On the Road Again...At Home, Finally

I'm home now. I'm tired. We drove 900 miles over the last 4 days.

I stood on a 100-foot tall fire lookout on a 3500-foot tall mountain in the Coast range. I saw a fire outlook from 1902. I saw a fire outlook that was burned down.

I rode on the steepest, muddiest logging road, where the truck slid sideways. I rode on a road so rutted that the bottom of our truck was scraping against the ground. Multiple times. One of the rocks tore a whole in someone's tire. I drove 30 minutes up locked forest service roads, to the middle of nowhere. I hit my head on the roof of the truck. And my shoulder on the door. A lot.

I saw a Brown Bear, kind of. We had a family of deer running up a mountain next to our truck. We had sheep on the road. Cows on the road. Llamas, alpacas, donkeys, goats. We saw wild turkeys. We saw a whole colony of black lizards (geckos?). Someone caught a snake. Someone caught a lizard. One of us has a tick in his leg, tried to burn it out but couldn't get the head out. We watched a pair of ospreys circle above us: one landed in their nest perched on the top of a tower; the other perched on our antennas and watched us. I watched a red-headed woodpecker peck for bugs in a telephone pole, then hop into his hole-in-the-pole/nest and peck away to make it bigger.

I saw some sort of altar on the side of a dirt road where we're pretty sure a timber truck accident occurred. We had a large dump truck come barreling down a one-lane logging road right at us, with both of us braking and swerving at the last second to avoid one another. We had 2 logging trucks, full of trees, screeching, brakes smoking, as they barreled down the road behind us and we weren't moving fast enough.

I watched the fog roll in from the ocean. Below us. I stood in the shining sun and was cold. I stood in the sun and was hot. I got a tan. One of us got a sunburn.

I saw the Redwoods. But no Ewoks. I saw Myrtlewood trees (I was told that these trees grow in 2 places in the world: the Oregon Coast and the Holy Land). I saw wild rhododendrons. I saw poison oak. I saw white dogwood trees blooming wild in the dark, dense forests, standing out like ghosts. I saw trees so windblown that their tops were gone. Or had branches on only one side. I saw cranberry bogs.

I saw clear cuts. I saw thousands of cut down trees, floating in water, waiting for the saw mill. I saw forests of evergreens that stretched out to the hazy horizon.

I stayed in bland hotels. With really comfortable beds. I stayed in a City that only had a hotel, a truck stop, a casino/hotel, an RV park, and a Burger King. We stayed on the beach, with one the top 5 golf resorts in the world just down the street. We didn't see a Starbucks for days on end.

[Edit: One of us opened the door to his room and found a fat, naked trucker standing there.]

I ate. Alot. Lamb with risotto. Prime rib. Gourmet Mac and Cheese. Wine. Beer. Cheesecake. Crab Nachos. Shrimp Cocktail. Spanikopita. Pizza. Wings. Burgers and fries.

I met good people. Clients laughed. Competitors worked together. Vendors joked. There was 7 to 10 of us, depending on the day. We had 5 to 7 cars.

My camera battery died, but I was able to take some pictures. Then I forgot my camera in someone else's car. Sorry no pictures right now. I'll update later.

Sometimes I hate my job. On trips like this, I really like my job. I don't think a lot of people get to drive past locked Forest Service roads and see what I saw, whether for work or for fun. I also don't think this stuff exists in Iowa; I'm not 100% positive about that, but I'm pretty sure.