I went to the ocean yesterday--for all of thirty minutes.  I was picking up my son in Shelter Cove, after a week of backpacking.  The drive could have been an advertisement for northern California.  I started the day dropping into the Central Valley, through the foothills painted with baby grass, with the Sutter Buttes rising into mist and clouds to my north and a rainbow marking the sky over the Sacramento River.  Then I climbed into the Coast Range, skirted Clear Lake, and turned north on Highway 101 to find snow covering the road. 

	All smiles after the trip.

It was a winter wonderland of white for about fifteen miles, and then I dropped down in elevation and started winding through the redwoods, where the trees towered as I twisted around them.  The last part of my journey was from Garberville down to the coast, full of slow turns, more redwoods, creeping fog, and rain showers.  I finally arrived at Black Sands Beach to the sun peeking out from the clouds and a group of wet kids ready to climb in the car.

Those kids were wet, but according to the talk in my car on the way back, they had a good week.  In the retelling it sounded like an adventure, and being wet was just one aspect of the fun.  They were, however, all ready for a hot shower and dry clothes--and non-dehydrated food. 

With all that driving yesterday, I was concerned that I might get sleepy.  I listened to radio, music, and podcasts, and I drank this week's coffee special: Costa Rica El Poeta SHB.  El Poeta means "the poet," and sipping it while driving towards a rainbow did feel like poetry.  It did keep me alert, but more than that, it was delicious.
  
For the more ordinary days, this is still a poetic coffee.  It's grown in the highlands of the Costa Rican province of Alajuela, in the central part of the country.  The farmers come together with an export company, Café de Altura de San Ramón Especial S.A (their website in Spanish is here).  Café de Altura works with these family farms to produce quality coffee with sustainable farm management practices.  Their goal is to "turn the producer into an entrepreneur and marketer of his own coffee."  This partnership benefits the farmers who get a better price for their quality beans.