Mike & Jenn White

Wow, so I’ve been slacking on getting this posted. Lots of things going on.

Labor Day Weekend was Mike & Jenn’s wedding in Fortuna, CA. Friday morning, Kerry and Candice meet up with me at my house, and we all went out to breakfast at IHOP. Kevin came up as well a little after Kerry, Candice and I got back from breakfast, and we all headed over to Cody & Becca’s house. Kevin and I rode with Cody and Becca; Kerry & Candice drove up on their own.

The drive was long (about 6 hours), but it went by pretty quickly. We made a stop in Willits at a Subway for lunch, which I think bored Cody … but more on that later.

When we got up there we had a little bit of downtime before we all headed over to the Rehearsal Dinner, which was kind of more like a pre-wedding reception dinner, because about 3/4 of the people weren’t involved in the wedding and didn’t go to the rehearsal anyway. But I still enjoyed being invited .

Friday night we headed over to the Eel River Brewing Company that was literally adjacent to our hotel. They had some pretty good beers including a hazelnut porter that had an uncanny resemblance to cold coffee. I liked it, I think Kevin liked it, but nobody else did. Their best beer was by for the California Blond Ale though.

Saturday morning, our little group headed over to Ferndale, which is an old Victorian town and we did some shop perusing. Including a visit to a littlie tiny farmers market with some rather large cucumbers. Kevin and I finally got some good coffee at a little shop that was tucked between two other buildings. They had painted the walls of the other building with a cool mural that I got a picture of too.

After our little visit to Ferndale, we headed back to the Hotels to get ready for the wedding, and shortly drove over to Jenn’s Mom and Step-Dad’s place for the wedding. Cody and I were doing pictures and video for the wedding, so we got everything setup and ready to go.

Once the ceremony got started, things went pretty quick. And the reception was a blast. I took a ton of pictures, and Cody was camera man extraordinaire. They had a bounce house for the kids, and a Keg of that California Blond for the Adults. There were a lot of speeches, because they had an open mic, but most of them were pretty funny. They also had a Carriage that you could take a ride on if you wanted, and we did. In the end, I got drug out on the dance floor and did a little dancing and had some fun.

When the night was over, Mike and Jenn left in a Limo and the rest of us all headed back to the pool and brewery. The pool got a little crazy so most of us left sooner than we really wanted to, I was quite enjoying the spa.

Sunday we got up early to make our trek home. We had decided to take the scenic route, along the avenue of the giants and we made a couple stops. One stop was at the Immortal Tree. I wasn’t really impressed though. Sure it was big, but I’ve seen much bigger. We also made a stop at a Tree House (that’s a house made inside a tree, not built on top of one) and the Founders grove. Again, very cool, and I’m glad we stopped … but not impressed. Our last stop was at Chimney Tree and Hobbiton. This was the stop that Cody really wanted to do. Chimney tree is a hallowed out tree with no top, so there is a hole going all the way up to the sky. Hobbiton though, is a self guided walking story of Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit. We all had a good time of it, but the place had seen better days. There were “Hobbits” that had literally lost their head, and speakers that didn’t work. The best part though, was that at the end of the trip, when we went back into the gift shop, we all got invisibility rings ourselves

From Hobbiton we pretty much just drove home, except for one stop in Willits again for food. Remember how I mentioned that Cody was bored with going to Subway? Well he was dead set on finding a hole in the wall place to have lunch at in Willits, and what we found was exactly what he was looking for. I don’t remember if the place had a name. I think it just had a sign that said “Cafe” on it. It had 4 entrances, two of them were blocked by tables though. While the outside said “I’m rundown”, the inside literally screamed “I’m more eclectic than your grandma”. The place looked like it had been expanded a couple times, and each time the style of the day was used instead of trying to match what was already there. The bathrooms were outside too, and they had a bit of a fly problem. It didn’t really bother me to much, I’ve been in bathrooms way worse but we drove back to the subway area for the girls to use the bathroom over there.

The best part of the place though was when we ordered our food. First we asked the lady what was good, and she literally started going through the menu one item at a time saying if it was good or not. She wasn’t bull-shitting either. She straight up said things like “Our burgers are ok, nothing special”. Becca finally had to say thanks to get her to stop stammering over the items. Then when she came back to take the order things really got interesting. Kevin and I ordered first. He got a patty melt, I got a burger. Then Cody ordered (I forget what it was) and he was presented with an option for his side. Fries, Macaroni Salad, Potato Salad, etc. “I’ll take the Macaroni Salad” Cody said. There was a pause, and the waitress looked up and shook her head. “Hmmm… Not today” she said, blatantly implying that the Macaroni salad was not a good choice. She quickly realized what she had done and started saying that usually the Macaroni salad was really good, but she wouldn’t recommend having any of it today. It was the funniest, most frank thing I have ever seen any wait staff do. Cody changed to potato salad and everybody else ordered. The food was pretty good I thought, although I thought it should have been priced a dollar or two cheaper.

From Willits, and that whole ordeal we just headed straight home. It was a fun weekend, but very long and I was glad to be home so I could rest a bit.