We didn’t do really much today except a short morning walk and one meal out due to the weather, so I won’t be offended if you skip this one! I always say I write for my own memories and this is definitely one of those.

I got up about 5am and thought “wow, I actually slept 8 hours!” Until I realized it was the night we “sprang forward” and it was really only 7 hours. But that’s a lot for me, especially here lately, so I’ll take it. I went downstairs to make coffee and got the blog up by about 6:30am. Ash started to get up around then and we got ready to take Paul out for his walk.

The farm where we are staying is just off of Little Lake Road. This is nearing the end of it after walking through the town. The wind picked up quite a bit here so we turned back towards town to get coffee.

Good Life Café and Bakery is on Lansing St. There’s a nice patio through that archway left of center which you’ll see shortly.

This is the view across the street. The white building is currently the Savings Bank of Mendocino County, but it was built in the 1860s as the local Masonic lodge. The local Masons still have use of a meeting room upstairs.

“The sculpture at the top was carved from a log of redwood by Erick Jensen Albertson, a local Mason and lumber mill employee, who also did most of the work building the lodge. There is some controversy as to whether it was proper to set up this statuary display of sacred [Masonic] symbols in such a prominent and public place.” (from Roadsideamerica.com) It’s call Time and the Maiden and apparently full of symbolism that only the Masons understand.

A nice sitting area that filled up as we sat there. It was about 8:30am (this place doesn’t open until 8) and the weather forecast had nothing but rain in it from about 11am on, so we figured now was the time to do something if we were going to. So we decided to go out for brunch.

Noyo Harbor is the port and docking area in Fort Bragg, about 10 miles north, at the edge of the Noyo River. We went to the restaurant of the Noyo Harbor Inn which had a nice heated deck and views of the river, above and below. This isn’t the main harbor which I didn’t get any photos of.

You can barely see Ash sitting at our table left of center, with the blue hat on.

We split a bowl of salmon chowder for starters.

Ash had the bagel and salmon.

I ordered polenta cake covered with fresh veggies, a poached egg, and hollandaise sauce, with a salad on the side. Everything about this was really good.

We got back to the farm around 10:30 probably and I took a few photos while I was thinking about it and the weather was decent. The sign at the entrance says Ricci’s Art Farm: Love Grows Here!

That’s the main house where Ricci lives. After much discussion the last couple of days, we finally determined that this IS the house that was saw in the hills from our walk on the headlands the day before. Notice the view of the ocean on the far left center.

The chickens I mentioned yesterday, along the drive before you reach the buildings.

On the left is the edge of the main house, and the building here is the cottage where we are staying. From this view it’s clear this is the back of it!, solving my question from the day before.

That’s Ash’s BMW, my Toyota; later there were a couple of more cars here but we don’t know who they belonged to. Ricci’s daughter is here and she had some friends over so probably them.

Art studio. What else would have you have on an Art Farm?

Another house to the right of the cottage.

For some reason I was really tired when we got back even though I’d only been up about 6 hours. Paul joined me on the couch.

The rain didn’t start until about 12:30pm and rained solid until about 6pm.

Weather like this is made for staying in. And that Gale Warning is about today. We’ll see what that does to our dinner plans tonight since of course it’s outdoor seating.

This was pretty much Paul’s state all day.

I’d made a list of things I wanted to do this week and made good headway on it in the afternoon. This included some journaling, and preparing a “personal paragraph” for the announcement my new boss will be making to the whole organization today at One Community Health about my arrival on 3/22. I got a bunch of documents ready for my tax guy and also hired a guy to do some technical work on the backend of my blog. So a productive day amidst all the laziness. Somewhere in there I took another nap, too. Ash did some laundry, worked on his writing, and played bridge (online).

The rain had stopped about 6pm and we went to the Safeway in Fort Bragg to pick up a roasted chicken for dinner. The sun was trying to break through when we got back and we were hoping for a nice sunset but nope, the clouds got heavy and dark again.

As we were driving up I’d caught a glimpse of the church in town through the trees and realized that this could be the house we’d seen the day before. (A better question is: why didn’t we just ask Ricci?) I walked back along the deck of the main house to get this shot and confirm it. That land in the middle of the photo is where we’d walked on Saturday, looking back into the hills wondering if this is the house we were staying at. You can’t see the cottage from there at all which is to the far right of where I’m standing so that’s why we were a little confused.

Dinner was chicken of course, with a fig balsamic sauce Ash had brought, leftover cauliflower from the night before, fresh carrots which I’d brought, and the last of that Austrian sunflower bread we’d bought at the French café on Saturday. It was a huge loaf and we’d given half of it to Ricci.

Ash hooked his laptop up to the TV after dinner. We finished watching “It’s a Sin” on HBO Max and started “Generation” which was incredibly fun (albeit not for everyone).

Today is pretty full in comparison. I have a couple of video calls scheduled with friends and we have plans for lunch with friends and dinner out as well. We’ll see if the weather cooperates.