GuerneTrek Day 1
Before I start my exposition about our current adventures in Sonoma County, I'd like to apologize if my strong views on the subject of Harry Potter offended anyone (I'm referring to my previous entry). While I'm not necessarily recanting my opinions, I have been questioning some of them. Basically, I'm wondering if me being up at 3:30 am, and therefore not in a good frame of mind to begin with, colored my take on the book, especially the ending, for the worse.
We left Los Gatos at 6:30 pm, with two passengers: Christa and Tango. Christa, Maddy's sister, needed a ride back to the city. Tango, a golden retriever we spent the last week dogsitting, needed a ride back to Marin. Much to Christa's delight (sarcasm) they got the share the cozy back seat of our Honda Civic coupe. The first legs of our journey were uneventful. No traffic, unusually good luck with traffic lights, and so on.
The last leg took us from Mill Valley, in Marin County, to Guerneville (pronounced GURN-ville), in Sonoma County. Most of this was fine. 101 North to Santa Rosa, then CA-12 West to Sebastopol and 116 West to Guerneville. By the time we hit 116 the sun had fully set, and the road becmae very windy. Not too bad, but by the time we hit downtown Guerneville at about 9:15, we were definitely done with winding in the dark.
Anyway, the directions were fairly straightforward: Go down Main St. and turn Right on Lovers Lane. So we drive along looking for the sign. Soon, we leave the area of Downtown, which is only about half a mile long, and the road becomes windy once more. In the dark, its hard to see much but cliffs and redwoods. There aren't many roads to turn onto, so it's unlikely we should miss it, but I do notice that many roads are unmarked.
After about five miles, we realize we've gone too far when we hit the next town. We turn back, still looking, and we miss it again. So we call our hosts, and they tell us to keep going till we pass a "tiny bridge" and then turn right just after that.
We keep going. No bridge. At this point we're getting pretty sick of winding through the dark. We turn back, and find a large bridge, and try it, but it's obviously not right. So we turn back again. Maybe they meant for us to go the other way? So we head back, looking for bridges. We find one, but there's nowhere to turn near it. We call again, and they decide to drive over and show us the way back.
It turns out, we missed our road because: a) there was no sign saying "Lovers Lane", b) there was a sign but it said "Old Monte Rio Rd." and c) there was in fact a "tiny" bridge right next to it, but it was so small we couldn't see it in the dark. We arrive at our final destination just after 10:00 pm, having spent almost 45 minutes on about 5 miles of a single stretch of road. Fortunately, I got over my initial grumpiness about this and started to see the humor in it fairly quickly, and the rest of the night with our hosts was quite enjoyable.
We left Los Gatos at 6:30 pm, with two passengers: Christa and Tango. Christa, Maddy's sister, needed a ride back to the city. Tango, a golden retriever we spent the last week dogsitting, needed a ride back to Marin. Much to Christa's delight (sarcasm) they got the share the cozy back seat of our Honda Civic coupe. The first legs of our journey were uneventful. No traffic, unusually good luck with traffic lights, and so on.
The last leg took us from Mill Valley, in Marin County, to Guerneville (pronounced GURN-ville), in Sonoma County. Most of this was fine. 101 North to Santa Rosa, then CA-12 West to Sebastopol and 116 West to Guerneville. By the time we hit 116 the sun had fully set, and the road becmae very windy. Not too bad, but by the time we hit downtown Guerneville at about 9:15, we were definitely done with winding in the dark.
Anyway, the directions were fairly straightforward: Go down Main St. and turn Right on Lovers Lane. So we drive along looking for the sign. Soon, we leave the area of Downtown, which is only about half a mile long, and the road becomes windy once more. In the dark, its hard to see much but cliffs and redwoods. There aren't many roads to turn onto, so it's unlikely we should miss it, but I do notice that many roads are unmarked.
After about five miles, we realize we've gone too far when we hit the next town. We turn back, still looking, and we miss it again. So we call our hosts, and they tell us to keep going till we pass a "tiny bridge" and then turn right just after that.
We keep going. No bridge. At this point we're getting pretty sick of winding through the dark. We turn back, and find a large bridge, and try it, but it's obviously not right. So we turn back again. Maybe they meant for us to go the other way? So we head back, looking for bridges. We find one, but there's nowhere to turn near it. We call again, and they decide to drive over and show us the way back.
It turns out, we missed our road because: a) there was no sign saying "Lovers Lane", b) there was a sign but it said "Old Monte Rio Rd." and c) there was in fact a "tiny" bridge right next to it, but it was so small we couldn't see it in the dark. We arrive at our final destination just after 10:00 pm, having spent almost 45 minutes on about 5 miles of a single stretch of road. Fortunately, I got over my initial grumpiness about this and started to see the humor in it fairly quickly, and the rest of the night with our hosts was quite enjoyable.