mason garden

Last weekend was our 3 year anniversary which was cut a little shorter than usual since I’ve just taken a new job in March and that wouldn’t look very good to take a large amount of time off. Anyway, I booked a long weekend for us that included a trip to Gualala and then an overnight stay down near S.F. at the John Muir Best Western. (The location for that place was great but the people staying near us were loud and weird, more on that later)

Starting at the beginning of the trip we got up around 9-10am and I started packing and James worked on weather conditions, cleaning the litter boxes, trash and other details. About 12 we started out the door headed for the bank when we remembered that rent was due. After going to the bank we stopped at Barn’s & Noble for some comedy CD’s then made the quick jaunt over to Ihop for our traditional breakfast where I had mashed potatoes and biskets and gravy and James had something that I can’t remember. So we spent about an hour eating and then went to Bev Mo for some non-alcoholic wine, cork remover and plastic wine glasses only to head back to our little apartment to turn in rent and pick up a package that was in the office and turned out to be a game I’d ordered, Settlers of Canaan which is oddly similar to Settlers of Cattan which is a fun game.

At 3pm we were finally ready to make the "3 3/4hr" drive over to Gualala where we had a lovely room with a hot tub booked for two nights.  The drive really was more like 5hrs but we enjoyed the trip and relaxed in the hot tub while enjoying the sound of the ocean. There will need to be pictures to really get the full benefit of the trip over which included cows on the road and rain. A side note on the way over I remembered that I hadn’t packed tennis shoes which would be needed for Friday.

Friday was what I’d call an almost disaster. Luckily we went to bed around 11am instead of what could have been a 3am bedtime like happens frequently because we were woken up at 8:30am to the sound of a table saw and hammering going on next to our room. You might not know this about me but I hate being woke up in the morning. So….I promptly stormed over to the office and demanded to see a manager, who the whole weekend was never to be seen. The lady at the desk asked what was wrong and I told her. She was nice and went to find those doing the work. I really wonder who was running the place because she came back and said they couldn’t stop and that I could be moved into a different room. Why weren’t we put into the other room to start with when they knew there was construction going on next door. Nothing happened with that and I stormed back to our room after being shown the other room that wasn’t really to my taste. Each room is decorated differently and we were in a very nice Japan room with furnishings that I really liked. The other room was nice but didn’t have the wood hot tub and was all in pale colors. I’m more of a burgundy, dark wood person. So all morning I stormed around and became more and more stressed. Luckily we were able to leave the room for most of the afternoon while the work was finished. We had plans to go on a horse back ride on the beach and I needed to find shoes. The local cobbler had a pair in my size that I wouldn’t have paid for normally except there wasn’t anything else available. The man was very nice and has an interesting way of pricing things. We ate breakfast which wasn’t spectacular and then headed over to the beach about 45minutes from Gualala where we met our guide. The trip was a nice slow venture on some entertaining horses. Our guide complained and laughed about his internet connection and how his daughter was going to horse camp when they owned 16 horses.  At the end James was enjoying himself thoroughly and we were plenty sore at the knee caps.

One the way back we stopped at a deli in some little town, which is really too big a term for the place, which turned out to be very nice. They served vegan food including sugerless cookies and brownies that Candice would have liked  as well as a large variety of sandwiches, drinks and coffee. Again some weird people from the town but they didn’t bother us so it was ok. That night we showered and headed over to the pizza place and grocery store that was easy walking distance across the highway. All said we walked across a major highway 4 times. Very exciting. We ate on the deck while watching the sunset and tossed cheese puffs to the birds. Then we brought out the Settlers of Canaan game while we sat on the floor and ate ice cream, drank wine and enjoyed the evening.

Saturday morning we checked out about 11am and headed to the grocery store to stock up on drinks and car snacks then made the lengthily journey down to our other reservation stop. On the way I got a little queasy from the windy roads and bright sunlight so we stopped for lunch in Dillions Beach at a cute Italian restaurant. The salad was wonderful, pizza terrible and the little old man taking care of the plans was funny. I ended up burning my tongue on the pizza sauce and am only starting to get feeling and taste back. On down the road we enjoyed the straighter roads and Two Rock town that had a lot more rocks as far as we could tell. Driving up to our hotel we knew we were in a good spot to enjoy ourselves. There was a movie theater on one corner and a Carro’s on the other. We saw Over the Hedge that was very funny and very enjoyable and ate twice at Carro’s.

Sunday we headed home but ended up on some crazy road in the middle of nowhere. I think it was like highway 4 next to a river. We got lost on a road that looped around so it didn’t go so bad but I was really wondering where we were went the road went down to one lane. We got home at a nice time and said hello to our kitties who’d been really good and missed us. Pippin nuzzled and buzzed for at least 20min.