into town we quickly discovered that Crescent City was not the large bustling
civilisation we had been anticipating and it took us several attempts to find a
restaurant. Perhaps we were being picky, but what we wanted on
Thanksgiving Day was a traditional Thanksgiving meal. We finished up in The
Apple Peddler, a family restaurant that was serving the customary
Thanksgiving fare as a special offer. The meal was good, although it did
remind us of school dinners. Our plates came crowded with all the elements
of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, almost identical to Christmas Dinner in
England but without the sausage wrapped in bacon and with mashed yams
instead. We followed this up with a slice of pumpkin pie and gave thanks for
the fact that we had found somewhere to eat where the food did not arrive in
styra-foam containers.
Crescent City was our first real taste of small-town America, starting
with the Thanksgiving meal, where our waitress was so timid that she hardly
spoke to us, quite a rarity in the U.S. The waiting staff all seemed shy of us
'out-of-towners' and were seemingly stuck in the 1980s, all sporting huge
fringes that were stiff with hair spray. The next day saw our continued
exposure to Hicksville - and also to Blair Witch syndrome.
We spent the morning visiting various parts of the Redwood forest and going
on several walks, including one that took in part of the forest filmed for Return
of the Jedi - evidently Mr. Lucas and I have a similar idea about where Ewoks
should live. In the afternoon we returned to the hustle and bustle of Crescent
City. Actually Denny's (picture Little Chef, but with better food) where we
went for a late lunch at about 3.00pm was very busy. Well, we thought it was