We left Ferndale about 10:30 after another nice night at the Gingerbread Mansion and a nice conversation at breakfast.
We were in a bit of a hurry by the time we left – friends in Palo Alto had invited us to a pool and dinner party which started, as usual, at 3pm. We normally don’t get to their house for these parties until 5 or so, and I had hopes that we’d make it by then.
But we didn’t want to leave Humboldt County without seeing a few giant redwoods! Tammy, who’d greeted us at the Humboldt Botanical Garden yesterday, had suggested we stop at the Rockefeller Forest instead of driving down the Avenue of the Giants, so we followed her advice and enjoyed a few minutes communing with nature without any other tourists around.
We didn’t have time to explore, though, so we returned to Highway 101 and headed for our first charging stop of the day at the One Log House a few miles south of Garberville. The house is a tourist attraction which has been around for decades – there used to be a gift shop there and you could pay a couple of bucks to get into the house itself. But new owners had turned the gift shop into a pot dispensary…which went out of business recently! Fortunately, the EV charging station was still operational, and there was a gas station across the street with a convenience store and restrooms.
It was smooth sailing on 101; we’d found a promising Thai restaurant on Yelp just north of Ukiah, but when we got there, it had a “Opening Soon” sign (making me wonder about the reviews). There was a casino with a restaurant that got good reviews nearby, so we drove over there, only to find that the restaurant was closed until dinner; they did have a fast food counter, but nothing appealed. We finally ate at Ukiah Thai Cuisine in downtown Ukiah – it was quite pleasant, and I’d go back.
But all of the false starts had put us well behind schedule, and we were barely halfway through the trip. We made good time to the charging station at the Safeway in Healdsburg, only to find that the charger wouldn’t accept my Electrify America pass or their app. I called their customer service – it took two tries to reach a human, who was able to get the charger to start…after another ten minutes or so. At least we left with a full battery and no need to charge again until we got home!
Traffic moved really fast on 101 from Healdsburg on, and I was hopeful of making the party at our usual time…until we got to the Golden Gate Bridge. I was in the right lane, which was a bad decision – there were a lot of people merging into that lane, so we were stop-and-go while the other lanes moved along smoothly. Once we were on the bridge, we moved well – but once we left the bridge and got onto CA 1, things stopped again. It took about 25 minutes to get through the Presidio, Park Presidio, and Crossover Drive before we reached 19th Avenue and traffic started flowing well again – something I’m not used to seeing on 19th Avenue.
We finally reached our friends’ house at 6:30; the pool was closed, but there was still plenty of food, wine, and good conversation, so it was worth the trek.