Today on Monday Mysteries we divine the auguries in Arcata, California. It’s where the Plan G Road Tour has taken us next.
As typical with our travels, the main mystery you might have, though, is “Why did they go there?” Arcata is on the northern coast of California, and it seemed like a nice town when we passed through it a couple of months ago (we stopped here for lunch in May).
Moreover, my project on early women photographers (1840-1930) has been greatly inspired by the work of a photo historian named Peter Palmquist. He was a photographer and photo historian from …. Arcata. Yup, Arcata. And his research on all the early women photographers started with women who came from Humboldt County, which is this part of California. Unfortunately, Mr. Palmquist died over a decade ago, and his archive and notes are all on the other side of the country at this point, inaccessible to researchers while the archives at Yale are remodelled. Ah well. But he published books (I have many) about women who were in this area, and I’m still hoping to track down some more information while we’re here.
Plus, as I said, we thought that Arcata seemed like a nice place to check out for a while. So, we decided to stay here for 7-8 weeks when we found a cute little vacation apartment to rent.
The first Arcata augury happened yesterday when we “checked in” to our latest vacation apartment here (which is technically in Bayside, the small area that is next to or part of Arcata – I’m not sure which. But I’ll call it Arcata to keep it simple. And alliterative.) Anyway, the husband of the couple that owns this place turned out to have known Peter Palmquist. Nice, eh? I took that to be a positive sign.
Then, there were two more auspicious things this morning. First, we beat the odds — weather-wise at least — when we awoke to a large rainstorm, even though there was only a 10% chance of that happening according to the online forecasts. One of the weather sites actually said there was a chance of fog, but not rain. Chris read that as we looked out at the rain outside the window. Only 10% chance? We got it!
No puddles near our door as a result of the rain, unfortunately, but there were a few nice raindrops:
After the rain, Arcata, CA
Then, the second thing his morning were the large spider webs that appeared overnight outside our door. The one below was the most photogenic, since it was covered in raindrops, but there were at least two others nearby (not pictured) :
Raindrops on a Spider Web, Arcata, CA
BTW, that’s an illusion that the web as big as the tree tops. I mean, it was big, but not that big. The illusion is created since the web was closer to me that the trees and I took the photo lining up the web with the trees beyond.
Anyway, I take spider webs to be a good sign since when we moved to Tübingen a few years ago, we were memorably greeted several mornings there by a series of enormous spider webs outside the door to our first apartment, and I like to think they brought us good luck there. 
For reference, you can read this old blog post about them.
So, although divining the meanings of the auguries is always a mystery — especially on a Monday — all the initial signs seem auspicious for our visit in Arcata.
Stay tuned… 