Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Portland

We’ve got potato packets sizzling on our camp fire now and I’m recounting the day’s events.  I slept incredibly well last night after the hot springs.  In fact I continued to be somewhat sleepy all day today form the heat of the sun.  After packing up camp and breakfast this mornig, we drove up to Portland.  It’s a beautifl city surrounded by verdant carpets of trees and hills. Our destination was a used outdoor gear shop where we all filled in our inventory with useful stuff.  The two men behind the counter were to helpful and showed us some great camping areas that we could go to outside of Portland.  I could feel the group become cranky and irritated – which oculd only mean on ething, we were hungry!  In the Safeway parkinglot, we wused a single burner and heated a pot of espresso for iced coffee, made sandwiches and eveggie bacon wraps and felt much better.  Food is so important for a group morale.  It’s probably the equivalent of new memoreis as far as importance.  So we’rve made it to a campground, nothing special but feel good and are ready to plan our day for tomorrow and used our coal-cooked red potatos in the morning.
Made an amazing scramble this morning with coal-raostse potatos, onions, cheese, Egg.  We’re so good at breakfast.  After refueling and stocking up on water the destination became Mr. Rainier through a beautiful country road lined with grass pine trees ohorses small houses blue skies.  The state signs here have a silhouette of george Washington on them.  The park ranger informed us that camping season in the park actually insn’t open for another 15 days, so we took a back road.  Cole drove us up a bump dirt road littered with pot holes.  He’s developed such a relationship with his bus that he makes thi s a pretty smooth ride.  Our campsite is a pull of f rigt next to a waterfall.  It’s moving tso fast that it creates a breeze and cleans the already fresh air.  This place is stunning – deep moss everywhere covering logs covering white moving rivers, mountain aquafers leaking out the side of the earth, meandering trails leading to nothing, dim forest light, no mosquitos, crisp cold air.  The night had a feeling of magi to it so Rachel and I beame forest witches, creating a fire, naming certain plants mystical names like wizards beard and land-growing eaa lettuce.  The men were the worlocks and collected wood for us, helong us with our witch tastks.  We made pasta, fire raosted hot dogs, s’mores.  Carbs are good.  Tom played banjo which matches the woods surprisingly well, adding a home quality, making a memory feel somehow, deeper. 

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