Seeking the Yreka Bakery in A Toyota

Notes from Lynn:
Any serious seeker of palindromes would envy us as we motored past Weed (refraining from pot jokes) and into the historic but depopulated downtown of Yreka. Margo asked two older ladies in the coffee shop if they could locate the Yreka Bakery. It used to be right up the street, we were told, the shop with the blue awning. But the original owners had sold it, and the new owners couldn’t make a go of it -- and that was 10 or 20 years ago. This is surprising. After all, we noted, it’s famous in the palindrome world. Although both women are longtime inhabitants, they looked blank. Yreka Bakery, we said, is spelled backward as Yreka Bakery. Oh.
As we left the coffee shop, Margo was compelled to add a note of realism. The palindrome world, she said gently, would be lucky to have a population of, say, 20 or so. Able was I ere saw Yreka.

Notes from Margo (and Lynn):
We stopped today at the Sundial Bridge in Redding – a spectacular white metal and glass footbridge over the shallow, rippling Sacramento River. Lynn learned that the span was built in 2004 as part of a park and educational project called Turtle Bay, perhaps an inducement to draw visitors to a city seldom noted as a tourist town. We didn’t see many tourists, and even the turtles are on holiday. But the boosters are right. The imaginative design of the suspension bridge ends in a single leaning tower on the north bank. Fourteen cables at 45 degrees hold up the broad walkway. The tower throws its shadow landward on a white-tiled berm, a giant sundial with a series of cast-metal markers, as the tower’s shadow moves across a well-tended lawn. The markers are labeled: 1 o’clock, 1:15, 1:30, 1:45, 2 o’clock, etc.
It was blazing hot, of course, mid-day in mid-September in the upper Sacramento Valley. A pair of young men sat on the berm at the point labeled 1:45, the only place in the shade at 1:45 p.m. So as we walked by, one of them says, “We’re on time.” And we all laughed.

Footnote from Margo:
I guess it’s more a commentary on Lynn than on our itinerary that the highlight of the day was an unsuccessful search for a palindrome. Today took us from the Central Valley’s varied fields and orchards through the dramatic volcanic scenery of Mount Shasta. (Even now, at the end of the summer, approaching the equinox, some small patches of snow clung to the upper flanks of the mountain. It was probably 100 degrees down where we were, 8,000 feet or so below.) We then drove past the ranchlands of Scott Valley and over the long steep grades flanked by mixed conifer forests that took us out of California and into Oregon. But, yeah, the Yreka Bakery of the distant past was a highlight. Our goal today was Medford, where a former colleague from the newspaper now lives. We had dinner and traded stories for a most of the evening. Dorothy Kantor, who lives in an immaculate house with her magical, well-tended garden, has been away from the Bay Area for about five years. So I’m wondering what the evenings will be like when we visit with people whom Lynn hasn’t seen since the 1950s.

Mileage today: 241 miles, Oroville, California, to Medford, Oregon.

Total mileage: 392 miles

Price of gas (in Redding): $3.19

Notable: In Los Molinas, a town along Highway 99’s two-lane stretch north of Chico, we saw a sort of home-made fashion store (pictured at left). Apparently it had already closed down, but the sign was still there, evidence of a proprietor with more in the way of bravado and hope than graphic skills. Also sighted: “State of Jefferson” on an old barn.

Notable II: We cruised old downtown Oroville looking for an internet café to upload our weblog, and found several to choose from in a revitalized booming little town. A decade ago, the brick and wood-sided buildings that date from the Gold Rush were boarded over and empty, and the downtown was moribund as the trade headed for the chain stores on the edges of town. Today, somehow, even as the chain stores proliferate, small businesses, art galleries, coffee shops have renewed the downtown. It wasn’t exactly jumpin’, but it looked good, and the gapped-tooth look of the dying downtown was gone.