Camping on Redwood Creek

We had a wonderful weekend hiking and camping at Redwood Creek in California. The hike in and up the river was nice. I might have been a bit overloaded with the 3 liters of wine, 12 soda cans, salad bowl sleeping bags, tent, sleeping pads, clothes, etc... We got in a bit late - arriving at the river around 7:30. The water was pretty cold with the sun behind the mountains.

The river was gorgeous and we arrived at the campsite just as everyone was eating dinner. Not your usual camp food - skirt steak, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli and red wine. What a way to camp!

We spent the evening poking at the fire and talking with the family. My sisters daughter Ella was quite the entertainment - kind of a mini superhero and full of adventurous plans of her own.

The hike out was hell. Roughly 2 miles of really steep trail. I was so excited that Becky and I were able to catch a glimpse of my brother in law who was way ahead of us, but then I realized that not only was he on his second trip up the trail, but he was carrying/walking a 2 year old at the same time... Becky and I are motivated now to lose some weight and get back in shape...

Our girls did really well and carried most of their own stuff as far as I could tell. We're all looking forward to the next trip down to the river in July.

Carving at the boardwalk

I did my first really public chainsaw carving down at the Harbor in Brookings today. It was kind of fun. I didn't notice a lot of spectators, but there were a few groups that stopped and watched for a little while here and there. I'm going to go back and carve again tomorrow. Becky and I think that if I go there and carve every weekend, I might sell a few after a little while. Next weekend is the big azalea festival here in Brookings. It's supposed to be a big event and super busy down where I am carving, so I'm hopeful that something will come out of it.

Becky had a job interview today. It went very well it sounds like. If she gets the job and I sell a few carvings here and there things will be a lot more fun for us in the near future...

Fun in the sun

Today was fun. It was 86 degrees here on the coast today and I managed to get a few decent sized logs for carving this weekend. I'm trying to pull together a public carving demonstration at the local Saturday market. Still a little nervous, but excited also about the opportunity to do some carving in front of an audience. Practice makes perfect, so the more opportunity I have to play with the saw, the more I learn.

Becky got an iTouch for her birthday this past weekend. It makes my old Handspring Visor look like a child's toy. Looking at the capabilities of the device I started thinking that there has to be more to it than just an MP3 player, photo, video and other standard application device... I mean, where were the add-ons (like games) and the like... Well, I ended up doing some Googling and you can probably guess what happened next - I downloaded a hack for the ipod so we could get some of the really cool applications for it. It took about an hour to read up on the process, less than 2 minutes to apply the software and viola - we have an ipod touch that now has games like solitaire and mahjong as well as a book reader with several on-line books. I thought so... Plenty of opensource applications and gadgets to really make use of the ipod. She now has 3 screens full of icons to play with.

Enjoying life and thinking about the future

We're all still enjoying the coast very much. We live about 5 minutes walk from Harris Beach and Becky and I enjoy sitting on the bluff overlooking the ocean in the mornings. After the girls go to school we sometimes get a cup of coffee and park in the scenic area and talk about things.

Even when the weather is not all that cooperative, it is very beautiful here. I don't remember the coast being so wonderful in Northern California. Seems there was always the smell of dead fish or something in the air. Here there doesn't seem to be any foul oder at all here. I'm not sure if that means that I am slowly loosing my sense of smell or if there's some other explanation...

We've done a lot of exploring here. There is the Chetco, Winchuck, Smith and Pistol rivers within just a short drive of where we live. We've scouted many miles up the Chetco river already looking at the possibility of doing a multi-day canoe/camping trip from way up in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area down to the beautiful campgrounds that are right along the river's edge. It would be fun to spend the first night on a sandy bar in the middle of the river and then spend the next night or two in the campgrounds where they have hot running water and flush toilets. We're thinking of an annual river trip for close friends and family. Something similar to the annual trips that we used to take down the Eel River in Northern California every year - hopefully we'll have the opportunity to do both this year.

With my family only a few hours away, we've been lucky enough to have my mom stop by and see us twice already since we have arrived here. The girls are currently spending the weekend at my parents house and we're planning a trip down to see them and spend Mother's day with the rest of the family before heading back home with the girls.

Last night was very pleasant. Becky and I had our home all to ourselves and stayed up late talking about the things what we want to accomplish now that we have basically settled on an area to live for the foreseeable future. We discovered that it is very difficult to explain to most people what it is that we are doing. Most think that we're trying to break away completely from society and live like some kind of primitive tribe out in the middle of nowhere. Neither of us want to be disconnected from the rest of the world and it's people - if anything I would say that people are one of the main enjoyments we both get from life. How to explain what it is that we want from life and how we want to live it causes most people to put us into some category that they already think they understand. They think of a weird cult or some kind of religious group or a hippie commune or something like that. I guess we're horrible at explaining what it is that we want from life.

We want to be free from the ups and downs of the economy. Sheltered from the scarcity of resources that have been looming on the horizon for many generations now. There is no question that sometime in our lifetime we're going to see a very different socioeconomic situation. We're thinking ahead - thinking "green" and pulling our own weight as best as we possibly can given our financial situation. If things should get tough for everyone, we'll at least be somewhat sheltered from the financial side of things. We're already 100% solar powered and have the luxury of not worrying about the price of electricity. We're working on not having to think about the price of gas or groceries too, but that will take a bit more time to accomplish while keeping our current lifestyle unchanged...