Road trip, part 1

Originally uploaded by starchmouse.

I picked up Liv from Caltrain at 9am and then we went in search of Dynamo Donuts. I had read somewhere about its maple apple bacon donut, and thought it fitting to start our roadtrip with these in our bellies. Thanks to my stubbornness ("we don't need to use the GPS! I live here!") it took us awhile to find it. We found a parking spot and walked up and down the block looking for it. Unfortunately, we had parked right in front of it, but seeing as it was CLOSED and it is a tiny storefront with a teeny tiny sign, we completely missed it.

Luckily, our place was right across the street. Fortified with pancakes and a fried egg sandwich, we headed back to my place, because, of course, I had forgotten something. Finally, on the road! We headed up 101.


Liv had a Coastal California guidebook, and as we were approaching Leggett, saw that we were not far from a drive-thru tree. Let's drive through a tree! That must be pretty special. Turns out...not really! There are tons of drive-thru trees along 101.

No matter, we still had the Avenue of Giants to look forward to. We stopped at several places to walk around and take in the yummy-smelling air. We also learned quite a bit about old-growth redwoods in general, thanks to the brochures provided and our ability to read.

Finally, we decided that perhaps we should look for a place to sleep for the night. Out comes the GPS. We are in Trinidad, and pull into the first "motel" we see - a collection of small cottages. They had one available for the night, but alas, the advertised free wireless internet was only available at the bar. (??!!) I needed to email a cover letter and buy plane tickets to Atlanta but didn't feel comfortable doing this while drinking a Stella (and possibly spilling it all over my precious MacBook), so we pulled out our phones to call a few other places. Thank god we did - Liv had a very nice conversation with one hotel that strongly suggested we NOT stay at our current location. Looking back, it did kinda look like a place where somebody would bring strippers to to murder them. So we ended up at the Trinidad Inn, a cute cozy place that thankfully we could afford since Liv and I are not squeamish about sharing a full-size bed.

Being two girls on a road trip, we decided to not sit down for a proper dinner but forage instead. That's how we ended up eating yogurt, snap peas, string cheese, and donuts for dinner. There's nothing more comfy than traveling with an old friend. :) As I tapped away on my computer (round trip tickets to Atlanta, $289 on United, are you kidding me???) we watched What a Girl Wants on the Oxygen network (or, the Oh!) then settled in for bed...