one thing about rental cars.. if you plan to drive it for more than 8 hours.. count on having a flat tire... it will happen. so but to continue the story... we get up in the morning and start the phone calls. first call is to the roadside assistance number of the rental place and then to AAA. 20 minutes later they arrive to replace the tire... with a donut! and we are suppose to go and fix the broken one! no-no-no.. we don't think so.. we head straight to the rental car office (luckily they had one in Eureka as well) and we tell our sad story and that we don't have the whole day to wait for them to fix it and so on (yes it does not usually take a whole day, but we were planning on leaving the town at 10 to make it to Etna at a reasonable hour)... but what do you know.. they offer to deal with it themselves so we propose that they call us when ready and we will have breakfast meanwhile... sounds good.
we take a little detour and go to the seaside and walk around. this place looks hopeless... basically majority of the people we saw were either homeless or handicapped. strange place. we have breakfast in a nice coffee shop and we wait and wait for the phone call... we play scrabble to make the time pass by.. no call. finally we head over to the office and only then they pick up the phone and call to the service to check the status (that is 1,5h later!) and the service goes "oh the tire could not be fixed so what should we do?" D'OH!!! so they call the original car rental office to get the permission to get the new tire and then some more calls and arguing and discussions... and then the service agrees to change it... but they don't know when the car will be ready as they are short on staff. so tired of waiting around we decide to go to the movies while they change the tire. we went to see Mr. Brooks. that was a good movie :) and after the movie they start to check if our car is ready.. well.. isn't that our car at the parking lot.. she looks out of the door and goes "i don't think so" .. so after the service tells that the car was picked up.. she goes to check the license plate.. it is our car.
finally we get out of town at 4pm. grrr... but ok.. we are out of this sad place finally. we take 299 east until Weaverville and then #3 up north till Etna. both of those roads are marked on the map as scenic routes :) and oh my! i've never seen anything like that before.. it was gorgeous. the road went up-up-up-up and then all the way down... downhill ("hill") was usually for like 10km and 9% drop. yay :) and i was driving automatic :S ... but the road was so very beautiful... dangerous but beautiful. the highest peak we got to was 5400 feet :D i don't think i've ever been that high up before :) and there were tens and tens of small tiny towns along the way.. one town had population 30 :) - one big happy family. the towns were just tiny.. and seems so isolated from the rest of the world, hidden between those huuge mountains. apparently during winter time the roads are closed at times because of the snow... hmm... i'd go mad there i think. AND there is no network in most places either (and i mean phones not internet)... so that means there is no way to communicate with the outside world :)
once we got closer to Etna the road got very narrow and windy again.. we were down to 20mph again :( .. but we made it.. no more flat tires nothing... and we made it before dark.. just barely.. we were there at 8.20pm and i was sleeping at 8.30pm :)
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