Another day on the road

we continued heading north, continued riding twisties and sweepers, and seeing gorgeous scenery when not concentrating an upcoming turn. . .

jim hiler had arranged for us to visit with ted simon and buy his latest book for him. he lives in covelo, ca which is 26 miles down another wonderful twisty road. ted is an amazing guy and we enjoyed our visit with him immensely. ted had told ye there was lodging there in town so we had expected to stay there for the night. come to find out, the only motel in town was full. i had my doubts as to whether it was really full or the proprietors just didn't want to deal with people anymore, but the result was the same and our only alternative was to take the 26-mile twisty road back out.


since we had planned on staying, we sat and talked with ted when we should have been riding back out. it was 7:45 p.m. before we headed out. the sun was setting fast, there were deer on the road by this time and my nerves were shot. still we made it back out and on to hwy 101 to the next town of laytonville, ca.


oh, joy. the first hotel we pulled in to looked quite clean. unfortunately, when they gave us our non-smoking room, someone had obviously been smoking in it. we returned the key and went to the next place down the road. it was somewhat "less" than quite clean. at this point it was dark and i didn't care. i was tired and hungry and getting more than a little testy.


we checked in and were told that if we wanted to eat in the only restaurant that evening, we'd better make tracks since they stopped serving dinner at 9:00 p.m. we arrived at 8:54 to be told they were no longer serving dinner.


so we hit the market on the way back to the hotel and bought a six-pack of smirnoff drinks and a bag of salsa verde dorito chips and were quite happy to get that. after 3 drinks, it no longer mattered. we stuck our earplugs in, as the motel was right on the highway, and dozed off.