Campfire Blues

It's been a rather spectacular dereliction of duties over here. I've been off stumbling through the woods of Northern California and Oregon for the past two weeks, and before that I clawed through the misery of a job that I should have let go and walked away from a long time ago, and a hundred other things that I've let get me down for a hundred reasons that don't seem so important right now. I'm having a cloudy moment of clarity. A momentary sense of reason. I'll offer these few things as a means of a possible explanation. My sister and I drove up to Portland a few weeks ago. It was our first trip together as near-adults, and the most amount of time that we had spent together in years. It was an awesome union. We saw some Mexican wrestling, had Japanese barbecue, and I reveled in the fact that she has four webbed toes, and a gold tooth lodged into the same spot where I have one.






















We camped a few nights beneath the massive California Redwoods. A shelter from the storm, of sorts.






















We cooked all kinds of fantastic crap on a campfire. That's actually a secret family recipe right there involving macaroni and cheese with baked beans. Actually those are the only two ingredients and it's not much of a secret, but it's a hell of a dinner when you find yourself in the woods.















Then we drove through a tree, because you can (and because it's called a drive-through tree), and it's what's expected of you when you're in the land of big trees and backwoods opportunism. We made it up to Eugene for a few hours, and then up to Portland where I tooled around town for a bit. Jamie had just come off of a tour, and we spent a few days getting the camper together for a drive back down to SF. He ended up with enough complimentary food and booze from the tour caterers to choke a rhino. Magic. We did some minor repairs (like fixing the headlights) jumped into the camper van, and headed to the coast.













It's hard not to love a VW camper, packed until it pukes with High Life and cookies.













We camped out at Cape Lookout for a night. I jumped into the ocean, and dried out in time to watch the sun burn itself out in the Pacific.













I stayed up most of the night staring at the stars, and watching the remnants of the Perseid meteor shower.

















And then we headed South to evade the law in Arcata, and get lost on The Lost Coast.