After checking out of the resort we stayed at this week we drove a 100 miles to Mendocino and Ft Bragg yesterday afternoon. We walked around to all of the picturesque shops. A couple of them had George Bush toilet paper. One proprietor said the Dick Cheney toilet paper sold out the first day. The ocean was fabulous. Very peaceful. While eating in a small restaurant, a teenager was quietly telling someone about the virtue of eating organic food. She was so intelligent! "As you know pesticides are made from petroleum. . ."

We drove over the hills twice and through the redwoods, 200 miles home. We tried to listen to Randi's show at first as the car wound through the redwoods. The trees are so tall and thick we'd lose the signal on XM. There are so many wineries between here and there it was breathtaking.

I've had a half fantasy for a while to move to the coast, but admit I'm afraid of the destruction caused by earthquakes. (I lived in Berkeley during the Loma Prieta earthquake in '89). Ft Bragg put those concerns aside. While I have a good life here, visiting the coast is a reminder there's a different kind of life out there, one with far fewer lights that crowd out the stars.

Sounds beautiful and refreshing! There's nothing like the sights and sounds of NATURE to put our lives in perspective and calm our frazzled nerves. I hope you got what you needed from your respite. We need to "keep in touch" with those places and the feelings they engender -- it is our ultimate well-spring! And when we come back here to the busy "real world", we also need to remember and continue fight to protect them...

The Redwoods of Northern California are just beautiful and an amazing part of Creationism/Evolutionism.

I hope you had a chance to get out and take the trails into the woods to be surrounded by the amazing beauty.

The hippie in me saw the old hippies up there, authentically thriving. . .not an empty HMO slogan. The coast is a powerful magnet. Each street was like something from the set of "Murder She Wrote." Decades old Victorians with dozens of blooming flowers spilling over into the sidewalk.

I made the comment to my daughter and her boyfriend while driving through the woods, if the Republicans had their way they'd cut down every tree on the coast. Reagan in essence said if you've seen a thousand acres of trees, how many more do you need to look at?

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/reagan/redwoods.asp

Reagan was an IDIOT: He also thought trees produced pollution. The rest of the GOP leadership isn't much different. In fact, THEY are the pollution -- to our government, our collective intellect and our gene pool...

That made me remember something. Snippy used to claim mercury came from trees.

That's it! How'd he get the nickname "Snippy"?

Not talking about Raygun, I'm talking about parsnips

Ooopsie! (I thought so, but...)

I love trees. No, I don't run out and hug a few of them every day, but I'm inclined to love them for taking in carbon dioxide and giving out oxygen. What's not to love about trees?
I really don't like birds. I used to like them, liked them a lot. Why the change? Certain species of birds annoy the hell out of me. Grackles and Crows, for example. In Texas, I have to listen to the horrible croak of Grackles; in Northern New York, I have to listen to the horrible caws of the crows. Do they serve any purpose whatsoever?
Sweet, twittering birds I can deal with. In the south, I watch the soaring hawks and marvel at their beauty. But too many sweet, twittering birds, attracted by my mother's and neighbor's four or five bird feeders, invade my reveries and the quietude I seek. The Crows, with their raucous calls, scare off the sweet twitterers and gorge themselves on the bounty, all the while spreading their wings and intimidating the little guys.
I've tried to tell these people that these bird feeders disrupt the natural balance. They deplore the explosion of spider webs and work, relentlessly, armed with brooms and incecticides, without realizing that they've made the birds lazy, without realizing that the birds that used to dispatch insects would prefer to eat the stuff in the bird feeders.
Can this be extrapolated into human society and our current financial crisis? I think so. On the financial level, we're putting out food for the little guys and the big guys are gobbling it up, spreading their wings and preventing the small birds from eating from the feeder....
Sallie

oooh! That brings back some beautiful memories.
I took a trip around there once. We did some diving at a state park there and found some abalone.

I remember measuring it to see if it was big enough. It seemed like a haven for hippies around there and I loved that...
I saw a school that was surely run by hippies...the classes were in old air stream trailers.
I could just imagine the kinds of conversations that were being held...

sometimes I dream of escaping to that kind of life and wonder
why am I here and what am I doing with my life?!

Its a wonder that I didn't see you.

A hippie haven but they've all got gray hair! It's a gentrified Haight Street but not so snobby that you don't feel immediately at home. I felt like "Murder She Wrote" could easily be filmed there. . .well kept Victorians right next to the ocean with loads of flowers spilling onto the sidewalks. One of the oldest health food stores is a converted church. White picket fences. Geese.

I'm sorry I missed you!