Home: Redwoods River Resort lodge room

Day five our our ten(-plus?) day period of rain has us in a planned day of stasis. Once again, at least we were happy that the terrible forecast was correct, and that we had found a great place to stay inside during the all-day-and-night rain.

The extensive library of DVDs available for “rental” (free to us lodge-stayers) was exactly the sort of family-resort amenity that had been attracting me to such places, and we definitely made use of it during the rain (along with some MLB playoffs for me, and Rett’s usual HGTV; are houses even more addicting to dream about now that we don’t have one?)

For more-social entertainment, we decided to walk the 50 rain-soaked steps over to Harrison’s Pub for after-dinner drinks and dessert. It’s British-pub theme, whose heavy (and excellent) Harry Potter decorations were a big excitement for Rett, and all that plus the adjacent game-room (air hockey, tabletop arcade, etc.) gave me warm flashbacks of staying at Tunnel Trails Campground in Wisconsin 35 years ago. We had fun talking to a couple couples of fellow travelers, one from San Luis Obispo (who gave us their card and said to call on our way through if we needed anything), and one from Utah.

But maybe more-interesting was talking to the bartender, who had newly arrived at the job with his girlfriend to work the 8-month winter-stint. They’d been RV-living for four years, and had worked National Parks up ’til now (Glacier, Yellowstone, and Big Bend), which is something we could see ourselves eventually evolving into (more the RV-living than the working, but maybe both), so it was good to hear his (mostly-positive) perspective on that life.

This was Day 30 since we left our home behind. That matches the longest of my previous bike tours, so from here onwards every day is a new record. So far my emotional conception of where I am in time and space has stayed closer to the “on a long vacation” feel of those previous tours than the “new life as a nomad” that it more-truly is, but my guess is that each new day from here on out will poke more holes in the “vacation” illusion and let that “new life” reality sink deeper into my bones. We definitely aren’t thinking of bringing this vacation/life to an end anytime soon!