Jordan goes into the woods...
Well...my glorious plans of wilderness grandeur and the actualization of the mountain woman inside of me kind of petered out. We had to come back on Wednesday because of the rain. I find it very very sad when not even Oregonians can weather a torrential downpour. Anyway, so Wednesday morning it started raining at around 4 am, and by 6 am when we got up our tent was a giant puddle. I would have been ok because I have a synthetic sleeping bag, but Dan's is down and that's no good, and the other people on the trip didn't really have proper rain equipment (like, oh, water proof shoes), so I think the rest of the week would have just been miserable and we made the right decision. Rain is a real damper for morale.
Anyway, dispute the fact that the trip was thoroughly truncated, I had a lot of fun and got to experience lots of crazy new things. During the three days we managed to survive in the backcountry, I:
-licked a slug. It my tongue and made the roof of my mouth feel like a snot factory.
-went to a natural hot spring...naked. There were lots of hippie locals there. And some guy in army fatigues who enjoyed peeing of a cliff in front of everyone (in their glorious nudity).
-made RAD tacos with peach salsa. Olive oil really is a great thing to bring backpacking...exorbidant as it may seem when you are at the grocery store, everyone else will be jealous of you on the trail.
-got to play leader...and actually didn't do a bad job of it. It was kind of stressful knowing that I was the most experienced one there, and so people kind of trusted me to make decisions, but it was kind of rewarding too.
-cooked dinner in a city park in Roseburg...after dusk! Oooh, that's after park hours...we were SO walking the line between criminal behavior and legal activity.
-drove along the North Umpqua River along Highway 138...about SIX TIMES! I know everything about that area now...
-Hitch-hiked! I was in the back of a car with four kids and a dog named Booger who snapped through the window at every car coming the other direction. He left a huge slobber mark all along the window.
-fed the pigs...well, that was part of the hitch-hiking adventure. We pulled off onto some dirt road and walked up to this pig pen to feed the pigs. Who would have ever expected it?
-went over under and around countless fallen logs and landslide debris. I should be a hurdler now.
-listened to Christian radio...craaaazy stuff...
Anyway, all in all it was a lot of fun. Dan's friends were interesting (it was cool being in a group that had a 6'9" guy and a 5'2" guy...) and we had fun playing Go Fish piled inside a too-tiny tent together. Good times, good times.
The only bad thing was my achilles tendon started acting up again from my hiking boots...so I guess it's a good thing we had to come back after hiking 22 miles of our 47 mile planned itinerary. My tendon feels so much better now...blah, maybe I need to get new boots.
Anyway, the area we were in was absolutely gorgeous. We were hiking up on the canyon above the North Umpqua (a river which I've rafted before...yay senior trip), which has tons of beautiful white water rapids. There were lots of cool geologic formations because I think the canyon was formed a basalt flow. There are columnar basalt formations and giant phalluses and the like. Neat. Lots of wet forests with really soft ground (think: feather mattress only it's pine needles and dirt), and lots of cool slugs and snails and fungus everywhere. Yay.
Today I went running on Leif Ericson in the rain. Lots of fun. Ten miles in the windy rain...oh I love Oregon so much.
Now I'm in the middle of making key lime pie. It's a multi-step process so I have a lot of breaks. I hope it turns out excellently...
Anyway, dispute the fact that the trip was thoroughly truncated, I had a lot of fun and got to experience lots of crazy new things. During the three days we managed to survive in the backcountry, I:
-licked a slug. It my tongue and made the roof of my mouth feel like a snot factory.
-went to a natural hot spring...naked. There were lots of hippie locals there. And some guy in army fatigues who enjoyed peeing of a cliff in front of everyone (in their glorious nudity).
-made RAD tacos with peach salsa. Olive oil really is a great thing to bring backpacking...exorbidant as it may seem when you are at the grocery store, everyone else will be jealous of you on the trail.
-got to play leader...and actually didn't do a bad job of it. It was kind of stressful knowing that I was the most experienced one there, and so people kind of trusted me to make decisions, but it was kind of rewarding too.
-cooked dinner in a city park in Roseburg...after dusk! Oooh, that's after park hours...we were SO walking the line between criminal behavior and legal activity.
-drove along the North Umpqua River along Highway 138...about SIX TIMES! I know everything about that area now...
-Hitch-hiked! I was in the back of a car with four kids and a dog named Booger who snapped through the window at every car coming the other direction. He left a huge slobber mark all along the window.
-fed the pigs...well, that was part of the hitch-hiking adventure. We pulled off onto some dirt road and walked up to this pig pen to feed the pigs. Who would have ever expected it?
-went over under and around countless fallen logs and landslide debris. I should be a hurdler now.
-listened to Christian radio...craaaazy stuff...
Anyway, all in all it was a lot of fun. Dan's friends were interesting (it was cool being in a group that had a 6'9" guy and a 5'2" guy...) and we had fun playing Go Fish piled inside a too-tiny tent together. Good times, good times.
The only bad thing was my achilles tendon started acting up again from my hiking boots...so I guess it's a good thing we had to come back after hiking 22 miles of our 47 mile planned itinerary. My tendon feels so much better now...blah, maybe I need to get new boots.
Anyway, the area we were in was absolutely gorgeous. We were hiking up on the canyon above the North Umpqua (a river which I've rafted before...yay senior trip), which has tons of beautiful white water rapids. There were lots of cool geologic formations because I think the canyon was formed a basalt flow. There are columnar basalt formations and giant phalluses and the like. Neat. Lots of wet forests with really soft ground (think: feather mattress only it's pine needles and dirt), and lots of cool slugs and snails and fungus everywhere. Yay.
Today I went running on Leif Ericson in the rain. Lots of fun. Ten miles in the windy rain...oh I love Oregon so much.
Now I'm in the middle of making key lime pie. It's a multi-step process so I have a lot of breaks. I hope it turns out excellently...