Thursday, April 16, 2015

Eureka to Santa Rosa

Saturday, April 11
Day 4
We left Eureka and headed south on Hwy 101 and took the scenic tour through the Redwoods through Humboldt State Park and saw beautiful Redwood forests. Eventually we decided to head down Hwy 1 along the northern California coast which was a crazy windy road to the coast. Once we were committed there was no turning back! Very few cars on this road. Once we reached the ocean the road tamed down a bit, but there were still many twists and turns but a beautiful road. We were going to take a walk on the beach but weren't sure how long that highway 1 would take so we opted out. Stopped in Fort Bragg at Starbucks to blog as had no service along highway 1. Other than Fort Bragg, the towns and population along this stretch of highway is sparse. We continued to follow highway 1 until it left the coast and headed into Santa Rosa. We stopped at a park for a nice walk.We decided to go to mass at St Rose's Catholic Church as it was in the neighborhood of where we were staying. It was a lovely church with friendly folks. It seems when we are traveling we are more willing to step outside our comfort zone to interact with other people than we are at home. We are learning that it leads to interesting things and memorable experiences. There were some women selling raffle tickets for some lovely quilts, terrariums, coasters, and jewelry so we started talking to them and found out they were raising money to help local children to visit their incarcerated mothers on Mother's Day and their fathers on Father's Day. We bought a few tickets to help and introduced ourselves. Then the priest came out to welcome people to mass, so we introduced ourselves and told him about our trip and being ambassadors for Unbound and shared some brochures with him.


 St. Rose Catholic church was beautiful on the inside with lovely stained glass windows and a huge crown of thorns done in metal over the altar and a mosaic of Jesus and 2 apostles. Their was a lot of lively music with guitar, piano and choir. It was fun to sing hymns that were new to us. Father Dennis informally welcomed the travelers from Tacoma. The mass was beautiful and Father Peter would be happy to know we are finding Christ in all 4 places, the community, the Word, the priest and the Eucharist. After mass, Jack spoke to a woman leaving mass and asked about a restaurant to eat close by. She recommended Adel's so we went there. A parishioner came up to us there and introduced himself, told us some things about St Rose and how much they loved Father Dennis. He told us the woman we had spoken to who was now seated by us was a sister. After a great dinner (Jack says the 2nd best Reuben he has ever had) we went and talked to the sister. It turns out she was a Benedictine nun from Minnesota and was familiar with the College of St. Scholastica where Jodi went to PT school in duluth, MN run by the Benedictines. We also gave her info on Unbound. Lovely people from St. Rose in Santa Rosa.

We made our way to Paul and Lucia's beautiful home.  We had a lovely conversation with Paul.  His wife was at a concert. He was probably the smartest person we have ever talked to. He spoke 6 languages, had lived in a monastery, Mexico, Russia, South America and had traveled to Georgia, and all over the world. He had books on shelves in every room, 2 deep. We are not talking John Grisham novels, but Dante, Japanese history and literature, Pushkin, Russian, Dosteovsky, etc. He has read most of the thousands of books in his house. We woke up to a fabulous “English” breakfast (according to Paul never served in England but always in Australia) of sausages, eggs, great toast and berries. It was great and lasted us well into the 6th inning that day. Paul told us all about how he had met Lucia (now a world renowned entomologist). It was obvious he adored her. Unfortunately, we never met Lucia. 

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