I caught a glimpse of the waning crescent moon just as the sky was beginning to brighten this morning, and it was the start of a very pleasant day.

A pleasant day, but not terribly noteworthy, though we did have an enjoyable walk through Los Gatos with the Shir Hadash Walking Group, a couple of tasty home-cooked meals, and an evening walk to the ATM to make sure Diane and I both met our exercise goals for the day, something which didn’t happen every day on our recent trip.

Quiet days are nice.

We left Ferndale about 10:30 after another nice night at the Gingerbread Mansion and a nice conversation at breakfast.

We were in a bit of a hurry by the time we left – friends in Palo Alto had invited us to a pool and dinner party which started, as usual, at 3pm. We normally don’t get to their house for these parties until 5 or so, and I had hopes that we’d make it by then.

But we didn’t want to leave Humboldt County without seeing a few giant redwoods! Tammy, who’d greeted us at the Humboldt Botanical Garden yesterday, had suggested we stop at the Rockefeller Forest instead of driving down the Avenue of the Giants, so we followed her advice and enjoyed a few minutes communing with nature without any other tourists around.

We didn’t have time to explore, though, so we returned to Highway 101 and headed for our first charging stop of the day at the One Log House a few miles south of Garberville. The house is a tourist attraction which has been around for decades – there used to be a gift shop there and you could pay a couple of bucks to get into the house itself. But new owners had turned the gift shop into a pot dispensary…which went out of business recently! Fortunately, the EV charging station was still operational, and there was a gas station across the street with a convenience store and restrooms.

It was smooth sailing on 101; we’d found a promising Thai restaurant on Yelp just north of Ukiah, but when we got there, it had a “Opening Soon” sign (making me wonder about the reviews). There was a casino with a restaurant that got good reviews nearby, so we drove over there, only to find that the restaurant was closed until dinner; they did have a fast food counter, but nothing appealed. We finally ate at Ukiah Thai Cuisine in downtown Ukiah – it was quite pleasant, and I’d go back.

But all of the false starts had put us well behind schedule, and we were barely halfway through the trip. We made good time to the charging station at the Safeway in Healdsburg, only to find that the charger wouldn’t accept my Electrify America pass or their app. I called their customer service – it took two tries to reach a human, who was able to get the charger to start…after another ten minutes or so. At least we left with a full battery and no need to charge again until we got home!

Traffic moved really fast on 101 from Healdsburg on, and I was hopeful of making the party at our usual time…until we got to the Golden Gate Bridge. I was in the right lane, which was a bad decision – there were a lot of people merging into that lane, so we were stop-and-go while the other lanes moved along smoothly. Once we were on the bridge, we moved well – but once we left the bridge and got onto CA 1, things stopped again. It took about 25 minutes to get through the Presidio, Park Presidio, and Crossover Drive before we reached 19th Avenue and traffic started flowing well again – something I’m not used to seeing on 19th Avenue.

We finally reached our friends’ house at 6:30; the pool was closed, but there was still plenty of food, wine, and good conversation, so it was worth the trek.

We had hoped to visit Humboldt Botanical Garden yesterday on our way to Ferndale from Ashland, but the trip took longer than I’d expected, so we would have been lucky to get there before the last entrance for the day. We decided it’d be smarter to wait and go there today – and we were right. We spent a little over three hours in the garden and could have spent longer if we’d brought lunch.

The garden is on the campus of the College of the Redwoods, a two-year private college that specializes in career education; in fact, the road leading to the garden warns drivers that trucks have the right of way and cars might have to back up to let them through…and you’d better believe it, because the people driving them are learning how as part of their degree program! Fortunately, we were there at a quiet time for the driving school.

We began our exploration in the formal gardens, near the entrance.

One of the highlights of the garden is “All Happy Now”, an earth sculpture which is a cross between a ziggurat and a labyrinth. It’s about a mile from the entrance (depending on which paths you take to get there and back), and the walk in the sculpture is another half a mile. The weather was perfect – cool and not too sunny.

We climbed up to the Oliver Eitzen Lookout Point on our way back to the entrance so we could get a good view of Humboldt Bay.

One of the highlights of the Garden is the Lost Coast Brewery Native Plant Garden, so we thought it only appropriate to visit the Lost Coast Brewery & Café in downtown Eureka for lunch. We didn’t see any plants there, but did enjoy the food and beer.

We also visited Dick Taylor Chocolate; we could have taken their weekly factory tour if only we’d spent two hours less in the Garden. Maybe next time.

We left downtown Eureka and charged the car at Bayshore Mall, then returned to Ferndale and the Gingerbread Mansion in time for wine and goodies. Then we walked back into Ferndale to work up an appetite for dinner, starting with another quick visit to the Ferndale Cemetery.

We walked up to Main Street and then towards the Ferndale Bridge (well, as far as Town Hall). On our way, we stumbled onto Hadley Gardens, a quirky garden devoted to native plants and wildlife, with a side order of solar power (there’s a Tesla Powerwall in the hobbits’ toolshed in the photo below).

We went back to Ferndale Pizza Company for a light dinner – we split a personal pizza!

Tomorrow, we leave Ferndale for home.

The view from our room at the Mesm Hotel was dominated by skyscrapers at night – but during the day, Hamiriku Gardens was the center of attention.

There was an entrance only fifteen minutes’ walk from the hotel, so we decided to explore the gardens this morning before leaving for Narita Airport and home. It was surprisingly rich in history; it was a feudal lord’s residence and later, a palace for the Tokugawa shoguns and then the Imperial Family, who donated it to the City of Tokyo right after WWII.

There weren’t many flowers in bloom today, but the park is overwhelmingly beautiful in its greenness. It’s well-maintained, and it looks like they do it the old-fashioned way, without power tools.

There are some statues in the park, like this one – it’s not a Minuteman, though that was my first thought when I saw it from a distance. It was installed to commemorate the Meiji Emperor’s 25th wedding anniversary.

The park has four teahouses, a sluice (still used to control the flow of water between Tokyo Bay and Shioiri-no-ike, the tidal pond in the center of the park), several bridges, and even a couple of old duck hunting areas, complete with blinds.

You can’t ignore the city that surrounds the park, but the two are surprisingly complementary if you find the right view.

The park also has a 300-year-old pine which is a must-see – unfortunately, we had to leave before we found it because it was time to go home.

We returned to the hotel, checked out, walked about 10 minutes to the Daimon Station, and hopped onto the Asakusa Line which took us directly to Narita in just over an hour for 1414 yen (about $9) each – much faster and cheaper than the Limousine Bus or a taxi would have been.

We left Tokyo with 171 yen in our pockets, empty Suica cards in our wallets, and many great memories. It’s good to be home, but I wish I’d had more time to explore!