Lets start in Redway at the Mateel Cafe, a favorite of mine and many other Sohummers for many years. Their menu ranges from pizza to rack of lamb, so you can chose a wide range of good food. I eat at the Mateel before doing my Thursday night radio show (every 4th Thursday of the month, its a confusing schedule). When I'm feeling I should be healthy I get one of their excellent salad meals. The Intrigue is a favorite. When I'm feeling like going for it, like last Thursday, I get an Ultimate Sirloin. It becomes Ultimate by tasting good, not by being so huge that you have to put most of it in a sack, and it was really nice. I had a glass of Merlot with it, then an ice tea to wake up for the show. In the summer I sit out on the shaded patio in the back. Travelers should take the 1 mile detour to Redway to eat at this restaurant.

If I'm feeling old-time burgerish, I go down the block from the Mateel to Deb's Burgers. Tons of fries, nice burgers, good beer selection. There is outside dining at Deb's, too, but it is out front by the parking area.

If I haven't gone to the Mateel, and I'm in Garberville looking for upscale food, I go to Cecil's. They have a nice bar, big glasses of wine, and an excellent menu. Sometimes live music in the bar. Being on the second floor many of the seats overlook the avenue (any Spike Jones fans reading this?)

For lunch, and often to pick up requests for other family members, there's the Cadillac Wok. You can't miss it, its right next to Nacho Mamas, which I understand is reopening.
They serve Thai and Chinese food, and have the only Thai Tea in town. Its plentiful and inexpensive good food.

I'm not getting into the Woodrose because it is so popular with the locals that its hard for me to get a seat in there. But, road-weary traveller, for you it could be a real treat. Its on the main street on the right as you enter G'ville from the South. Coming from the North take the 2nd exit, turn right, cross the freeway, pass Cadillac Wok and Nacho Mama's, turn left and look on the left up about 1/2 block.

This doesn't exhaust the eateries, but it exhausts those that I most often eat at. If you have a fave that's not on this list, post a comment.

Update: I got word that breakfast at the House of B in G'ville can be spectacular. They He do an Eggs Benedict with a fantastic hollandaise & a slab of pork loin instead of Canadian bacon, which is recommended.

So I'm in Yreka with a digital photo in my camera. It is of river runners in individual "inflatable kyacks" on the Klamath river. I met my sweetie about 30 years ago on this stretch of the Klamath when I was a whitewater river guide in charge of inflatable kyacks, and I thought I'd send her the photo for nostalga's sake.

Only problem: I forgot to bring the cable which attaches my camera to my computer. Well the digital world comes to the rescue. I look up Compuworld (or whatever it is) and find that miracle of miracles there is one 4 minutes from the San Rafael Day's Inn where I am spending the night. I'll just zip by there, get the cable, and surprise my sweetie (who does not seem to read this blog) with the photo. I get Mapquest to print out the route, drop in at CompuWhatever and there are a thousand cables. None of which fit my camera. So I browse at the Apple section where a large poster tells me that an Apple expert is on the job. Only he isn't. I want to buy a new 17" laptop because the one I'm typing this on is 3 years old. In techo years that means its a dog. THe new one is a zillion times faster, uses better programs, has a better screen resolution (something like being bigger), has a huge hard drive, has the intel chip so it runs windows, and that scanner that makes police reports into pdf files works with it. So I'm ready to shell out 3-4 thousand bucks. But the expert is not actually on the job, he's nowhere to be found, no one else knows anything about Apples, and I still have my old laptop (and my money). Compuwhatever has lost a major sale (I'll buy from the Apple Store on-line most likely) and I can't send my sweetie the photograph. Staples was next door, but they didn't have it either. We can do so much and yet so little with our digital world.

Update: I got home eventually, found the cable, and sent my sweetie the photos. I was about 50 feet from her at that point.

The Klamath river was beautiful today. Saw some inflatable boats with river trippers in them and got all nostalgic. Met my sweetie when I was a river guide on the Klamath in the 1970s. From Weichpec to the Yreka road you get to spend a couple of hours with one really striking scene after another. Do try to keep one eye on the road, please. There are no guardrails and the river is pretty far down the cliff at some points. The early scenes are magestic, huge mountains, deep river canyon. The later scenes are more pastoral - the highway is close to the river's level, the banks are green (the hills are not).

Staying at the Best Western - close to the courthouse and I'm builidng up enough Best Western points to get a free hat or toaster or something. The internet was wireless in my first room, and the signal faded to nothing. A complaint got me one of the 4 or 5 rooms that is hardwired for the internet - so ask for one of those if you are staying here and really need the internet (and I already have my room). Oddly the internet signal on the wireless is so strong in my new second story room that I don't need to plug in. Did I mention that there are no elevators at this motel.

The DUI classes were fun, as they always are. Nothing fun about DUI, but there's plenty fun about defending those accused of it unless the facts are bad. I've got 4 DUIs in the hopper now and expect to go to, and win, trials on at least a couple of them. Of course I could always lose, but you can't go into a trial expecting to lose.

But on the way back I stopped in Petaluma - once the chicken capital of California, then a sleepy little backwater town. I should have picked up on the changes coming when a friend of mine bought a nice suburban house around Petaluma for $500,000 some years back. I don't know what $500,000 sounds like to you, but to me its a fortune and the idea of paying that for one house is extraordinary.

You leave the freeway and travel through a mishmash of fast food franchises, and Petaluma seems the same, only updated. The freeway was built a bit away from the town and as usual the infilling was not wonderful. The main intersection (Washington and Petaluma) features a huge bank building of marble (or some stone) from 1925. It is now a liquidation warehouse store. Turn left and you're in a more upscale section of stores, the riverfront area has been cleaned up nicely. I had spring rolls at Graphiti. Nice little bar, good service, high tables - the kind you might stand at and eat in New York. Here you get to sit. I don't know how the dinners would be, but the snacks were great.

I'm on my way to the DUI MCLE - continuing education for lawyers. I thought I'd have lunch at one of my Willits faves, the Railroad Cafe (Loose Caboose?) which is on a side street not far from the courthouse. Wrong. I got there shortly before noon to find every table taken. Sigh. Off to Ukiah. I thought I'd have lunch at the Thai place but I didn't see it so I went to Patrona. Wonderful, as usual, and by the time I got there the lunch crowd had thinned. I had a Patrona burger. Eat one and you'll starve before having another fast-food burger. Nice and thick, juicy, cooked to order.

Dinner was at a salad restaurant outside of San Jose for reasons too complex to discuss here. It was fine, but cost $27 for salads for two. This was an ordinary shopping center eatery, too, not upscale at all. Lots of families with kids. I'm out of touch with the economy.

The hotel where the MCLE is being held wanted $260 for a room, so I decided to stay 1/2 hour away in Salinas for $80 at the...... Best Western. Salinas today isn't your grandparents Salinas. At least near the freeway.