America - Being there.

NATURE
Rosy-fingered dawn had touched the sky, somewhere above the fog, I surfaced through a fog of my own and sought solace in the shower. When I emerged, swathed in a towel, Rocket came and gave me his greeting, in fact he gave me this greeting at every available opportunity. What was it with this animal, had he been a sniffer dog for testicular cancer, was he attempting to induce some sort of psychological trauma, or was my crotch the canine equivalent of Kleenex?
"For those annoying little sniffles - try NIXCROTCH! Nixcrotch is mansize and comes in a variety of smells and textures, try Earlyamnude and really wake up the neighbours! Yup, try Nixcrotch today - as recommended by Fido, Rocket, Rover and Patch." After that he came and ate my breakfast when I wasn't looking! I mooched about, admiring the way the hummingbirds ignored the feeder, and made a mental note to grub up the fuschia should I ever move to the States. Then we took Rocket, a round, surfeited, Rocket off to "camp", before heading back to Safeway for supplies. I love American supermarkets for two reasons, firstly the enormous range of stuff they have and (sort of) secondly the vast variety of crap they have, like completely fat- and cereal-free cereals.
In the afternoon I made myself useful, I built soup, a sandwich lunch, watered the plants and had a nap. Paul arrived fresh(?) from work, so we loaded the car and headed off along Highway One to Point Reyes. This means crossing the Golden Gate Bridge (tick) and then hanging a left at Marin City where Highway One turns into a road that Wales would be boast of, it twists, it dives and swoops, it dives its head in its armpit, I was proud of it. Brief stop at Bolinas Lagoon,
Passenger, " Cor look at all those, wonder what they are?"
Supposed Birders, "Pelicans!"
Passenger, "Nope I meant the 5000 other things, wheeling around the sky in those patterns so loved by chaos theory people, the groupings and partings forming shapes that Escher would have died for."
Supposed Birders, "?"
Passenger, "Those!" points.
SB's, "Oh!"
I don't think we found out, maybe terns.
Onward to our residence for the next two nights, An English Oak (I've linked it so that you can revel in its tweeness, I wouldn't recommend it) where we installed and tried the breakfast cookies before hightailing it to bar for steak and oysters and Lagunitas IPA (recommended - in medium doses, let's put it this way, on the way home, Paul slipped into the ditch, well I say ditch, Paul slipped into the gulch - about forty foot deep and two hundred and fifty feet wide, apparently he didn't see it, though he did stop after six feet or so, thanks to the large patch of brambles. A welcome import from the Old Country, as I pointed out as we inspected the damage, I thought his response somewhat terse). And so to bed.
Still digesting, I had the remains of my breakfast cookie and headed out to sip, slightly stale coffee while contemplating the Zen Garden, I knew it was a Zen Garden because it had a hand-painted sign, propped on a stone (not representing an island, unless it was a small one with a big sign on it) telling us that it was. It also had a Japanese Lantern and a Japanese Bird Table (?), it did have gravel though, sort of, have a look at the picture and you'll see.
Then off to the Port Reyes Station and the Earthquake Trail where we read all the boards and learned that the area was prone to earthquakes because of tectonic plates and the subduction zone where the Pacific Plate dives under the North American Plate, damn careless if you ask me. After that we zoomed up to Pierce Point, a backbone of rotting granite supported on what seems to be windblown sand and other sediments so that the severely cut gulches are marbled and fluted.Here we had a wander down the path while being serenaded by Bull Elks bugling to attract the girls with their somewhat wheezy prowess (they sound a bit like me with 'flu'). Bull Elk run harems, the older males coralling in the cows to make their own private mating herd. However, such are the ups and downs of the mating game that the whole thing tends to run like a student disco. At the edge of the herd you'll see the adolescent males, strutting their stuff along invisible boundaries, trying to attract the odd wayward cow, some of them lurk in the undergrowth with just their antlers visible. Occasionally a cow will wander from one harem, ignore the bull who's trying to chase her back, and end up in the harem next door, leaving the bull attempting to look like he doesn't care. Sometimes whole harems decamp and head off for the bull who obviously has a car and might buy you cocktails, leaving their previous boyfriend to stand dejectedly in the middle of the dancefloor, antlers scraping the ground, trying not to shed unbully tears. As we walked along the spine we were kept pace by Turkey Vultures who cruise looking for carrion, they found some this day in the guise of a dead sea-lion on the beach, however there were only three hardy souls in attendance - everyone else being, presumably, on a low sodium diet. Scattered along the paths, were Docents, unpaid experts who will tell you about stuff if you ask and will let you look through their telescope (very docent of them). It being a wildlife sort of day we agreed that the occasional dollop of non-elk crap on the path must be that of mountain lions, who live there taking advantage of an elk diet. We had a mercifully small lunch, watching the disco and doing the odd bit of birding, Paul won with a raptor of some sort (a black-shouldered kite, apparently), then wandered back to the car, avoiding stepping on the snake on the way.
A quick whizz down the road, then out for more nature at Abbot's Lagoon, where we used our combined birding skills to identify firstly Pied-billed Grebe, and then an immature Moorhen as the Virginia Rail that the docent had told us was there, before heading off to the coast, past hills reminiscent of the cellulite-dimpled buttocks of mature ladies (well, I could see it, the others struggled with the concept). The coast held a mixture of Pelicans and one Blue Heron (resembling a badly put together feather duster, I wonder if this is camouflage?
Natured out we high-tailed it to the Old Western Saloon, following in the footsteps of Charles and Camilla. The Great Western Saloon is a pub, pure and simple, well when I say pure - the carpet is a pub carpet, thick, stiff and redolent with sins and spills past, made more potent with the ban on smoking. We watched the barman chew his way through a series a bar snacks, only drawing the line at the Demon Dog, a sausage about the same thickness and colour of a firecracker and, we suspected, with the same kind of oral punch. However, it was the ingredients that put him off, the phrase "mechanically-recovered meat" and his suspicion that the Dog was only made from the extreme front and rear ends of the cow, I had a chaw of jerky, it's made of steak.
Back to the "cottage" for a shower, where I discovered my towels to have the same degree of freshness as the Old Western carpet, resulting in two showers and a dry on a spare handtowel, no mean feat some of you may think. Then back to Port Reyes and the Station Cafe, for salmon fishcakes (somewhat drowned in oriental herbs and spices) followed by seared baby backribs - baby here being more of a PIGLET than a piglet. I pigged out on a pig. The couple next to us troughed their way through two bowls of clams whose aphrodisiac qualities became more self-evident throughout dinner. The size of the dessert however, may have put paid to any of the more energetic, umm, roistering. We returned with a chicken breast about the size of one of the ones barely contained next door, and a half bottle of wine, which we drank.
DRIVING
After a breakfast of Costco peach yoghurt (the cheapest) and some coffee we hit the deli in Port Reyes and watched Margie rack up an impressive collection of expensive cheese followed by an impressive collection of expensive vegetables for me to buy, the twitch abated after thirty minutes or so. Then we offed to a breakfast of polenta cake in a layby/pullover overlooking the Tomales Bay (1 Heron - Blue, 3 Egrets- Great, several Cormorants - varied - in a panic). The polenta cake was fine. The off, over the hills to Bodega Bay where The Birds was filmed for a quick stop at the harbour (Pelican- Brown, Bittern - American, Lion - Sea) before heading on to Russian River (discovered by Russians) where we flicked from coastal heathland to Coastal Redwood. The road was in a bit of a state having had several "washouts" (I think these are landslides, I myself, have had several washouts but I think they involved women) so that the river was hidden behind large concrete barriers - and holiday homes.
We motored on - popping out of the forest and being drawn into some strange kind of gravity well centred round the Sonoma valley (reknowned for its wine-making apparently). And so it was that we turned up at the Iron Horse Winery, in fact at the tasting bench. Now I'm interested by the choice of Iron horse by My Hosts as the vineyard (that's what we call them in Europe) was much favoured by Ronald Reagan (who was not much favoured by MH) but perhaps they didn't do red then. Sadly the picnic area was shut, so that all we could do was taste the stuff, quel horreur! Wine was delivered at breakneck speed by a rather gushy girl whos delivery was not impeded one jot by her piercings - I decided to call her Mildred. The sauvignon blanc drew the most comment, who would have thought that the addition of 1 % viogner could turn this friuty refreshing, rather spritzy w....
So, no picnic spot, what to do, for me, quaff wine number 13 and slide back into the car for a trip to the next winery with a picnic spot, down the road. Anyway I think that's what we did, after being forced to taste theirs we sat outside for a very late lunch and a modicum of picnic rose, the cheeses lived up to their price. Then back in the car and a trawl through the rush hour back to Half Moon Bay, where we were met by Rocket ("99% sauvignon blanc and 1% viogner, interesting, I'll bet it took some of the zing out. And speaking of zing, I say those towels! What were you thinking?") in the usual manner. We had just enough energy to fling the steak on the broiler (or gas-powered barbecue) and eat it with some wine, before an early night.