Ear to the Ground See Travel Map

Food

Best breakfast feature ***** a dough machine and a waffle iron for making your own warm waffles with syrup. Yammee! At the Super 8 Motel in Ogden, Utah

Best breakfast ***** at Good Harvest Cafe in Crescent City, California. Blueberry buck wheat pancakes with quality maple syrup and delicious eggs Florentine with spinach

Best lunch ***** at Nora’s Fish House in Hood River, Oregon. Fresh and sustainable seafood from Californian sea bass to Alaskan halibut

Best dinner ***** our homemade meal with our friend Donna in Tiburon, California. Big shrimps, fresh salad and vegetables from her garden, pasta with homemade pesto and for drinks the Danish speciality hyldeblomst - a drink made out of elderberry flowers. For dessert Hagendasz vanilla ice cream with an abundance of blackberries off her vines. Plus fresh water from her spring. Just couldn’t be better.

Best restaurant dinner ***** at The Tides in Crescent City, California. Fresh seafood, all your heart could desire and a great clam chowder!

Best homemade dessert ***** Kathleen’s homemade brownies waiting at the float club in Portland, Oregon

Best restaurant dessert ***** the serious hot fudge Sunday at Pizza Nova at one of the San Diego marinas in California- and it is big enough to share. Their pizzas are very good too  

Motels

Best deal ***** Orchard Motel in La Grande, Oregon. An old motel that has been remodeled, we had a small, but very neat room with quilted bed blanket and pillows and the best towels of the whole trip - thick, olive green and not fluffy. They also have an excellent working wifi. Only $42 for staying the night - a good deal.

Working space

Best working space ***** s/v Friendship, San Diego. Ross’ 30 foot Catalina is my writing and radio station in Paradise.

Hi tech journey aids

Best invention for our road trip ***** the GPS was fantastic, getting us to every place we wanted to visit. You can really concentrate on driving when you have one of these, especially in the big cities. Garmin, thank you so much - and Ross, thank you for buying it!

Second best invention **** the radar - saving us speeding tickets; that Audi tt has fast energy.

Best tech assistance on the road ***** Gabe, our webmaster genius .

Worst traffic lights * In Canada - small and hanging so low you need your GPS to find them .

Hospitality

Hospitality ***** all 5 stars, thank you Joanne, AZ, Carol & Soleil, AZ, Donna, CA, Kathleen & Joel, OR, Ahmad & Graca, BC.

Teas and teachings

***** thank you to all the teahouses we visited for sharing your best teas and teaching us about the ways of tea

Weather

Worst driving weather * through thunderstorm and hail in Utah

Best driving weather ***** 98 % of the time - thank you weatherman!

Our gypsy silver Audi tt at the float club in Portland, OR - a fast, fun and safe car. After a couple of thousand miles I even figured out the climate control that kept us comfortable on the road, from the 116 degrees F Arizona desert to the hail storm in Utah. Great Bose sound system, real bright headlights and it just stays glued to the road on the curved mountain roads.

The Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. The huge primordial rock formations are so alive, like sculptures. Maybe this is God’s testing field when the Earth was created

Balancing rock

This rock arch landscape blows my mind. Here I try to capture a small part of it with my dog camera that has actually been bit by a dog, mistaking it for food. I felt great spirit so present in the colossal stone formations. Food for the soul.

In Utah we drove into the only bad weather on the whole road trip. A hail and thunder storm covered the mountains in a gray and black foggy mist and made the road disappear right in front of us. This picture looks like winter - but it is actually September.

I

The basics

We were traveling from Vancouver to Vancouver Island to visit Victoria, BC. Overnight we stayed at the Western 66 Motel in Saanichton outside Victoria. We had a great seafood dinner at a little bistro out on the pier in nearby Sidney - the Pier Bistro. They are located just next door to the fish market and their seafood is totally fresh. Ross had a halibut with mashed garlic potatoes, baked tomatoes with cheese and vegetables. I had a couple of crispy wraps with halibut, shrimps, crab, spinach and feta. A great meal overlooking the ocean as it got dark. Back in our motel Ross noticed that it was a motel just containing the basics and nothing more. Bed, table, chair, bathroom, all in a dull brown color, but nice and clean like my mother would have said. I made a comment on the fact that a shower cap apparently belonged to the basics here, much to my surprise. I mean….maybe in the 50es, but in 2007? The next morning Ross came out of the shower wearing the basic shower cap. I had a big laugh and took this shot. I just loved the way he put my comment into play.

We drove right into the Vancouver sunset

In Vancouver we stayed with our wonderful friends Graca and Ahmad - don’t miss taking a look at their Flickr sites http://www.flickr.com/photos/mgbon/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kavous/

the Flickr troup going for a walk at the marina

Ahmad’s tea

We didn’t find any real teahouses in Vancouver so we did our own tea ceremony with Ahmad and Graca instead. The frog is for good luck and happiness - and right now it is jumping up to Vancouver with a whole bunch for you both, thank you for everything.

It is a beautiful sail from Vancouver to Vancouver Island through the archipelago - the ferry boat almost touched the sides of the islands

Yuan Sheng Hang in Seattle, WA can help you out with Chinese teas and medicine. Ya Mei Xie and her husband, Xin Pei Zhang, are located on 666 South Jackson Street

I got Chinese medicine for my sore throat

Chinese tea ceremony at Yuan Sheng Hang’s. The owner gifted us with a Lotus blossom tea and a Puer for the road

The Panama Hotel in the Japanese neighborhood of Seattle, WA, is dating back to 1910. Present owner Jan Johnson does a great job in keeping the historic atmosphere of the hotel and cafe.

Jan’s handmade wooden table without a single nail

the Panama Hotel has a big tea selection - and you can also get a cup of quality coffee there

Ross had a delicious Ti Kuan Yin, one of the most popular Oolong teas, and I had an organic peppermint tea. They also have tasty treats to go along with the teas like this lemon muffin

Owner Jan Johnson and a Japanese friend who came by while I did the recording. Jan told me she got the hotel by magic

The Panama Hotel is a local meeting place - here you see some of the visitors

Mocca, the hotel cat

Jon studies Chinese medicine and he also gave us a little piano improvisation

Jon checked our pulses for his Chinese acupuncture class and they came out OK

Joel and Hanne. We met Joel at the boatyard in Portland, Oregon, by the impressive Columbia river and spent three wonderful days on his houseboat. Besides being a boat aficionado Joel is also a wonderful photographer - take a look at his Flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/buckaroobob/

Everywhere in the houseboat you could feel Joel’s exuberant energies that created this magic place. I especially fell in love with this detail from the bathroom - old typewriter from the pre digital, even pre electric days….standing just in front of the toilet.

view from the deck of Joel’s houseboat

Columbia river by night - thank you Joel and Kathleen, it was such a great time we spent together, hope you will use the talking stick

We had a delicious curry lunch at this Indian-Chinese teahouse downtown Portland. From their website we quote this Daily Tao: “Anyone who aspires to follow the Way of Tea, guard against jealousy. If you place yourself in the center, to envy others, to tempt others - you will lose the way. Know what you have to do, and as you immerse yourself daily in the way of tea, happiness will come. The more you look up to others, the clearer your own position will become. Remember the humble heart of the tea preparer in the teahouse, for they know the spiritual taste of tea. Know what you know and know what you don’t know - only then will the limits of your strength become evident. Devote yourself to study and practice of tea. The Way is never exclusive. It is open to all to follow.”

Jonathan has majored in Chinese culture and music. He is pouring at The Tao of Tea where he served us a Wenshan Baozhong, a very green Oolong tea, one of his personal favorites. Rich and tasty - thanks for tea and good conversation Jonathan.

tea at Tao

This is Ear to the Ground Productions, Podcast # 5

We went to see Loren, a Pomo medicine man and one of Ross’ teachers. Loren lives near Stewart Point North of San Francisco in California. We drove across mountains and arrived at his small native village Kashaya. Loren did healing work on me first, then on Ross in the big wooden ceremonial roundhouse. Then we asked him to do a recommitment ceremony for us. It is now 2 years since our commitment ceremony at the Tsankawi site in New Mexico and we wanted to renew our bond. Loren did a prayer for us in the Pomo language while we stood with two branches connecting to the same bigger branch in our hands. After the simple and beautiful ceremony I did this recording with Loren about the story of the ceremonial roundhouse and his healing work as a medicine man.

 

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Natascha dancing the Pomo sunwheel in the big ceremony house

Loren saw in a dream that he should build a ceremonial roundhouse in the Pomo community North of San Francisco, California, where he lives. And he made his vision a reality.

roof of the roundhouse

Loren and Hanne. Loren worked at my blocked energy fields and the confusion in my heart in these times of life transition. Basically he helped me connecting my head and my heart. After working with Loren I felt my energies flowing much freer - as you can see.

Loren is one of Ross’ teachers

After working with Loren I did the interview with him for our podcast