People...?

Good tidings to all of our faithful followers. Today's post is purely Aaron's point of view and the sponsors of this show take no responsibility for anything printed below. (insert fast-paced lawyer speak as to the legalities of the aforementioned statement).

I went to the supermarket today to cash in our empties and the line was unusually short for 3:00p so I was excited to get going. Only one person in line and the "dude" who fixes the machines was working on the other. I patiently waited for whomever to finish first and daydreamed about other things I could be doing instead of standing under a rickety shade awning, awaiting my turn at the recycling machine amidst the all too familiar smell of stale beer and cigarettes (not from me, mind you, it is just the way the location is).

Finally, after not too long a period in the stale stank, the woman finished with her allotted 144 cans for that machine and was on the next. I took my spot and started to pour the first box of cans into the machine and listened to the whir, clank of the magical can recylcler when about half way through the cans, the box that holds the cans inside the machine filled up. I had to then stick my hands into this metal sticky mess of cans and load them back into my box so I could try the other machine. Success! All cans went through no problem. Now onto the store to get my purchase for the day...beer and ice cream. Does anyone need anything else, ever?

I get to said beer aisle and perused the case searching for the perfect deal. Well let's say best deal on Bud Light because that's what the Lady (you know who you are) likes. I don't know why, but it baffles me every time to see this: 18 pack - $12.99 special price; 24 pack - $19.99 special price; and a six pack is $5.49. I will go ahead and let you do the math and try to explain to me how the 24 pack is a better deal and move on.

The next stop is ice cream and this was an easy choice, almost. I was going for cheap but good and found a 1/2 gallon for $2.49 of cookies and cream. I would have gone Rocky Road, but the Lady doesn't like nuts (keep your jokes to yourself) so I went with Cookies 'n' Cream. Now with beer and ice cream in hand, I make a bee line for the "about 12 items" line. (They have since changed the sign from "12 items or less" obviously because of the egregious grammatical error).

Rounding the end of the ice cream aisle, I see an empty line with a cashier just waiting to service me (OK that was meant for jokes). Then out of the corner of my eye, I see a less than bright father and his two equally bright children meandering towards the checkout line. I, being the gentleman that I am, paused to see if the father would see that I only had two items and let me go in front of him as he had 6 gallons of paint, 3 sets of rollers, 3 sets of roller brushes, about 5 horse hair brushes and many rolls of tape. Now if you are paying attention, you will notice that this person is in the "12" items line and he has well over the suggested amount.

Just as I thought. The father looked at me and my meager bounty and proceeded to unload his basket, without the help of his offspring, each time glancing back at me with nothing but a mouth breathing expression on his face. Once all of his items were on the grocery mover I noticed the cashier giving me the "I really can't believe this guy" look and I shot her back the "I halfway expected it, I mean look at the guy" look and we shared a silent laugh and smile.

All of his items have been scanned and it came time to give the rewards card, because it is important to get those points for the gas discount. But he had been searching his over packed wallet the entire time the transaction was taking place (pause and respect the alliteration), and I knew he wasn't going to find it in time. Try the alternative phone number...nope didn't work. Try it one more time, this time saying each number with the precision of a jackhammer. Finally, the obviously smarter of the three, the young kinda trampy 14 yr old girl, wearing the shorts that are way to short for a 14 yr old girl to wear, and wearing sunglasses inside the store, piped up and said "No dad! It's not that number, duh! It's blah blah blah".

At this point I offered to use my rewards card because, hey, they bought a lot of paint and it isn't cheap and for every $100 you spend, you get 10 cents off per gallon of gasoline. He again looked at me like I had just spoken Farsi and proceeded to give the correct number to his account and then waddled out of the store with his brood of underachievers in tow.

I actually surprised myself with how well I kept calm. It did help when the cashier said "Beer and Ice cream? That sounds perfect." She probably noticed the corners of my mouth starting to utter something I may have regretted and averted a scene quite nicely. Well done check out person.

Anyway, that is about all that I have for now. Thanks for listening and stay tuned.

California Redwoods via Oregon Coast

Welcome back to our continuously updated blog; we have been busy traveling the coast to bring you the wonderful stories you have come to know and love. Our last update was before Christmas and we have been busy with getting a new car, taking weekend day trips to the coast in said new car, and enjoying the wonderful spring time in Oregon.

There is no need to bore you with too many details about the last few months, the first paragraph sums it up fairly well. I will, however, bore you with some details of our latest excursion to the coast. It was a lovely spur of the moment trip to the Redwoods by way of the Oregon coast during beautiful weather. I know it is hard to believe that Oregon has nice weather but occasionally the sun does shine and when it does, look at everything you can because you don't know when the sun may be back.

On to the story. After packing up Jen's 4runner with all of the camping equipment needed (we thought) we headed out early on Thursday morning (10:30am) so we could get a head start on the weekend traffic. Our journey started out in perfect Oregon fashion; raining buckets for the first 15 miles of the trip. But then the skies cleared and we continued through the Coastal Range towards the coast joining the historic Highway 101 at Lincoln City. If you ever get a chance to stop in Lincoln City, don't. There are plenty of other coastal towns to choose from.

From there we headed south towards the California Redwoods down the beautifully dramatic coastal highway with no real plans on where we would stop and when; we were just winging it. We took the time to see the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport which was really cool. We ended up stopping for the night at a little campground on the east side of the highway just north of the Sea Lion Cave called Carl-something-or-other State Park. We were going to go past the cave into the town to find a camp ground right on the beach but decided to go back to the one that had a little more shelter from the wind.

After finding a suitable campsite for the night, we bought some wood from the camp host and got everything ready to start the fire. I, being the man, knew that the best way to start a fire is with the pyramid technique so I built a little pyramid of wood and ignited the little paper we had to start the fire. It was a brilliant fire for about 30 seconds until the paper burned out and the fire was reduced to tiny glowing amber edges of spent paper. Then Jen came to the rescue with her stacking technique and we had a fire going within 10 minutes, and it lasted all night until I was asked to keep it going and managed to put it out again. But it was no big deal because we were ready for bed by now.

A little earlier in the day we had realized that we forgot our inflatable bed for the back of Jen's truck but we decided to rough it and just use the plethora of blankets we brought as padding. After that wonderful night of sleeping for 20 to 30 minutes at a time while in between finding new and painful pressure points you never knew existed, we came to the conclusion that one of our first stops must be to a Fred Meyer or Wal-Mart so we could get the most needed air mattress for the truck. So we got up to get the day started only to find out that minutes before we got up, we had been robbed by the most notorious of bandits. If you have ever camped in the Northwest, or anywhere for that matter, you have encountered these little varmints at one time or another. That's right, I am talking about the fiercest creature in the land; Raccoons. Oh, you may think they are cute and cuddly until they steal all of your string cheese and frozen chicken, which they didn't even eat. They also absconded with one egg that they managed to pry out of the tightly sealed cardboard-esque egg carton; but they didn't even eat the whole thing. Most of the yoke was left, which tells me we were dealing with some health conscious ruffians.

Narrowly escaping our encounter with the widely feared beast, we continued our trip down the coast to the Redwood National Forest. Our first stop for the day was the Sea Lion Cave which is the largest natural sea cave on the West Coast. Here we enjoyed the sounds and smells of the coastal wildlife in its full splendor. The helpful cave guide told us that we were lucky to see so many sea lions in the cave that day. He added that if we had been there a few days prior during the big storm we would have seen 500 or so instead of the mere 200 we saw. Being somewhat math-minded I did some quick "smell" calculations and determined that no human olfactory system could withstand that much stimulus without completely crashing and shutting down. 20 minutes down there with only 200 sea lions in the cave was enough for my sniffer so we traveled south again towards the Redwoods with a few more stops planned along the way.

We arrived at our next destination of awe called the Trees of Mystery in the northern part of the Redwood Forest. We pulled into the parking lot to see the beacon of hope that is Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox, Babe and we though for sure this would be well worth the $15 they were charging to ride to the top of the hill in a gondola. We made our way throught the .6 mile trail to the base of the gondola, all the while enjoying the massive structures of nature and all of their quirks. Once on the gondola we were whisked up the hill sailing past 50 year old trees, only slowing down three times so the other gondolas could load passengers. I say 50 year old trees because this was a section of forest that was logged during the 1950's and only a few of the old growth trees were left behind. The park operators said they were left behind because the were curious oddities and couldn't be chopped down. I think they were left behind because the men didn't have the technology at the time to deal with such massive trees. But that is not the point. Once we got to the top of the hill, we were treated to a mediocre view of more unassuming mountain peaks and a few Osprey nest's and a narrow view between mountain peaks of the pacific ocean. All in all not worth the money.

Next we had to find a spot to camp for the night so we could enjoy the Redwood Forest to the full extent that 2 days can afford. We stopped at this campsite called Mill Creek and found a perfect little campsite next to a meandering creek. It was the perfect spot; no neighbors and close to the bathroom. Again we settled in and I decided to give the stacking method of fire starting a try. I set up my platform and lit my paper. Oh, it was a glorious fire once again until the paper burnt out. Then I was left again with only smoldering embers of a few scraps of paper. Jen to the rescue one more time and the fire was ablaze in less than 5 minutes this time. I like to think I laid down a good base for the fire, you know like loosening the lid to a jar? But apparently, no. She had to completely rebuild the fire from scratch so we determined that I should not be in charge of starting fires. No problem. My only question is, how did I start so many fires when I was a kid?

On to the next spot. We broke camp for the day and had only one plan: find a spot to camp right on the beach and take a hike in Fern Canyon. Let me just start with a quote, "The best laid plans...something, something, something". We got to our destination of Gold Bluffs Beach in Northern California and there was a spot to camp right on the beach and the Fern Canyon was just two miles up the road. We thought this is perfect until we saw the campground. It was very desolate and unprotected from the elements. We even took two trips around the site just in case there was the secret hidden spot that can only be seen if you take two or more trips around the site. There was no such spot so we decided to drive the two miles of dirt road to Fern Canyon and hike for a while.

After a somewhat easy drive we arrived at the parking lot for Fern Canyon and noticed that all of the other cars had the day use pass for this site and we did not. Our Oregon pass wouldn't work. There was some back and forth about just chancing it, then we got distracted watching an elk forage in the bushes, but we finally decided to go back and get the day use pass so we could at least accomplish one goal for the day. When we left the campground for the first time, we left at the same time as two people on foot with the same destination of Fern Canyon. We obviously got there before them but with us having to go back and get the day use pass, we actually arrived at the same time. We then noticed that most of the people that were coming back from the canyon had their shoes wet and their pants rolled up. Seeing that, I knew we were going to be in the creek for some of the hike and took the appropriate steps to accommodate; I put on my "water" shoes and rolled up my pants. No my legs aren't that white, I just had my socks pulled up all the way. We enjoyed a lovely 1 mile hike through the water scoured canyon with 30 foot sheer walls covered by prehistoric species of ferns. This is apparently the spot where the local teenagers like to "trip" and we did see quite a few of them giggling at nothing and saying "whoa" a lot. Aside from the occasional acid tripper, the entire scene was unreal and quite peaceful. I would encourage anyone to explore this canyon, it is well worth it.

Following our hike through nature's time machine of Fern Canyon, we now had to find a suitable spot to camp for our final night. Instead of going further south, or staying in the unprotected, acid tripping campground that was Gold Bluffs Beach, we decided to head north east so we would have a shorter drive the next day. Jen found, in her camping book, the Jedediah Smith campground right on the Smith River. This may have been the most turquoise river I have ever seen and apparently everyone knew about it. All of the camp spots along the river were either already taken or reserved. We did manage to find one that had privacy and proximity to restrooms, but it wasn't on the shores of the beautiful little river. We settled in for the night and I didn't even attempt to start the fire, I let Jen do the whole thing and it was going in no time. I did do my part, however, by cooking the meals (BBQ-ing) every night because that is just the kind of guy I am.

That is all I will subject you to for now but stay tuned, we may have another blog post within the next six months, but don't hold your breath.

Thanks for listening and have a great day!