End of Summer

We always end our summer with a week up in Northern California, visiting my parents who live in Fortuna. We've been doing this since before our children were born, so we've had time to develop many rituals that the kids are especially demanding that we observe each year, despite the fact that they are eighteen and twenty years old. Some year we take along our "old beagle" Rowdy who pines for us at the dog-sitters otherwise. Rowdy considers this trip the highlight of his entire year. 

. One of our long-time rituals has been to have lunch at Hurricane Kate's in Eureka. This year we parked a block away, walked up to our favorite restaurant, ...and it was closed--closed, as in you could look inside and see that the kitchen had been demoed. Kai, especially, took it hard. He's not a fan of the rest of our adventurous tastes, and Hurricane Kates made all of us happy with bacon cheeseburgers with sweet potato fries for him, and things like Lime Rock Shrimp Salad Sandwich or Falafel sandwiches for the rest of us. Oh, and the French-press coffee! I say this with a smile now, but I have to admit that I felt a little catch in my throat as I got out my phone to try to find somewhere else to eat. We have a lot of happy memories from that restaurant!

We were kind of hungry by the time that we discovered the tragedy of Hurricane Kate's closing, so we didn't want to mess around. We decided to drive across the bay to Woodley Island, where there's a restaurant called Cafe Marina. It was good in a generic "by the ocean" kind of way. Paige and I had a couple of oyster shooters, which was kind of fun, partly because it grossed Kai out and partly because they were really good.

We managed to complete all of other rituals during our week visit though, eating at No Brand Burger Stand in Ferndale. which has added chalk to their table decor, so the kids didn't have to miss the crayons on butcher paper from Hurricane Kate's.

My family eats pretty healthily most of the time. We eat a lot of seafood and vegetarian main dishes, and tons of vegetables. I'm not exactly anal about it; it's just easier to clean the stove if you haven't cooked a bunch of greasy food on it. I truly can't remember the last time I cooked a hamburger, but I do love a good hamburger, and one of the things we never, ever miss is the Cajun-bacon-cheeseburger at No Brand Burger Stand. Guy Fieri is from Ferndale, not that I like Guy Fieri that much, but he loves No Brand Burger Stand. I'm getting hungry just thinking about one right now. Oh well, there's next year to look forward to.

As I mentioned in my last post, I haven't been that excited about knitting lately, just kind of distracted by other things, but I was already starting to work on my fun projects by the time we headed up North. My dad had a surprise for me when got there that has gotten my even more excited about knitting again. First of all, he had a huge bundle of fleece from a friend of his who raises Romeny sheep, and he had started a spinning wheel for me. Actually, I knew that he had started a spinning wheel from phone conversations, but I hadn't realized how intricate of a wheel he was creating. He sent me some pictures of his progress this week. Yep, I better start looking into how to spin.