Friday, September 19, 2008

Kayaking in Humboldt Bay

Day 4 of trip, last Wednesday. Layover day, kayaking, laundry, and dinner at Hurricane Kates. Nine-dollar eggs at Restaurant 301.

The Carter House Inns is comprised of several historic Victorian buildings in old town Eureka. We stayed in the largest of these buildings, which is also home to Restaurant 301 on the ground floor. Brandon described Restaurant 301 and Avalon as two of the better restaurants in town for our rest day, when we had to fend for ourselves for lunch and dinner. And by "better" I think he meant "expensive."

The dinner we had at Avalon the previous night really was fantastic; and having the restaurant to ourselves gave it a special air of exclusivity. But seeing as how most of us on the tour thought the trip itself was already pretty expensive, we weren't particularly looking for the most expensive digs in town for our extra meals.

Breakfast Wednesday morning was included in the price of the trip. Restaurant 301 offered a continental breakfast for $7, and hot breakfast for $9. The hot breakfast was some sort of frittata with much meat in it (from the description). We were on our way out to Humboldt Bay for kayaking, though, and that sounded a little on the heavy side. Could we just get scrambled eggs, we asked our server. They were happy to fill that request, but they still charged $9 for the scrambled eggs. And it wasn't a huge portion.

After breakfast we headed out to Humboldt Bay where we received rudimentary instruction in how to paddle a kayak, and we set out for an environmental tour of the bay. The tour guide was named Hawk, and he was a bit of a hippy. I mean, he portrayed the wholesale slaughter of the indigenous people a hundred years ago as practically genocide; and he made it sound like a pollution-spewing wood pulp plant isn't always the ideal neighbor. But he did end the tour on an optimistic note, pointing out that the return of eelgrass to the bay shows that the environment is rebounding.

After kayaking (which wore me out), we were on our own wandering the historic section of Eureka. Erin had printed out  walking tour, which we made a few copies of and shared with others in our group.

Erin and I meandered through the walking tour after lunching at the Lost Coast Brewery. Our adventure included a dollar's worth of candy corn and some excellent coffee. Later in the afternoon we washed our bike clothes in a nearby laundromat. And at 5pm we convened with the rest of our party again because the Carter House Inn had free wine in the lobby again.

On our day off, without any encouragement to do so, the group went out to dinner together. That was pretty nice.

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