The Christmas Quilt

This is a Hawaiian quilt, ginger motif that I did for my mother's birthday in June. Well, ok, she got it for Christmas. She is ninety years old and can remember all the words to songs from a long time ago, but day to day memory is troublesome. She may or may not remember who made the quilt or why, and who knows how long she will appreciate it, yet, it was important to finish it. Mom has written a book about her time running a roadhouse in Alaska, when she was 17 and those memories are the ones that count for her.

We were struck with the power of the ocean this trip as those logs in front were rocking with the force of the spent waves. A coastal trip north would need to be done twenty miles from shore, with full watch schedules in order to avoid any floaters like this.

Mom's beach on a stormy, wet day is better than the best day in any city.

Into the wet........

Between Eureka and Crescent City is a small red school house and several large field where these traffic stoppers live.....hundreds of them...along with many signs warning drivers to watch for them. There is one huge problem - the road is windy and you can be face to face with them at any given moment. They look calmly at the dogs inj the van who look back with frantic barking. Finding the surprise of the elk among the redwoods is great, but as we have done this road so many times we try to be very quiet so the dogs don't raise a ruckus.
While walking down to the beach at Mom's, there is a herd of deer that come down the river that empties into the ocean - and the deer calmly walk throught the neighboorhood chomping on everyone's landscaping. This time, the dogs just stared them down. A portion of the Brookings Harbor
and the river is in the background of the cottage.

This homeowner has a great view.

All the chart books talk about going across the bar at slack tide, and the photo below shows why. Extremely dangerous, at almost any time. Summertime has calm waves, but the waves breaking in the mouth of the channel were pretty intimidating following this winter storm. I don't think so for any crossing in the winter.

It was raining too hard to show the foam and whitewater from the surf in front of the harbor. When the sun comes out here, Brookings is a magical place. In a storm it is awe inspiring with crashing surf heard into the center of town, mists blanketing the hills, and wet, wet, wet. Even more magic,

Legislating nature.....

There are four marinas down here in the south part of the Bay: Pete's, Docktown which is derelicts and nice houseboats, the "new" one out in the Salt flats and the municapal, which has about 6 boats on the channel and and larger marina area by Sequoia Yachtclub, which has some good memories for us. We are considering joining, just to meet some people and be forced to join cruise -ins on the Ba.

These are some of our neighbors. We never used to see pelicans here, that I can remember and would startle a night heron on our dock or see a few seals.. The view is across the channel, looking towards San Mateo, which today has hills covered in snow. Both heaters are going on the boat, which is a toasty 48 degrees f. We had a lovely quiet weekend at Linda's, celebrating my birthday. We will celebrate her's and Sandy's and mine next month with a spa or some fun thing to do hopefully in a place where we are not shivering to pieces.
We presently live in this harbor, and are down channel next to the tallest mast in the top photo. There is an inner harbor which has some elegant and some tremendously ratty boats, which haven't moved in years, mostly liveaboards, and someone estimated that there are about 50 dogs living aboard throughout the harbor.There is a dog walk/poop area, and we all check to make sure we arn't interfering with others trying to "walk" their dogs, as there is a lot of growling and posturing, especially from the smaller critters. The two shepherds lunge and try to act like silent killers on the prowl while we are pulled, flailing and ungainly, trying to keep them under control and smiling bravely. Your cool is shot, though, when you carry the poop bags over to the dumpster. Such is the adventurous yacht life.

It is possible to ride bikes all along the bay front, paved and unpaved, however, you can't run the dogs there , or enter the fields any more as we used to do. Signs all over prohibit anyone human daring to think of stepping into what is now called habitat. Where before it was homeless habitat in places. It is very urban here, and the sense that there is a large swath of nature just means you can look, but don't touch. The drawback is that where there are houses along the bay, they get to smell the low tide mud, twice daily.

Not stuck in Lodi, again......

Thanksgiving was magic in the soft light of lovely Lodi. The colors of the huge trees were astonishing in their brilliance, with leaves everywhere. A big wind storm tried to get rid of the last hangers on but didn't succeed when we were there. Bridget and Dave made an incredible meal, with 12 of us sitting together. Champagne not only goes well with turkey, but goes well with everything - don't ever let anyone tell you differently.

There was abundance, color, and new fun people - light filtering through the leaves to sparkle on more leaves. Blazing reds and golds. Solid, older homes, small town main street with people doing black Friday shopping - it is middle America at its best: us gypsies really appreciated it. Bridget and Dave skunked us at Trivial Pursuit and we slept the sleep of the sated to go home to attend St. Peter's, Redwood City on Sunday.

Now, that was spooky, as there were wonderful times there, and some pretty disturbing, distressing times, due to church politics. The liturgy has changed greatly, and some familiar faces were welcoming - since 1993, you may ask. But it was the first Sunday of Lent and we sang an anthem to the tune of St. Patrick's breastplace - which is the music with very different words for all great church occaisions and my ordination. Is it a sign of age when one is disturbed about changes in church liturgy? Humph.

Sell, donate, give away.....lighten the load

On the road again - only staying in Phx at Aaron's to have a garage sale with him and We cleaned out, compressed, were ruthless in throwing out "stuff - yet Aaron had a collection of wonderful, exotic furniture to sell. His neighborhood is an old established one - Arcadia, in Phx/Scottsdale and near an enclave of Hispanics. In two days we sold almost all of his stuff, most of our's and then some - mainly to Hispanics who peeled off $100 bills - off of money rolls. This was a better sale than those we held in Fountain Hills - go figure. At the end of the sale, I was exhausted from bargaining and Robert was just exhausted. We had managed to downsize: do the math - three years, if we last that long cruising x $79/mo, for stuff? We can afford to buy this "stuff" with the money we saved. Then, we get back to the boat and guess what? Rented another smaller locker near the boat

in order to hang up winter clothes. We had put them all in storage as Mexico is the tropics. Again, go figure. But our skis, bikes and possibly our kayaks will fit in there.

Then there is Bishop Jake who is famous world wide. he was featured with a bishop's mitre and cassock in a calendar. He danced and snorted all during our "unbirthday dinner".

The neat thing about unbirthdays is we can just celebrate being with friends such as Shelley and Doug, Eileen & Kenny, and Debbie and ...who? Where is Harold? Falling on his head somewhere while we drink champagne and watch Jake dance. I love it when Shelley explains all of us as family - which we have become. This isn't the family where you go when you have nowhere else to go -but the family that rejoices in your triumphs and mourns in your losses and sorrows. This is the family you would travel miles and miles to be there with for any old occaision. We really love you guys.

The elegant garage sale- it is telling that all that stuff was in storage!

And we are back on the road for Thanksgiving at Bridget and Dave's. On the road again------

crocks on the beach

Good thing there was a fence between him and us - the dogs were throwing out challenges and the meadow behind him was full of his kind. Elk - the critters that have signs all over northern 101 in Calif. We left Brookings and wandered a bit to unwind before getting back to boat work. The elders have caregivers and are ok for now, so we need to get back, move the boat to our new slip and try to figure out how to stay busy in this strange new retirement life.

No problem - we are going to go to Az. and sort out the storage lockers there and sell, donate and give away stuff. I feel it loading us down when we are twelve hours away from all that stuff.

We found this secret beach - Gold Bluffs, in Prairie Creek Redwoods State park - miles of sand and camp sites. Only my sister tells us it isn't so secret as there is a fern gully miles down the treacherous road and people come from all over the world to see the ferns.- we stopped to let the dogs run. We saw ferns in Hawaii, ferns at Lake Powell hanging from seeps in dry cliffs. The dogs needed a run and the fog was lifting. No ferns for us. The ocean was silver in the sun and the waves crash and echoes against the cliffs of this magic place, while the wind soothes the low evergreens by the road. I wanted to winter camp and stay awhile.

The dogs, of course, wanted to swim - but we just yelled at them to stay with us. The waves were huge and all we needed to see was shepherds being carried out to sea while we are land bound. They jump in any water available, so it was tough to keep them dry. Sha'ash thinks it is Lake Powell and he can drink all he wants.

Highway 101 runs down through giant redwoods, to the busy towns of the wine area, to San Francisco, and to the peninsula where you take your life in your hands on the Freeway.

We were glad to get "home" to unpack and organize the boat.

Beach art.

A metaphor.

Wrong way on Coast

And we thought coming out of Half Moon Bay was foggy! At least on Hwy 101 we didn't imagine giant ships spooking through the fog. We are in Brookings taking care of the elders and came up in beautiful fall weather. And then, rain. And today is November and we sat on the beach in the sun with the dogs - the extra dog is Buddha, and she belongs to Robbie, Mom's husband. She isn't sure of the bigger guys and has a tendency to run off. Both shepherds ran into the ocean and tried to drink it - thinking, probably, "hooray, we are at Lake Powell." They don't understand why we yell at them to not drink the ocean. Bad stuff happens to their digestion.


It is strange to be on the beach in Nov. and to have warmth. Mom's beach is a little cove at the mouth of the Chetco River, which is Brookings harbor. We had thought that last summer we would be cruising up here on our way to Canada. There is an old Jewish saying, "Man plans, God laughs" - so we land cruised in the van. Mom's neighbors must think the Clampetts have arrived when we show up as we sleep in the van in front of the house. I just smile and wave at them in my pjs.

Robert looks retired here - his new job is either International Yachtsman/ boatworker/dog walker/boat fixer/mechanic/fog driver/ or whatever he feels like.

We are very relaxed after the awful push of trying to get the boat ready. The worst part is that Robert made another list that is a full page of things to do on the boat. Ok - we will be cruising in and out the Gate for the winter and enjoying doing things with our friends here. As well as shortening the list. One would hope.

This , below, is Mom's beach with the tide trying to wipe the beach out. There are huge logs and piles of driftwood, which comes in from the ocean....or as a sailor would say, was out there on the water before it came to the beach. And something to watch for when we do come north. That plan is back in place - but again, a plan is a plan, is a plan. We shall see. We had some magic charters in Canada, years ago, and there was so much country we wanted to explore that going north is something we should get out of our system. I'O goes to weather beautifully, but the lesson, after seeing the huge logs on the beach - is we will harbor hop from about 20 miles out.