They're jackhammering ouside our window tonight

It is hard to explain the feeling when you arrive in a new place (Napa in this case) and you can't remember where you have booked the two nights accommodation. Norm has forgotten to write it down, has no phone record, no email and no clear memory of it except it is in Napa. It is 5 pm and the visitor info center has just closed but I have begged them to please let me have any list of places to stay in the city so we can figure out something. As she hands me the information she adds.....there is nothing available this weekend in Napa. I am not daunted, Norm less so but a nice wine tasting mellows him a little and I begin phoning the list of accommodations to see if any of them have a registration for Gidney. You got to laugh cuz what else can you do. Well guess what.....after only a half dozen calls Norm thinks the Discovery Inn sounds a bit familiar. YEAH!! we hit the right one, such a feeling of relief. Now here we are in Napa back at our Inn having just walked to town and watched Red at the movies having coke and popcorn for dinner.  And guess what, there is construction on the street. Norm's comment, "I don't think I have ever had the sound of a jackhammer right outside my room." It could make for an interesting evening.
The day did start off with a delicious breakfast at the famous Woodrose Organic Cafe in Garberville.  Pam from Cleveland came here in 1977 to start the place, and the food is pretty good. Norm's organic pumpkin pancake filled the entire plate. We headed south along 101 passing through some less than prosperous towns--Leggatt, Laytonville, and Willits, all places I had never heard of. Once we got to Sonoma the temperature must have been in the mid 80's. Awesome! Loved my Ben and Jerry chocolate brownie ice cream cone:)
NG here: so I forgot the motel, who's perfect? Lucky I have a persistent wife, and we got here in the end. I treated her to Coke and popcorn and a movie, a fluffy explosion-filled confection, with Helen Mirren, Bruce Willis and John Malkovich as retired spies who still like to keep a hand in. As good as a Napa sparkling brut any day. Now, what was it about?
Travel notes for the day: did you know they have Sasquatch in the redwoods? Here they call him Bigfoot. Didn't see him, though. Also passed by the One Log House, yes a house inside a horizontal piece of redwood log; and the Tree House, which is a small dwelling built into the base of a live redwood. Confusion Hill, we gave a pass to, and the Elfin Glen attraction. You know, not that I'm a fan of Ronald Reagan or anything, but there is a grain of truth to his saying that once you've seen a redwood tree, you've seen them all. The old logging and sawmill towns along the highway remind me of the Fraser canyon in B.C., a place that never saw much economic good times since the main industry declined. But stop in Willits if you come this way, there's a superb used bookstore on the main street where I loaded up on Nicolas Freeling mysteries. Laytonville had a tie-die emporium and two quilt shops, a biodiesel filling station and a school in a geodesic dome. I think all the hippies moved up here from San Francisco.
Willits also has a cool sign, the one that used to proclaim "the biggest little city" over the main drag of Reno, Nev. It's repainted now for Willits' motto: Heart of Mendocino County. Give them time, maybe it will start beating. Just south of Ukiah we saw the first palm trees and then prickly pear cactus. It's getting warmer and drier -- they told us in Sonoma it hasn't rained worth noticing here for the last nine months. OK, they need water, but I love those golden hills and dark green oak trees.