Ridin'Ard (The h is silent)

Our last tourist stop is the Washington Olympic Peninsula, home to Team Edward and Team Jacob.  Jaron found us a cute place with seaside condos. Turns out they are if the same era as our first apartment. Downstairs living room and kitchen, upstairs loft bedroom. It advertised a path to the beach, which was true. There was a path. It was quite long, but it certainly was a path. There are six condos to a building making it a du... tri... ...wait for it... ...a sexplex.  We stayed up late finishing books the first night after a lackluster foray in to town for dinner. So for breakfast we had backpacking meals and coffee at the sexplex.  We went to the Hoh Rainforest and did their mossy loop trail.  Julie keeps feeling better every day, but the covid got to her on that walk and she slept in the car on the way home.  Back to the sexplex to chillax the rest of the afternoon and evening with backpacker meals for dinner, after our experience last night at the restaurant...

Back to our regularly scheduled vacation: masked edition.  We set out from Bandon and FINALLY got some west coast coffee, the first of our trip (unless you count the Starbucks cold brew that Jaron got from the grocery store for our hibernation, which I don't). I know, I KNOW! It's a crime that it took this long. But, it was delicious.  We headed up the 101 to Portland. Jaron booked us 2 nights at a hotel near Powell's Books, where Julie will deposit all of her tattoo savings.  Jaron has been craving Dairy Queen for some reason (🙄) and they have either been closed or nonexistent. We were coming up on another one and were sitting in traffic, so Julie started reading its google reviews in characteristic voices. Jaron comes out with his ice cream, which WAS made correctly, and Julie suggested that he leave a review.  This section of 101 was adopted by Alpacas of Oregon. I guess they pick up litter with their mouths?  Julie slept a little in the car today, but is fe...

Jaron was able to extend our stay at the corporate hotel by only 1 night due to a football game in this college town. It was nice to have a kitchenette, not that Julie ate much. Jaron went to the grocery store for bananas and microwaveable meals. I did some more laundry the next night, too. And we hunkered down.  We figure Jaron got covid first because he was super warm on Friday night, so much so that Julie had to move to the other bed. Julie had body aches and chills Monday night, and Tuesday was puke day when we tested positive, but her sinuses were feeling tender starting Sunday night. Jaron said his "allergies" started on Wednesday, and that Friday was his worst day, but that he was feeling a lot better by Tuesday. In truth, we WERE also dealing with allergies and altitude adjustments. But Friday was after 3 nights in a row of camping and a lot of isolation, so maybe he got it at the airport? I know it doesn't matter, but it'd still be nice to know.  We checked o...

We could have driven to Eugene in 4 hrs on the interstate, but that would have been no fun. I mean, the package could have been delivered as late as 7, and REI was open until 8. So we took the scenic route through Crater Lake just to break up the drive. We're planning to come back here and camp.  We passed this "lake" on the way. Google maps & Garmin gps said it was water, but our eyeballs said it was not. Jaron has been asking me to look up various things that we drive past, so I looked and said that the big field of grass showing as blue on the map was Grass Lake. Weird.  Crater Lake really is beautiful. Maybe moreso than lake Tahoe.  That blue!  We got lunch at the gift shop at Crater Lake and poked around to see what we wanted to come back and do. There is a hike down to the beach, 1.1 miles each way with 700 feet of elevation, which works out to a 12% grade. On average. We missed boat tours by literally one day, but we thought that strenuous hike would be co...

Today we did 2 hikes in the Mount Shasta area. Jaron got the good stuff from the pharmacy today and has been feeling better, but we started with an easy hike at McCloud Middle Falls to see how it went.  It went great, so we went to the not aptly named Bunny Flat trailhead. I mean, the words "bunny" and "flat," especially together, do not imply a moderate hike. We made it about a mile out with 600 ft elevation gain before deciding it was time to turn around. Julie remembered to put her HR monitor on, and burned 505 calories active with several spikes in to 80% of max HR. It was a pretty good workout and we should sleep well tonight.  But we got this view.  We found a super cute family-owned motel in Weed, CA (named for its founder, not the herb) and got our lodging squared away, and then dinner at a Thai restaurant. The motel gave us these for coffee at their diner in the morning. #adorbs I kept one for my foreign currency collection in my library.  I really enjoyed ...

After 3 nights of camping in a row, we were ready for a hotel. It had a restaurant and spa onsite, so we decided to take a break and stay 2 nights and get massages. Highly recommend Gaia just south of Redding.  Julie remembered how allergic she was to NorCal from when we lived here and kept up with allergy meds, but Jaron is getting them bad. (Or covid) So we stopped at a drugstore before tucking in for the night. Of course, the good stuff was locked up. Jaron asked for someone to unlock the case and they didn't have just sudafed by itself and he didn't feel like he needed the combo of active ingredients. The pharmacy portion of the drugstore was closed and you have to request sudafed literally over the counter from the pharmacy. 🙄 By the morning, Jaron did feel that he needed the combo of active ingredients and went back to the drug store early, before the pharmacy opened. On his way in he said he needed something out of the locked case. The attendant asked which case. Jaron...

We decided to go check out Lassen Volcanic National Park to give it a second try. Here we had the worst camping experience of our lives about 12 years ago.  We were backpacking and the mosquitos were absolutely relentless. It was so bad that we walked around while eating. I lived in Galveston for a year and the mosquitoes were worse than I'd ever seen. And Jaron redefined love by waving mosquitoes off of my ass while I popped a squat. We were hiding in our tent after dinner, playing a game when we heard a bear breathing and walking around. We got very quiet and still and turned our light off. We heard the bear walking closer and almost shit our pants. It eventually satisfied its curiosity and left.  The next morning, we went home instead of finishing our trip.  But, we were in the neighborhood and Julie read about two interesting hikes, so we went to check it out.  It turns out the first hike, Bumpass Hell, was 2.6 miles.  It's a hydrothermal area with bubbling ...

I don't remember where I first read about Kaspian campground, but we love it. The sites are walk-to up 25 steps. We camped here a lot when we lived in NorCal and have brought different people at various times, and have a lot of good memories camping here. Being a primitive and walk-to campground, only the dedicated stay here. It even has a fancy flush toilet now! It being a weeknight, we were really happy to find that we have the place to ourselves. I forgot to take pictures of our site, but it's in (I think, a Ponderosa) pine forest.  Due to construction delays, we were racing the sun to get the tent up and dinner cooked. I should have timed us putting up the tent. It went pretty quickly the 3rd night in a row. Jaron said we were a little more on-brand tonight (by arriving late). We had dinner overlooking Lake Tahoe from our parking lot during twilight, but for bkst we made it across the street to the lakeside.  Our camp host was out of firewood and with an overnight low unde...

Got packed up this morning and headed to Mono Lake, an inland salt lake. These mineral formations are called Tufa (plural). They are like reverse stalagmites and form from the salt and stuff in the lake. It really looked like an alien landscape, actually kind of like the movie Pitch Black (but without the killer aliens).  These look pretty trippy.  We drove to Reno for showers. New experience: first intentional truck stop shower. (My first, unintentional, truck stop shower was after spraying gasoline all over myself.) It was great, very clean, lots of space, hot water, no time limit or anything (unlike the coin showers at the campground).  We also hit up REI to see about the legendary warranty on our sleeping roll, which is losing air and less than 3 years old. Update: REI's warranty is now only 1 year!?!? Ugh. We ordered a new mattress expedited to Eugene, OR. Jaron topped it off 2x last night. Julie can't get a good seal with her mouth that wide. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Tonight we're s...