I could actually write about the city of McCloud, Ca. and do it apart from the fact that the river is there, and I just happen to find it more magical than other places.  So . . . as far as that goes I’ll leave it alone for now.

In between those bouts at the river yesterday, I blew back towards town to eat.  It is an absolute must that I go into the local burger joint, Floyd’s Frosty to eat the buffalo meat that comes at a premium rate.  It’s just what needs to be done.

After the burger is put away, I usually like to breeze through the town to look at things. There are of course, the now-defunct train cars from the dinner train on which I would occasionally perform.

Headed down Main street, one sees the old Mercantile building in the hub of town.  Inside there, literally buried in the heart of that multi-compartmented building  is the Mountain Star Cafe.  One literally feels a sense of living in the 1860’s when they are in there, including a natural spring that has been pumping water effortlessly for hundreds of years with our fail.  Water tastes amazing, by the way.

Even more amazing is the coffee.  Cherie, my lovely and gracious barista, could have technically  engaged me in an overt sales pitch about NorthBound Coffee Roasters in Mount Shasta–but the coffee did that all by itself.  She just happened to be lightly mentioning it to me when my brain went “WHAAAAA!” It was, by far, one of the best coffees I had tasted since I had my sensory pugilist slapped around by Kauai brand coffee a few years back. The coffee was the perfect complement to an ad hoc conversation with both Cherie and Rachael about Preston Castle and other old haunts. 

I should’ve bought a bag before I left.

The ambience of being “buried” in the center of an old historical dinosaur, complete with the original wooden floors that could tell the stories of ghosts long past–is exactly where I will be blogging something of substance from when I return to that area for some extended days in June.  Maybe it’s just me.  But I can’t do something substantively historical and such in tradition when I’m at a Motel 6.  I need grit.  I need a sense of history.

The Mountain Star Cafe also brags some delicious food–but I am saying that second-hand. Though I was culinarily glutted from the Bison meat burger I had just eaten around the block, I was still tempted to go for half the things I saw on display there–you know what I mean. Pastries and things that you might expect in a coffee shop, but made with that certain flair, care, and passion that you KNOW is going to cause all kinds of synaptic digestive nostalgia.

I know.  In bald attempt to sound funny, that last phrase came off as one step above “coarse.”  I don’t know how.  Forgive me. But suffice it to say, while I can’t exactly brag about the food I have only tasted by an arms-length, osmotic desire index, I can let Yelp do it instead.

Next on the blog agenda:  THE BOOK.