Mother's Day Visit to the Anderson Creek Inn

The Destination: Anderson Creek Inn

A friend and past co-worker surprised many of us several years ago by picking up and leaving the SF Bay area and moving up to Boonville, California, to become an innkeeper with her husband Jim. Their place is the Anderson Creek Inn. This was our first visit, as our very active son, David, was now old enough to appreciate the environment. We were in need of a quiet and restful couple of days, and this sounded like just the thing. There's an airport at Boonville that is actually pretty close to the Inn, but, alas, there were no rental cars to be found anywhere nearby, so we decided to fly up to Ukiah and get a car from Enterprise there.

We loaded up N811TW (a Cessna Skylane) and departed Palo Alto on a sunny but windy Friday afternoon (May 9, 2003). After picking up the car I realized I'd neglected to add the local detail for the area to our Garmin Street Pilot III GPS, so while I had the address, I didn't know how to find the Inn! Fortunately a quick call to the Inn netted directions and it was very easy to find.

Our first impression of the Inn was of peaceful farm house. Coming down the driveway with sheep on one side and horses on the other, while Jim was parking the tractor over between the house and barn, built that feeling. But the rural earthiness stopped at the gate to the house, where charming elegance is the main theme. The rooms are neat as the proverbial pin, complete with comfortable furniture, gorgeous fresh flowers, and even some tasty chocolate treats. What you won't find are things like televisions and phones. It's just not that kind of place.

After we got settled in, Grace had a treat for David. She took him out to the cabaña where a family of birds had set up housekeeping on top of a wind chime under the eaves. The baby birds were the first of many interesting wildlife encounters.

Probably the goofiest of all the wildlife was this hollow-legged gap-toothed diddie found cavorting on the soft, luscious grass. For dinner we followed Grace's suggestion to visit Lauren's in Boonville. Amy was talking up the gorgonzola and walnut salad when the waiter walked by with a great looking cheeseburger. She changed her mind... David had the 4-Salsa Nachos (yes, he loves the jalapenos). I tried the meatloaf (I wondered about the fried mashed potatoes; they were great!) All of us selected beer to drink; Amy one of the local brews, Henry Weinhards Root Beer for me, and Dad's Root Beer for David (who later agreed that the Henry's is actually better) All those dishes were quite tasty, but paled next to the strawberry-rhubarb shortcake we had for desert. Yum!!!

After a bit of strolling around Boonville we returned to the Inn to enjoy a bit of reading before a very peaceful night's sleep. One of the things I really appreciated about the Inn was how unobtrusive it was. While the temperature remained very comfortable throughout our stay, the heating/cooling/venting equipment was very quiet, never interfering with the quiet or natural sounds.

Saturday, May 10

We had gone to bed early, so we were all up by 7. As I hope you can see in the photo, the mist laying over the hills gave a beautiful soft light to the countryside. We set out on a stroll down Anderson Valley Way.
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The sights, smells, and sounds were wonderfully pleasant and too numerous to list. This bit of weathered wood that looks like a pair of geese is just one example. Check out how the light plays with the texture of the wood. Beautiful. Soon we were getting hungry, though, so we headed back to clean up and meet the other guests for breakfast at 9am. Yummy! Ham quiche with fresh from the oven blueberry muffins, fresh fruit, and fresh orange juice enjoyed by the lovely courtyard.

After breakfast we tempted Grace away from her duties to get a tour of the grounds and meet the other locals. David was quite taken with Bill and Blondie, the draft horses, and can be seen here with Blondie discussing topics of great depth and import.

Grace showed us the way down to the creek, and after a bit we took off our shoes and waded across (it was just a bit too big to jump), and followed Con Creek down to Anderson Creek, finding lots of interesting stuff along the way.

Later in the afternoon we went into town, had lunch at a taco truck (yep) that actually had some really wonderful food; fresh, nicely spicy, and very good. We were lucky enough to be visiting at the same time as the circus, so we took in the show, and Amy (who just loves elephants) took her ride on Barbara. In the afternoon we stretched out by the pool and David took the honor of being the first person to actually venture into the pool in 2003. It's not heated!

On the way out to dinner we stopped to admire the hummingbirds making use of the several feeders. The coloring on the birds was incredible, but only visible in just the right light. We quite enjoyed our pizza dinner, and then Grace was kind enough to indulge David and me in using her fancy apple corer/peeler/slicer machine to prepare the apples for the fresh homemade applesauce she was making for breakfast.

Sunday, May 11

We took a walk down to some of the other houses nearby, passing by Blondie, the "Pasture Princess". Her job is to be pretty. After lunching on our left over pizza, we packed up and headed out to Hendy Woods and had a grand time climbing around among the giant redwoods. Then it was time to head back to Ukiah and the flight home, but we took a few minutes to get this aerial view of the Inn first.

I hope you've enjoyed this story and my pictures. Drop me a note (please, no spam) if you did (so I know if it's worth the time to make this kind of web page :-), and consider making your own visit to the Inn.