Darling & Wolf: Northern California

Northern California likes its hippies. I read an explanation stating that this place was a refuge from Feds looking to persecute weed growers. As far as I was always aware being a peace loving hippie and being a gun toting drug dealer were two different worlds. Two different worlds I was recently informed aren’t always that far apart. Driving through the back roads from the coast towards Gold Country it was easy to see how these regions could provide a respite from the law. First though we visited Trinidad, a tiny town perched on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Here we encountered people with bumper stickers protesting against chem-trails a phenomenon which, as any normal person knows, is bollocks. For the uninitiated, believers insist that the vapour created by aeroplanes contains chemicals designed to pacify the masses/control the weather/manage the population. Sure weather management is possible to a degree but let’s not get into it; it hurts too much. Trinidad was pretty though.

We took a detour to Arcata and the 6 Rivers brewery for their recommended spicy chicken wings and beer. 6 Rivers is now a completely female owned brewery, the female owners having bought out their male partner a number of years ago. I ordered a taster float to get a flavour of what was on offer. They are supposed to match the beer menu so that you know what you are drinking and in what order. This brewery didn’t have half the beers on the original menu so there were substitutions and the order was completely lost. As such I had before me an order in which I was recommended to drink their coffee porter before their summer ale, where they pitched a chilli beer between two IPAs and finished with a very pale pilsner. If I drank them in that order I’d never taste anything so I tried to rearrange with the lighter beers first leading into those with a higher IBU (measurement of bitterness). I’m glad I did as I couldn’t taste anything after the chilli beer. Perhaps it was mish-mash of drinks and the lack of balance in the offer but I was underwhelmed, the most underwhelmed I had been since being here (in regards to brewery visits). I begrudgingly finished all my beers and felt so full I had to lie down. A damning review but there are over 1400 breweries in the US, some of them have to be crap. The lonely planet guide raves about this place but they commit more words to the female owned part than the beer so I suspect they were more taken with girl-power than taste.

Our journey took us through Eureka, a town seemingly solely existing to provide cars to Northern California. This was convenient for us as, within the miles and miles of car showrooms sat a small RV service shop where I looked for a part to repair our on-board propane system. I know nothing about propane nor the systems designed to deliver it safely from tank to hob, but we had a leak and I didn’t fancy paying more for someone else to fix it. So I bought a gas regulator having noticed ours was pissing gas everywhere (I now know what one of them is) and spent a good few hours on my back fitting it. It worked and we didn’t explode so that’s nice. I only mention this gas part because it was sold to me by one of the strangest auto parts stores I have ever encountered. It had a main shop with sparsely stocked shelves so that one shelf might contain only two items spaced very far apart. Within the shop were two glass booths, completely sealed from each other and the rest of the shop. In one booth sat a fat woman with the appearance of a melted bowl of ice cream. She was surrounded by porcelain figurines of varying subjects – a dancing lady, a dragon, a giant pig. Interspersed between were the occasional stuffed animal and a live animal in the form of a blind cat. The other glass container hosted a work shop for, I can only assume, her husband who sat reclined in a shabby armchair looking at nothing and nobody in particular. As Ice Cream rang me up on her abacus it occurred to me that they have decided to exist in totally separate rooms during the course of the day. I can’t imagine how riveting their RV trips are. They probably go in separate caravans.

Leaving blob fish and beau alone to their lives we headed inland to Gold Country and were rewarded with some of the most phantasmagorical scenery we had seen on the trip. The rolling sub-alpine hills were dotted with cypress trees transporting us to Tuscany or southern France rather than the US. The sun shone and the roads were deserted, punctuated sporadically by picturesquely dilapidated ranches, some presumably owned by gun toting hippies whilst others were open to those with addictions to recover from and deep wallets. It was a breath-taking segue to our journey, and one which will never be forgotten.

We stopped by Drytown Cellers for some wine tasting and came away with two bottles of their least horrible wine (their Syrah). The friendly woman insisted that the sourness I tasted was the character of the wines of this region. This may be true, I don’t know enough, but to me they tasted like Ribena with a hint of stomach acid – the type which rises in the back of your throat when you drink too much pop and jump around. We bought wine because I am British and therefore feel guilty if I don’t buy something after tasting it, even if it tastes like a diarrhoea sorbet. We spent the night in a car park of Black Oak Casino, Tuolumne. Lots of casinos offer free parking to RV users. Again, being British, we decided to spend money there and went bowling. We had a go on the slots but immediately lost the dollar we had invested and agreed that we weren’t cut out for gambling. This casino was packed though – sure it was a weekend but we were in the middle of nowhere – people had driven for hundreds of miles to piss away their money in the shiny-noisy machines. It was all bewildering to us so we retired to the van to sleep under the floodlights of the car park.

Yosemite needs little introduction. The home of monoliths El Capitan and Half Dome. Yosemite is one of the most visited outdoor recreation sites in California, if not the US. Climbing the unused trails up the valley walls gifted us the most spectacular panoramas; the height of our climb concealing the signs of human life which permeate the valley floor to such a degree as to make you feel like you are visiting a town centre more than a natural wonder. One thing America does so successfully is to make everything accessible and to make something accessible means to build a road or 6 through it. It allowed us and everyone else to see the beauty of this place, yet detracted from the sense of wilderness or solitude which these places should provide. It is always going to be a compromise; I just think that perhaps they over-compromised in this case. I am however contented that, once again, the fatties left the trails alone and we escaped the crowds to experience Yosemite in its epic yet secluded glory.