I have found it!*

Much like I imagine a mother must have this awareness of the whereabouts of her brood at all times, I am constantly attune to the next long weekend or holiday in the calendar.

There are 65 consecutive work days before Memorial Day.

But President’s Day was just 4 days ago, and herein lies a little tale.

Way back in November, due to my intense anticipation for long weekends, I booked rooms at a bed and breakfast in Eureka for President’s Day weekend.  Eureka is about 5 hour’s drive north of here, on the coast, in Humboldt county.  I’ve never been that far north, so yay!  Adventure!  And bed and breakfast?  Please serve me up a slice of Victorian quirky quaintness any old time!

We were gung ho about leaving early on Saturday so that we’d be able to stop at the Humboldt Redwoods State Park on the way.  We packed on Friday night.  I did laundry so that we wouldn’t have to deal with that when we came back.  We were rip raring to go.  Long weekend!  Weekend getaway!  Long weekend!

And then we were off.

The drive took us through wine country.
iTunes were set to shuffle.

We stopped and slogged about with some redwoods.  We jumped down and stood inside the cavern of one and scuttled through the center of another fallen trunk that had a hollowed out middle.

And then we got to Eureka.  It wasn’t quite what I had in mind.  More bail bond establishments than I had anticipated.

The bed and breakfast was definitely cute and Victorian from the outside, but really more like a hotel on the inside.   The staff seemed to be comprised of community college students, who were plenty nice but not the sort of service professionals you expect for two hundred bucks a night.  Same for the restaurant in the hotel that we went to that night… it was fine, but they definitely had some delusions of grandeur.

We went for a run the next day on a path through an old growth forest reserve, which may have been the best run I’ve ever had.  The air was moist and cool and fresh.  Like a rain forest.  The path ran parallel to a little river and we often passed pretty little waterfalls.  There were little wooden bridges.  At one point, I told David that I felt like an Indian chasing after a deer in the woods** it was just that good.

I didn’t take pictures on the path, but on the drive back we did drive over a covered bridge:  Also, cows live here.

We wandered around Eureka.  One of the main points of interest, apparently, is this big green mansion, which you can’t go inside because it houses a secret society of warlocks.

We found The Lost Coast Brewery.  It was excellent.  There were beers.

 

And later, nachos.

On Monday (which should have been a work day, but was part of a Long Weekend!  Weekend Getaway! instead) we got back in the car to head back home.  The drive back definitely seemed longer, but we had a nice little visit at a small cheese factory and later, a great lunch at a funny little gem of a place in a little teeny town.

And then, back home again.  I probably wouldn’t encourage a mini-break of your own in Eureka, but it wouldn’t be a half bad place to pit stop on the way farther north.  And I’ve still never been to Portland, so you never know…

*Eureka translates to “I have found it!”  Also, California’s state motto is “Eureka (I have found it.)”  Which means that the motto is basically saying the same thing twice. 

**I may regret this sentiment now, as David used this idea to try and motivate me while running the two miles of heinous.