From my email to parents...

it's a cool place. It seems unbelievably tiny to be able to support the number of shops it does - it feels like the size of Harborne, but has a farmer's market every saturday morning. The twist is that you can only exhibit there if you're an Organic grower. Amazing. They have a little square there, and there must have been like twenty vegetable/flower/plant stalls there - all completely organic. Tomorrow evening (friday) there's Arts Arcata which happens once a month, and is in the main square again, but here they're selling local art. Again the twist is that you can't sell anything there that isn't made locally so there's no bead necklaces from Africa (actually made in China) or little 25 cent metal pendants sold to kids which have a 69% lead content - the big scandal in the NY Times today.

We went to the beach the other day and I got a tiny inny meenie bit burnt, though San Francisco's frazzling is long gone thank god - I think I thought it was worse than it really was. Anyway, we went to this beach, A, Katie (another cousin who's visiting from Texas) and I, before walking through Fern Canyon. We were actually meaning to go to Fern Canyon first, but the beach seduced us. the beaches here are amazing and as the sun is streaming down and the waves rolling in, you can watch the FOG washing over your feet. Yes, fog. Supposedly, when Kristin (A's Aunt) first came here twenty years ago to work as a tree planter who followed loggers when they'd clear cut down forests - (when she was 19...) the fog was so thick that in the morning they couldn't see the car in front of them for the thickness of it. The fog isn't quite so thick now, but it's still pretty bad. When A and I were driving here up from San Francisco up on Highway 101 (the scenic one) I could see a big blanket of fog sitting over the whole town.

Oh yes, and fern canyon. Guess.. it's easy. It's a big canyon and on either side of you, on the walls, are... FERNS! inventive name really. It was amazing - covered in ferns all over, and streams running down the bottom which you have to constantly jump over (or in A's case, wade through) to get ever further up the canyon. We've been driving through redwoods, playing tag in the tallest trees, and running around amongst some of the most magnificent specimens of plant life I've ever seen.