Who’da thunk garlic ice cream with caramel mole sauce would be so damn good? I mean, I knew the bagna calda (roast garlic in a skillet) would be good; eventually we stopped bothering with dinner rolls and just ate the whole roast cloves by the forkful. I figured the crab cooked in special garlic sauce would be good (Dungeness, too) and when it came on a giant griddle set on a rack over two big empty “boneyard” bowls (for the discarded shells). But there were a couple of surprises – there was a pasta dish that was kind of an afterthought that I ended up ordering a second helping to share around (I think it was called “orsini? “) and there was rabbit and ravioli.

Mmm. Good stuff. And yes, the emanations have begun. Even with the generous application of Altoids and Phazyme, I’m emanating at both ends.

It’s been kind of a weekend for emanations – yesterday I sort of bubbled and simmered in the mud bath (which had a surprising number of little sticks in it, owing to it being a combination of peat moss and volcanic ash) and tonight… well, likely to be more of the same, but without the mineral water.

Poor David.

Meanwhile, Steve took off to play tourist a little bit (kind of late at night) with a couple of friends of his that joined us for dinner; we walked around in the area of the Stinking Rose for a while, then said goodnight to him and everyone and grabbed a cab back to the hotel.

I’m pretty happy with the hotel – it’s one that the corporate travelers are encouraged to use when they’re here, so now I can at least say I’m familiar with it and recommend it without, well, reservations.

The drive down today was pleasant, although not sunny; we stopped for a while at Goat Rock State Park and walked on the beach, then found a seafood place for lunch (natch). Our stay at the Wine Way Inn was really pleasant – great, great great people and fabulous food. I only wish it weren’t on a noisy highway, and the bed we had in our room wasn’t very comfortable, though thank goodness Steve’s was fine (he has a bad back). The B and B was beautifully decorated but not fussily so, and we all got a pretty good feeling about Calistoga, which struck us as a neat little town with a strong sense of community.

Steve had a strange and rather sad encounter with a lady that turned out to be one of the local characters – we figured out a bit more about her today when we were putting some pieces together. I suppose it’s a measure of the place that we started to feel like temporary members of the community of Calistoga. Like I said, neat town. Everybody knows everybody, everyone looks out for each other and helps out (especially the vineyard people, but really everyone).

We had dinner the first night at the Calistoga Inn and Brewery – they had a realy nice outdoor patio setting for dining. Steve had to go inside to find the men’s room and on his way down the hall encountered an older lady who appeared to be headed the same way. When she saw him, she reversed her course and wandered back into an area that he assumed was a private residence attached to the inn.

We didn’t think too much about it, but the next day when we were walking up to the spa place for our mud baths and massages, we passed an older lady sitting on a bench. “That’s her, that’s the lady from the Calistoga Inn,” said Steve – and since the Inn was right across the street from the bench, he was pretty sure it was the same lady. I noticed the bench the day before, because there was a bus stop just up the street from it – the kind of bus stop with signs for several different local and one long-distance bus carriers, plus at least one tour bus line. I didn’t mention this when we saw the lady – I assumed she was merely waiting for the bus, and didn’t point out the obvious to Steve or David.

So then this morning, Steve got up and went for a walk before breakfast, and while he was chatting with someone from a bagel/bakery type shop that was open early, he got some of the lady’s story. Basically, she’s homeless, but she’s also considered a local character of sorts, and people in the town kind of look out for her and make sure she eats and has somewhere to stay. Nobody seemed to know if she had family somewhere, but the shopkeeper seemed to think that she was like a lot of people who found their way to Calistoga – it’s at the end of the line for Greyhound, so she just got off and never left. Or perhaps she was put on the bus from somewhere else and abandoned by bus ticket (can this still happen in this day and age? Maybe). The story ended with some details of the little schedule she follows – Steve saw her going into a nearby restaurant and getting coffee, which is when he started asking about her. That’s part of her morning routine, apparently. Later, she goes and sits on the bench on the corner, but goes across the street to the Inn to use the restroom and get a bite to eat.

Steve finished telling the story and we all pondered how someone could just get off a bus in a town and just be left to fend for themselves, and then I remembered about the bench and said “But that bench where we saw her yesterday – didn’t you see the sign? It’s the Greyhound bus stop. She was waiting at the bus stop.”

And that’s when we realized how sad the story was, and how lonely. Is there someone somewhere that put her on the bus deliberately? Is she lost or simply mislaid? Hard to say. But she’s going to have her coffee tomorrow morning, and later on she’ll wait on the bench for the Greyhound bus, but it won’t take her anywhere, and no one she’s waiting for will be on it.