Good morning, Pacific Northwest! It's Thursday, and I'm just south of Portland, Oregon.
This week so far has been a blast. I've been "camping" with my best friend of too many years to count as we worked our way up from Orange County to Portland. According to my sister, I am not allowed to call it real camping because sleeping in a cabin at a KOA campground doesn't count. Just to clarify, these cabins are about the size of a dorm room, with nothing but two twin bunk beds and a full-size bed with mattress pads. On the porch was a porch swing. That's it. Eating nothing but hot dogs, smores, and FiberOne cereal with evaporated milk mix takes it from cabin-ing to semi-camping. So let's just leave it with I've been "camping" (in quotations) all week. There.
So, Monday our roadtrip started at 5:30 a.m. as we burned through L.A. and made our way up to Fairfield, CA by maybe 2:00 p.m. No traffic, period. We rocked. In Fairfield we stopped at the Jelly Belly factory, because why not? It was fun, we got stomach aches from sugar coma, and it was all good. We also hit up a pistachio farm in Madera among many cows and silos. There I bought (and got more sugar coma on) some honey roasted almonds and pistachio brittle. The California heartland rocks! These farm people love to eat!
By the afternoon, we made it up to the Sacramento KOA "camp"ground to our kabin (with a 'k'), which overlooked a swampy lake to the front and the 5 freeway to the right. Okay, okay, I know this isn't rustic but it was so much fun! You have to remember the point of this trip is not to shit in the woods like bears but to spend time with my crazy friend, C.Bizzle. We tried lighting this log on fire, and about 50 matches later we bought a charcoal B.B.Q. bag for some freakin' fire. Turns out the log was too moist -explaining why it didn't light in the first place- and it tried killing our coals in the height of its anti-fire attitude. We still got some smores out of it, and then retreated to our cabin, beers, and wireless internet. Don't say it, I know what you're thinking, so whatever! This is our "camping" trip, not yours.
The next morning, we headed up to the much less populated Mt. Shasta. Again, in an identical kabin at the KOA, we had an incredible view of Mt. Shasta's reddish-brown dirt and evergreens. The place was so deserted that the staff didn't even stay for our check-in but left us a note that our keys were in the kabin. I took tons of photos of the trees and scenes surrounding our site, so be ready for a photo update soon as I get those babies developed. We also hung out in the town of Shasta, which is hippy-ish and very quaint. The highlight of my time in Shasta was going to the "Soul Connection: A New Age Emporium." It's basically a grocery-store size hippy store. Can you say AWESOME? Upon smelling the incense and hearing the light sounds of a sittar, we caught the urge to buy tarot cards and had a mini-seance in the dark light of the campfire of coals in a standing barbeque.
While the restrooms of the campground were entirely too far away to hit it in the middle of the night, and the deserted grounds were creepy as hell, I had an interesting midnight experience. (That is, by the way, the best way to start a paragraph.) Around 3 a.m., in 14 year-old slumber party fashion, we were zipped up in our separate sleeping bags laughing and chatting hysterically in the dark. This would have been around the time Mom (or the campground neighbors) would come to tell us to shut the f*ck up but we avoided that given that the campground was completely empty. About this time, I realize that I really need to...er...use the facilities. You see, I metabolize water as fast as I would imagine does a small rodent. So, I go to peek outside to realize that, of course, it's really dark and spooky, and I am without a flashlight. In normal best friend fashion, C reassures me that there's no way in HELL that she's accompanying me to the bathroom at 3 a.m., and so I go to pop a squat in front of the kabin. Being that it was way creepy in the midnight darkness of bear country, and that there were probably perverts waiting for me to disrobe behind every tree, I left the kabin door open. You know, just in case I had to scream and needed someone to hear me.
All was going well until all of a sudden, my dear buddy -again in 14 year-old fashion- hears my pee stream and starts losing her mind. From outside amongst the crickets, I hear a faint snicker from inside the kabin. I yell at her,"What the hell's so funny?" which only fuels the fire... and of course she starts cracking up like a looney tune. Well, as laughter is naturally contagious, I proceed to begin laughing hysterically as well, at which time I lose control of myself and pee a little too hard... all over my right foot. The icing of the cake, however, for my funny friend was that I had to sleep without my sweatpants because I had slightly peed on them too, and they were my only pair.
At any rate, it was a funny night and a great couple of days to start off the trip. The rest remains to be seen.
To be continued...
This week so far has been a blast. I've been "camping" with my best friend of too many years to count as we worked our way up from Orange County to Portland. According to my sister, I am not allowed to call it real camping because sleeping in a cabin at a KOA campground doesn't count. Just to clarify, these cabins are about the size of a dorm room, with nothing but two twin bunk beds and a full-size bed with mattress pads. On the porch was a porch swing. That's it. Eating nothing but hot dogs, smores, and FiberOne cereal with evaporated milk mix takes it from cabin-ing to semi-camping. So let's just leave it with I've been "camping" (in quotations) all week. There.
So, Monday our roadtrip started at 5:30 a.m. as we burned through L.A. and made our way up to Fairfield, CA by maybe 2:00 p.m. No traffic, period. We rocked. In Fairfield we stopped at the Jelly Belly factory, because why not? It was fun, we got stomach aches from sugar coma, and it was all good. We also hit up a pistachio farm in Madera among many cows and silos. There I bought (and got more sugar coma on) some honey roasted almonds and pistachio brittle. The California heartland rocks! These farm people love to eat!
By the afternoon, we made it up to the Sacramento KOA "camp"ground to our kabin (with a 'k'), which overlooked a swampy lake to the front and the 5 freeway to the right. Okay, okay, I know this isn't rustic but it was so much fun! You have to remember the point of this trip is not to shit in the woods like bears but to spend time with my crazy friend, C.Bizzle. We tried lighting this log on fire, and about 50 matches later we bought a charcoal B.B.Q. bag for some freakin' fire. Turns out the log was too moist -explaining why it didn't light in the first place- and it tried killing our coals in the height of its anti-fire attitude. We still got some smores out of it, and then retreated to our cabin, beers, and wireless internet. Don't say it, I know what you're thinking, so whatever! This is our "camping" trip, not yours.
The next morning, we headed up to the much less populated Mt. Shasta. Again, in an identical kabin at the KOA, we had an incredible view of Mt. Shasta's reddish-brown dirt and evergreens. The place was so deserted that the staff didn't even stay for our check-in but left us a note that our keys were in the kabin. I took tons of photos of the trees and scenes surrounding our site, so be ready for a photo update soon as I get those babies developed. We also hung out in the town of Shasta, which is hippy-ish and very quaint. The highlight of my time in Shasta was going to the "Soul Connection: A New Age Emporium." It's basically a grocery-store size hippy store. Can you say AWESOME? Upon smelling the incense and hearing the light sounds of a sittar, we caught the urge to buy tarot cards and had a mini-seance in the dark light of the campfire of coals in a standing barbeque.
While the restrooms of the campground were entirely too far away to hit it in the middle of the night, and the deserted grounds were creepy as hell, I had an interesting midnight experience. (That is, by the way, the best way to start a paragraph.) Around 3 a.m., in 14 year-old slumber party fashion, we were zipped up in our separate sleeping bags laughing and chatting hysterically in the dark. This would have been around the time Mom (or the campground neighbors) would come to tell us to shut the f*ck up but we avoided that given that the campground was completely empty. About this time, I realize that I really need to...er...use the facilities. You see, I metabolize water as fast as I would imagine does a small rodent. So, I go to peek outside to realize that, of course, it's really dark and spooky, and I am without a flashlight. In normal best friend fashion, C reassures me that there's no way in HELL that she's accompanying me to the bathroom at 3 a.m., and so I go to pop a squat in front of the kabin. Being that it was way creepy in the midnight darkness of bear country, and that there were probably perverts waiting for me to disrobe behind every tree, I left the kabin door open. You know, just in case I had to scream and needed someone to hear me.
All was going well until all of a sudden, my dear buddy -again in 14 year-old fashion- hears my pee stream and starts losing her mind. From outside amongst the crickets, I hear a faint snicker from inside the kabin. I yell at her,"What the hell's so funny?" which only fuels the fire... and of course she starts cracking up like a looney tune. Well, as laughter is naturally contagious, I proceed to begin laughing hysterically as well, at which time I lose control of myself and pee a little too hard... all over my right foot. The icing of the cake, however, for my funny friend was that I had to sleep without my sweatpants because I had slightly peed on them too, and they were my only pair.
At any rate, it was a funny night and a great couple of days to start off the trip. The rest remains to be seen.
To be continued...
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