8/2/07 Caspar Inn (Caspar Ca)

The drive to Caspar is beautiful and finding on a map is like playing Where's Waldo. Its a couple hours north of San Francisco on the 1. Its on the rocky Norcal coast by Mendecino and Fort Bragg. From the outside the venue looks like the setting of Stephen Kings' "Needfull Things" but the inside is warm, cozy and perfect for doing the hippie shuffle. The crowd was a little thin because the huge festival "Reggae on the River" was the next day, so people were saving their money and braiding their hemp necklaces and shells. I talked to some Abalone divers who explained that Abalone are a delicacy and that diving for them is really fun, but selling them is illegal. They also told me that recently an Abalone diver got his head bitten off by a shark nearby. We played 2 sets, had a couple of drinks and headed upstairs to get some sleep. Usually we share beds and sleep on floors to save money on hotel rooms. This night we all had our own rooms. We all were in Brian's room laughing and talking, when out of the corner of my eye I say a brown furry thing run across the floor. There weren't two feet on the floor after someone yelled "rat!" we all switched to Sean's room after realizing how lame we all looked. Then when we were in Sean's room we saw a large 8 legged insect crawl across the bed. Time to move to my room. When we got there we realized we didn't close the door to Brians room and the rat had gotten out. After the rat, bug and rumors of haunted rooms, what started out as a luxury turned into normalcy as we crammed into a few rooms and got some sleep.