The tropics of Oregon

Around 6:00am, an alarm went off.  Viola turned it off and I went back to sleep.  At 6:30, it went off again and she turned it off again.  I asked her if she was getting up or what and she said she didn’t know how to turn it off.  I asked her to either get up and unplug the damn thing.  She didn’t seem to have any consideration for others.  I dunno.

When I finally got up, I was stunned to see about four or five more inches of snow outside.  I don’t know why I was so stunned, it seems to be an ongoing theme.  It was very pretty though.

Well, I listed my ASUS computer on eBay last week and it sold last night.  I brought it along all packed up and ready to go, so I dropped it off at the Seaside Post Office this morning and then headed for the beach again.

Wow, this is one wild scene man.  The high white caps of the surf rolling into the snowy beach.  Lots more snow than last night, it was hard to walk.  Lots of locals were out this morning to see this oddity, some of them with kids who had never seen snow before.  As I walked toward the water, there was a group of four or five teens I guess and as I walked by I could smell pot, they asked me if I wanted a hit.  “No thanks” said I, but thought how kind of them to ask.  Geez, what is this world coming to?  I walked around a bit and got some neat pictures of people and their kids playing in the snow, building snowmen and sledding down the dunes.

I got on the road again and headed south.  It took me three hours to go 50 miles.  Wow.  The prospects of making it to the Redwoods Hostel in California weren’t good.  But I kept going.  About half way down Oregon, the snow started letting up and the roads started to clear, so I was able to get some speed on.

As I hugged the coast all the way down, many spectacular views of gorgeous craggy, rocky Oregon coast passed me by.  That was tough, I wanted to stop for some hiking.  I got a little farther south and there were more and more small beach towns with old 50’s motels and the trees were changing and it was a little foggy up ahead.  As it warmed up to about 40, I felt like I was in the tropics.  The tropics of Oregon as it were.

I finally made it to California, yea…  I then arrived at what appeared to be a customs booth.  Agriculture inspection station it was.  California is pretty particular about what produce comes into the state I reckon.  Seems many years ago, when I lived in Florida, Florida put up similar stations at the border to prevent California oranges from coming into the state, when it was well known that year that California oranges were carrying some disease, I forgot the name.  California sued Florida and a federal judge ruled that Florida had to remove the stations and in came the California oranges which then infected the entire Florida orange crop for that year.  Billions lost.  And now California has the same stations.  Hmph.  California might be an OK place if it wasn’t for all the, you know… Californians.

I passed through Crescent City, it’s quite dark dark at this hour and the road is going up.  I’m in the Redwood National & State Park and in my headlights, I can see the biggest tree trunks I’ve ever seen, right at the road’s edge.  I can’t see much else though.  So, I’ll probably go back up that road tomorrow in the day so I can see it.  I need to get some groceries in Crescent City as well as some Internet.  I arrived at the hostel at 8:00pm and got checked in.  This place is very neat.  It’s in the woods and has a view of the ocean.  It’s a big old green and white house on a hill, it’s an historic landmark, quite nice actually.

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