The Road to Eureka - Part Two

So Friday morning we got up nice and early, but not too early, to leave our hotel in Ukiah at 9:30 am for our drive to Eureka. Now the roads between Ukiah and Eureka have some of the best scenery in California. Some might say the best, but I prefer Yosemite by a tad and the snow covered mountains in Eastern California by a smidge. Your mileage may vary. What was particularly unusual about that morning is that we were in no big hurry. Usually, we are racing from place to place. It is especially hard when we have an afternoon thing and an evening thing that are hours of travel apart because we sometimes have to break off conversations with members to load up into the cars and take off for the next place. I hate doing that, but it is a necessary evil with no way around it. What can't be cured must be endured. But on this particular Friday, we had a lovely seven or eight hours to drive about three, so there was plenty of time for enjoying the sights in this part of the state that is not visited nearly as much as it should be, if for no other reason than its natural beauty. So off we go up 101, that part of it that stops being a highway every now and then to pass through a town. You know, it's the part where you really have to watch the speed limit signs because tourists passing through too fast are a healthy part of the local economy. A little under an hour down the road, we come to a rest stop and decide to get out and take a stretch. There is a nice creek which I imagine is a bit more of a rushing river earlier in the year and plenty of parking. What more can you ask of a road trip? Unfortunately, this is also where we had a bit more excitement than we were hoping for because as we were pulling out to get back into a caravan line, we heard one of those sounds that you hate more than any other on the road, the squeeek-crunch of stuff that is not supposed to touch touching rather painfully. A fender bender in a parking lot is annoying at the best of times and up on 101 amid the trees where towns are far apart is not the best of times. In all honesty, I am astonished that Grand Families don't have fender benders more often, because you've got all these cars who are all parked next to one another and they are all trying to leave at the same time to get in line. But up until this point, so far as I know, we've never had one in a caravan. Luckily, no one was hurt and the damage was not disabling to the vehicle in question, so we were all able to get on the road with little delay and only a few shaken but not stirred people. A few more miles up the road, we stopped at a redwood place with a lovely souvenier place where the Grandfather tree sits. This tree is ginormous!!! I am not sure if it started out as three redwoods that grew all together or one big tree, I suspect the former, but it would take more than a dozen people to clasp hand around the thing. We took pictures under the tree and I was completely bummed that my camera broke at the end of last year and I couldn't get one. What an amazing sight! Not knowing what the food plan was, and it being almost noon when we got to this shop, I got a smoothie to tide me over, but not fill me too much if we were going to stop somewhere for a late lunch. I confess that one of the hardest things about road trips for me is not knowing when or where you are going to eat. I have to watch my blood sugar fairly carefully and snacks totally kill me, so eating meals at regular times is fairly essential for me, but often impossible when we are on the road. It is really tough though, when you don't know if you should eat a lot or a little or nothing at a particular stop because you don't know what comes next. I bought a couple of souveniers for friends and eventually, we were back on the road. We did end up stopping for lunch at a place called Eel River, which was a nice pub sort of spot which was clearly the favorite of the locals. My daddy always told me that to find the best food, you want to go where the locals go and not where the tourists go and we seem to have managed that with our lunch stop. The food was good and the company congenial. We might have been a touch loud for them, but maybe not. It was hard to tell. Back on the road, we had one more stop before reaching our hotel, the Loleta Cheese Factory. This is a quaint little building in Loleta, just shy of Eureka, where they make their cheese on site and you can see the operation through windows from their gift shop. We got there just as they had finished the day's run, of cheddar I think they said, and were cleaning up. The shop had all sorts of selections of fresh and aged cheeses, wine, crackers, and cute gift items. If you like cheese, you have to stop there on your road to Eureka! But please, no cutting the cheese jokes. :-) So we made it up to Eureka and checked into our hotel in time to change clothes and head over for the Official Visit that night. Lucky for me, there was an Associate Conductress for that district, so I didn't have to work for my snacks again, but one of the other officers did end up taking a chair. The hall there is beautiful with a lovely meeting room. The only thing that made it tricky is that the room is a very long rectangle, so there is a LOT of room to cover in the East leading up to the podium and in the West towards the back of the room. In some of our ceremony work, all the officers are supposed to arrive at their stations around the perimeter of the room at the same time and it was quite tricky for the people who only had to go two or three feet to go slowly enough for those who had fifteen feet to cover to make it in time. This was something that we had to go early and practice because the next morning we were doing an Instructional for these members and we had to show them how to time the work correctly so we had to make sure we could do it correctly. It worked, but it really showed how different rooms take different timing. After our Saturday morning instructional, we had lunch and then a short afternoon Leadership session. It was really nice that the members got to see some of the Leadership committees modules, but it was a shame that they couldn't see them all. It is a puzzlement how to get all our programs everywhere in the State for all the members no matter how far away they are. I wonder if anyone has ever looked into video conferencing or a remote site set up so we could travel less and offer more? On Sunday, we had a Grand Officer breakfast and reception. We had abelskievers with syrup and jam, which are totally yummy and totally naughty and then we got to explore Ferndale, which I am told is the best preserved Victorian town in California. The shopping is great and the people are very friendly. The reception was also very well done and we had a great time before turning to make the long drive home. Next week I am going to miss the visits in Barstow and Palmdale so I can attend the Grand Lodge Retreat event in San Ramon and see what our Brother Masons are teaching their up and coming leaders, to see if the same sort of stuff might help our members and get a feel for ways that we can provide more training opportunities to our upcoming leaders.