really found, like they may have found evidence of an out-building and someone thought “oh it might have been a place where people worked wood, which Vikings did, a lot.” 
These character actors really enjoy playing their roles. They were a hardy lot, and they work hard.
Decoration on entry to middle of houses:
Outside view of houses:
To the far end of the connected rooms is a multiple bedroom, with kinds of clothing they might have worn. The beds are small, the mattresses thin. It would appear this might be where a family might live, or a father keep his unmarried daughters, as it looks like the next room, much larger, is more of a lodge room where unattached men might sleep along the side of rooms or on the floor near the fire.
More clothing, and cooking tools. Sigh. I am guessing mostly women did the cooking, and that those are women’s clothes, and the corner where they speculate women might have worked preparing meals.
I love the room at the far end. I bet some old woman lived there, some old woman who loved fabrics and colors and textures, who would shear the sheep and clean and comb the wool, card the wool and make it into yarn, or thin threads that could be woven into serviceable clothing.
And I am speculating that old woman slept in this chaste little bed among all the supplies for spinning and weaving the wool into yarn and fabrics to clothe the inhabitants. Maybe she even made warm blankets 🙂
Outside the far end of the long house, with an opening for smoke to escape, and light to come in.
This was a forge. What it seems they might have made there was nails, using the most primitive tools and techniques.
We walked back to the center, where we were told to catch the bus, but we are told no, go to this bus-gathering place. Our meet-up seems to have been scheduled about the same time as the National Geographic Explorer meet-up, as their buses are there and . . . ours are not. It is starting to rain.
We wait a long time, and then our bus comes, to take us to another stop, a sort of re-creation of someone’s idea what things may have been like. AdventureMan and I look at each other. He is really tired. He wants to go back to the ship. When the others get off, we stay on, and one other couple asks if the bus can take us to the ship. More and more people figure out that this bus might be going back to the ship, and hop on.
It is really raining now. A tender has just arrived, and a lot of people get off, more people than I would have thought possible. We get on. I learn that a tender can hold a total of 234 people. We head back to the ship. On our way to the elevator, we ask the spa lady if the spa pool is open and she says “YES!” We run upstairs and take off all our clothes and jump into our swim clothes and head down to the hot pool. There is no one else there, just us, rolling around, warming our chilled bodies in the relaxing hot pool and the “ya-kut-zee.” We have a quick lunch, AdventureMan sacks out, and the ship is making rumbles like we are leaving L’anse aux Meadows any minute now. Life is sweet, or as the Captain ends all of his daily announcements from the bridge – All is Well.
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