Working For It in Santa Rosa

Leaving San Bruno for Santa Rosa, where Simone's Tribes course is being held. After a leisurely one hour drive through beautiful scenery (and over the Golden Gate bridge much to Simone's satisfaction, see photo below) we arrived at the Hilton Santa Rosa. It's wine country here, so there's golf courses, spas, resorts and all things related to be found here. The room is nice, but there's no fridge which was a bit surprising given we had one in all the previous hotels. I requested one at reception and it's just been delivered, so all drinks and yoghurt are now being chilled.

As we arrived fairly early in the day we had time to get our bearings and decided to go for a little drive, first stop was Armstrong Park, famous for its majestic Redwood trees. It took about 40 mins to get there and once again, driving through this beautiful countryside is a real pleasure. You go through these small country towns that you just know depend entirely on the tourism dollars. And from what I've seen these places seem to be a popular destination for the local (Californian) population for a quick getaway.

The entrance to Armstrong Park. Entry with a car was $8 and that gives you entry to all the local parks for the day.

After parking at the picnic area we went on the Pioneer Trail (1.5kms) which takes you past the main attractions of the park. The one below is called the Icicle Tree for the shapes of the outgrowths.

The tree below is the largest one in the park, I tried to photograph the whole tree but unfortunately my lens wasn't wide enough, so I had to split the photos in two. One thing I was annoyed by and also made me slightly sad was the attitude of some people. A family of three came past here and it was all like "oh look another tree" followed by some annoying loud chit chat between mother/daughter. Where is your sense of wonder? Where is your appreciation for nature? Just imagine that this tree has been around for 1400 years and start thinking about how old that actually is, for any living organism!

After Simone and I had a discussion about just that, we came to a junction where another trail took off to the right. It was also 1.5kms long and I said yeah ok, let's take that back to the car. What I didn't see was the "steep trail" warning sign! For someone with zero fitness this was a bit of a challenge, and after huffing and puffing my way to the top, the way down was also not easy as you had to take small steps all the way down so as not to slip. After what seemed like hours we finally arrived back at the picnic area and drove on to Bodega Bay, about another half an hour.

This is a small seaside area where the towns depend on fishing and tourism for their income. We stopped at a place called The Tides Wharf for our late lunch/dinner (it was 4pm at the time). We both had a red seafood chowder that was complementary with our mains, and really tasty. Simone ordered the red snapper and I had what was called the Crab Cioppino, basically a whole heap of Dungeness Crab, mussels, scallops, clams and prawns in a spicy, rich tomato based sauce.

Our waitress warned before I ordered that you have to work for this meal, it's not something you can just go and eat, you gotta work to get all the meat out of the crab and yes it would be messy, that's why they give you a bib :)

Bib and tools ready for my main :)

The aftermath. It was very delicious, the crab tasted great and wasn't too hard to crack. Some of the legs were fairly soft so I didn't even have to use the cracker.