Cliff Hangers

We had decided last night to start the day with a slower pace and sleep a little later. When we finally did get up I was frustrated that we had wasted an entire hour of adventure by sleeping!

As we drove out of Eureka we saw a sign for the town of Ferndale. I remembered that my friend Betty had relatives there and had mentioned going there, so on impulse we took the exit. Ferndale is a little gem of a town filled with many wonderful Victorian homes, large and small. Just seeing those would have been worth the extra miles, but the little downtown shops made it even more fun. We wandered through the various shops and met two ladies from Texas who were just full of fun. We ended up in a hat shop and we all tried on dozens of fun hats. One of the ladies took our picture and texted it to me (I had left my cell phone in the car).

We decided to take Highway 1 down the coast. After winding through mountains of redwoods, pin turn after pin turn, mile after mile, we finally came on to the beach front. The only problem was that we were still high on the cliffs. I am terrified of heights and curves (especially curves with cliff dropping edges!), so after enduring the mountains, I was not exactly ready to take on ocean bordering cliffs. But we were committed by then, so I hung on for dear life, sweated my way through about 10 Kleenex and about the time I was ready to say "I'm done" we arrived at Mendocino. We had thought it would be a little ocean art town, but it was not quite what we expected. We had lunch in a little meat market/delicatessen and decided to drive on.

It became clear to us that towns are few and far between all those cliff dropping curves, and I was beginning to despair over ever finding a place to stay for the night. I had visions of us sleeping in the car. I certainly wasn't willing to drive those curves in the dark! Just when I had almost lost all hope we came across the town of Gualala. There was only one hotel with a vacancy, and Jim said we were going to take it no matter what. I suspect he was weary of my anxieties. We took one of the last two rooms available and paid less for it than we had at some of the other hotels where we have stayed. Because we had approached the hotel from the mountain side, we had no idea until we walked into the room that it was an ocean facing suite. What a wonderful blessing. Tonight we sat out on the balcony and watched the sun set over the Pacific in a quiet, beautiful setting. God provided the tranquility just when I needed it most.

Tomorrow I will have to endure more scary curves and cliffs, but we will drive on to San Francisco. Maybe by the time we get there I will have overcome my fears!