THE DARK TIMES

This entry deserves its own post…Our 44-mile drive (refer to previous post) turned into a 2.5 hour stomach curling drive up and down narrow and winding roads that transformed both the passenger and driver into anxious/squeamish travelers. After finally arriving at the Albion River Inn—exhausted, tense, and ravenous—we found the inn’s kitchen closed at 8:30 PM, 30-minutes prior to our arrival at the restaurant door. Still needing to grab a bite and finding ourselves in the middle of nowhere-California Coast, we were lucky enough to have the Albion Inn Restaurant’s staff call an establishment named “Pattersons Pub” in Mendecino, a town about 20-minutes back on the road we came in on, to ensure they were still serving dinner. After confirming the kitchen was still open, the hostess sketched out a map to Pattersons for us and, although weary, we hopped in the vehicle with the hopes of recharging over a nice meal.

Then it happened…We got to Pattersons and found it was a bar. Not a pub…A BAR. We still paused for a second inside the doorway to scan for a table as the hostess at the Albion River Inn raved about the food. Unfortunately, we found no tables available and decided to skip the two bar stools next to the Jagermeister machine because we really didn’t want to keep someone from sitting directly next to the speakers that were blasting music throughout the establishment for the patrons.

After leaving Pattersons we did a quick scan of our surroundings and noted there wasn’t an open eatery to be found, prompting one of us to say, “Where in the hell are we?” (Please use internal voice inflection when reading this passage.) The comment led us to find a small local grocery store and purchase some wheat thins, cheese, and deli turkey slices; we then returned to our quarters and tried our best to ignore the fog horn that we determined blasts out off the coast every 30-seconds (literally) as we ate our crackers and cheese with our fingers, sitting on the floor in front of the fire that Dave had built in our in-room fireplace (yes, we did need to light a fire in the middle of July).

Well, this morning we determined that the fog horn, in fact, goes off all night and all day at 30-second intervals; therefore, we’ve determined that it is time to cut this visit short. We’re going to eat breakfast, terminate our stay a day early and head on to San Francisco. (We really tried to film the fog horn for you but decided that it didn't have the same impact on film as in real life; trust us, it was bad!)