Eureka! We're Living in Eureka now!

As we left our campground at Richardson Grove, the first leg of our journey was through a grove of redwood trees on Highway 101. There isn't any room for error driving a wide motor home where there are no highway shoulders and you are meeting cars around curves through these giant trees.

Highway 101 also crosses bridges over the Eel River more than a dozen times. We're told that it's usually a nice emerald green, but the recent rains have clouded it. The Eel river was named by early explorers for all the eels they saw swimming in it.

But we took this picture of a Pacific Lamprey at the state park visitor center. This is what those early explorers saw in the river. This creature is not an eel nor a fish, but it has a river named on its behalf anyway.

We are looking at another soggy forecast, and the clouds were hanging in the trees as we made our way a couple hours north through California to the town of Eureka. Doesn't that town name just feel like it needs an exclamation point after it?!?

We chose a campground with good wifi, in an area with a good AT&T phone signal because we need to make some reservations and do some business while we wait out the rain. We haven't had cell phone or television service for the last four days. That's one of the interesting parts to moving to new locations. After parking the motor home in its new space, we took a short drive across the bay to Samoa Island to see what the ocean looked like here. The only one on the beach was a fisherman in full rain gear, and we didn't see him reel anything in while we were watching.

We had been warned not to leave any valuables in our car at the beach, and that might have spooked us to not get out on this rainy day. We did see this car with a broken back window and missing all four wheels at the beach. So it looks like there are some serious troublemakers around.

We love to take factory tours, and they are a great rainy day activity. We signed up for the morning tour at Holly Yashi Jewelry in the nearby town of Arcata. After we left the store, Denisa wished she had taken some pictures of their beautiful display cases with their bright colors and examples of their designs. But instead, we just have some sample shots from their brochure to give an idea of the products they make.

Our tour guide had a display board to explain some of their processes. They start with a product called Niobium. That's one of those obscure elements on the periodic table that we have long forgotten from chemistry class. They stretch and polish it, then color and add design images. The third item shows what is left of the sheet, after all those earrings were cut out using their water jet cutter.

We were introduced to the water jet on the tour. It is also able to cut out the finely detailed shapes of Niobium on the far right of the example board above.

We were encouraged to lean over shoulders to watch their artisans weld and bead and hammer metal pieces in the assembly process.

There were real people beading real beads, and they can make up to 2,000 items each day during the busy Christmas shopping season. Their products are available nationally and internationally, in stores and on-line.

The thing that makes their jewelry unique is that Niobium can be changed to a permanent rainbow of colors by dipping it into an electrically-charged bath. They showed us an example that started with a simple sheet of Niobium.

The artist had a chart of the electrical charge necessary to change the Niobium to "red purple" or "kiwi green." By changing the dial to a different charge, she could create a rainbow of colors on that single sheet of metal.

Right before our eyes she changed plain into exquisite. She knows just the right electrical charge and time to leave the metal in the bath to get graduated coloring for the earrings in the bottom left hand corner.

It's hard to see a demonstration like that without thinking that this would make a great souvenir. To entice you further, you are presented with a thank you card and a 20% off coupon at the end of the tour. It worked, and Denisa ended up buying some earrings before we left. They were just the right size to fit into the motor home. Eureka!