North Coast Travelogue, 8/20- 8/21

Made another one of those long trips to UCSF on Sunday. A pleasant surprise down at Confusion Hill: The road beneath the slide area is freshly paved- makes for a surprisingly smooth ride. A few other freshly paved areas between there and Laytonville, as well. Kinda nice.
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The breakfast room at the Day's Inn in Novato definitely needs some work. I mentioned last time it didn't seem to be too well maintained, although it was adequate. This time the hard boiled eggs weren't fully cooked. I just had four extra pieces of toast instead.

I also kind of wondered when their maintenance man came in to the breakfast room and started fiddling around restocking something around the coffee machines. Does this guy restock all the food items? Does he wash his hands? Maybe I'm just being paranoid but over the years I've gotten pretty concerned with hygiene, especially since I'm with someone who is very immune deficient.

We've had rooms right next to each other every time we've stayed there. First time it was room 219, then 215 and Sunday night was 217. Perfect placement as it makes it easy to peek out the door and see if any deer or wild turkey are out and about.

This time we got in the room and immediately noticed there wasn't a refrigerator or microwave. Not good, as we'd brought frozen microwave meals for dinner and had other things we needed to keep cool. Not to worry. I called the office and within a couple minutes a guy was there with a hand truck delivering our microwave and fridge.
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Whatever happened to plain old iced tea?

I've found iced tea is a necessity for summer travel in the hotter areas. Not only is it a refreshing drink, the caffeine it provides gives me a mental boost and I find it easier to avoid highway hypnosis, as they call it. Can't do without it anymore.

I don't normally drink the stuff regularly, at least not anymore, but a month or so ago we were down at UCSF and I had a sudden yankering to drink something besides water and thought of iced tea. We went down to the food court and none of the places had anything but those berry flavored teas. Talk about yuppies!

I didn't want any of that yuppie stuff. I wanted just regular, unsweetened, caffeinated iced tea. None to be found. Luckily, as we were leaving, we stopped by the Subway Sandwich place on the floor beneath the food court and were surprised to find they had good ol' Lipton Unsweetened Iced Tea.

So, after that we stopped at the Subway in Cloverdale assuming they'd have the same iced tea. Nope, just the yuppie berry flavored stuff.

So, what is it about me that, when I like something, it seems to go out of fashion with everyone else? You used to be able to get regular iced tea just about anywhere, years ago. Not anymore.

Whatever. It's actually not a problem now as we just make our own before we leave, minus the ice, and stop at various places along the way to refill our cups with ice. Some places charge more than others for a cup full of ice. One place charged the full cost of a drink just for a cup and ice. A couple places charge fifty cents per cup and some twenty five cents.

Best deal I found was the Shell station on the east side of 101 on the south end of Willits. I went in there Monday just to refill the small deteriorating cup I'd gotten at Subway in Frisco. They had nice solid plastic cups there and I decided to go ahead and pay for one. The lady only charged me twenty five cents for both the cup and ice.

I'll have to make that a regular stop. It actually already has been. I often buy gas there when heading north, but this last time I noticed that station on the south end of town- I forget the name- had gas for ten or twelve cents a gallon cheaper. I decided to give that place a try and assumed they had beverage machines that provided ice like most every other gas station.

Wrong. Not only did the gas pump not accept my debit card, they only sold bagged ice. Nice people and all but I'd rather just make one stop next time I go through there. I'll just pay the extra ten cents a gallon and buy at Shell. It's still cheaper than Humboldt gas.
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Oh, finally stopped by that Real Goods place in Hopland, if only because we'd heard about their "Weird Bathrooms" and we both needed to make a pit stop. Nice place and luckily it wasn't anywhere near as hot as the last time we stopped in Hopland.

Kinda makes for a long bathroom break, though, cause you have to drive a two or three hundred feet to park and then walk up the pathway to the bathrooms. Also relatively pricey, assuming you go along with their request for the dollar donation per person visiting. I didn't see anybody enforcing the request. We were going to throw in two dollars but the wife bought something in their store so we figured that would suffice.

As far as the bathrooms, I don't know that I'd call them "weird". They're clean and all but I suppose the only thing weird about them is they're supposedly made completely out of recycled materials. I believe there was a sign saying the toilet stalls were made out of recycled prescription bottles. I'd call that neat, but not weird.