Hot, Hot, Hot

"Mama, I wan go town"

It is currently 10:41 PM, and at least 85 sweltering degrees inside the yurt, while 50 mph gusts of wind shake and shudder our thin exterior walls. Day three of a rather unseasonable heat wave. Being only 6 miles or so from the coast, we are usually blessed with nature's air conditioning, the cottony masses of fog that sit patiently to the west, waiting for their opportunity to creep upriver. Not so today. Heavy heat produced an inversion-type day, trapping smoke from the recent fires, reducing visibility to less than a few miles, raising the mercury to around 100, and creating a particulate-induced sore throat. Plus, it's hard to feel as though you are seeing clearly. I keep thinking that this is what it must be like to live in China.

Partly to escape the heat, we took a town trip to Eureka yesterday. It was one of the most fun town trips I can remember. Firstly, we didn't stress too much about leaving "on time". We had to stop to water a neighbor's garden, and picked some raspberries for the road. After an uneventful journey weaving through the hills of the Wildcat route, we were detoured at the freeway onramp through Loleta, and stopped at the Loleta Cheese factory, to appease a small toddler who was over riding in the car. Many tastes of small squares of flavorful cheese and viewings of the curd mixer "pinning" (spinning) later, not to mention acquisition of a very small plastic spoon, we resumed our trip toward the "city." First we had to offload recycling, where we observed forklifts and "big tucks have biiiig teeth" moving urban rubbish around, and then daddy lost his choice for lunch: "Ella, do you want a burrito or a sandwich?" "Samich"

Our next stop after picking up a deli lunch was the Sequoia Park Zoo, a small-town, nicely maintained, odd menagerie of critters, including a black bear, flamingos, llamas, domestic goats, wild pigs, and monkeys. Ella had a blast. She especially enjoyed the "taminoes" (flamingos), and petting and brushing the goats. We narrowly avoided a trip into the gift shop, conveniently located outside the door where you exit the last exhibit.

The rest of the day was spent doing grown up errands, but was topped with a stop at Matias Restaurant in Ferndale, the local Mexican eatery. Turns out it's under new ownership, who knows how long, but we haven't eaten there in ages. Though the food is the same, we miss the friendly waiter who has brought us our food for the six years we've been visiting.

All the way home again. The temperature was tolerable once we returned, and we puttered in the yard until after sunset, tying up tomatoes, watering things, playing piano in the shed, throwing the frisbee for the dogs. Ahhh, the good life....