PCH Day Two
November 22, 2010 11:44 pm [No Comments]
You do know that PCH stands for Pacific Coast Highway, right? Just so we’re clear.
Today is actually Day Three, but due to unforeseen connectivity problems last night I didn’t get to write about Day Two. Now we’re settled down for the night on Day Three and I have Wifi and a few minutes to write, so I will!
Today was kind of grueling. We did a lot of driving but we saw a ton of great stuff along the way. We woke up early and got a pretty early start. Neither of us were very hungry so we just hit the road. Our big goal for the day was to see the Seal Caves in Florence, so we just started heading that way.
First up, we came across a really nice looking lighthouse at Yaquina head. Our annual national park pass saved us the $7 entry fee (score!) and we decided to bypass the tourist info center and just go straight to the lighthouse. We ended up being the only ones there and got to wander around in peace and silence for about half hour. Mainly, it was a lighthouse, but I had a good time reading about the family that used to live there full time in the late 19th Century. It’s not very long ago that plucking dead people out of the sea was a common occurrence. Maybe it still is.
One of the things that struck me about the lighthouse was the hugely corroded metal finishings around the edges of the house itself. It looked like it may have been copper, and if so, it must have been ancient. Looked as green as the Statue of Liberty.
After leaving the lighthouse we got hungry and Courtney found a nice cafe in our guidebook a few towns down the road. We had a great breakfast and the best scones either of us have ever eaten at Cafe’ Stephanie in the Nye Beach area of Newport, OR. A very inviting and friendly little hole in the wall.
Speaking of guide books, Moon guides have been doing us great service and are highly recommended.
After breakfast we burned many miles to get to Seal Caves in Florence. This is another one I will need to write more about later. the basic gist of it is that you go through a gift shop, walk down a 400 yard path to an elevator buried in the rock, take it down 200 feet and you find yourself in the largest natural sea cave in the world watching sea lions drift in and out calling out to their mates. It’s fucking amazing.
Seal Caves done, we made many more miles and eventually stopped at Don’s Main Street Restaurant in Reedsport, OR for some awesome sandwiches and pie, thanks again to Moon guides and kept on.
Pretty soon we had hit Oregon Sand Dunes state park, or something of the sort. Eventually, the gorgeous coastline of Oregon gives way to giant sand dunes and they are just as spectacular. Even more wonderful is that many areas allow off roading and other 4×4 delights.
After seeing several 4×4 trucks up on the dunes, and seeing a tourist information map showing entry points, I convinced Courtney, must against her better judgement, to go do a little 4x4ing. We found a suitable entry point, hit the gas and promptly felt like we were going to get instantly stuck. I did a quick U-turn and with my sense of adventure (and manhood) feeling much lessened, headed back to the main roads. No worries though, I would get my fill of off roading on Day Three.
One of the notes I made for myself along the way was “Rain, rain, rain.” Not more more to say than that. It has rained basically the whole way. Sometimes hard, sometimes soft, nearly always constant. We’ve been lucky so far in that every time we have stopped to do something outdoors it has not been bad at all.
In Crescent City we stopped at Walmart to pick some cheap binoculars. I should note that so far we’ve stopped at two Walmarts and both have been nicer than more department stores I’ve been to. The one near our house in Renton is a shithole of epic proportions.
Our destination for the night was originally Eureka, but we decided that driving in the dark we would miss too much if we pressed on, so in Crescent City we called the Ravenwood Motel in Klamath, which came highly recommend and booked a stay. Gary recommended we eat in Crescent City since “everything in Klamath is closed”, so we stopped at Pizza King for some good pizza and plenty of local weirdo drama.
Finally, we pressed on to Klamath, found our room at the Ravenwood and called it a night. We were both asleep by 10 so we could be up by 7 for… Day Three.
PCH Day One
November 21, 2010 8:20 am [1 Comment]
Not much time to write as we’re getting ready to start day two, but I wanted to get my thoughts down so I can expand on this later.
We’re roadtripping down the Pacific Coast Highway from Seattle to San Diego and back. We don’t have much of a plan except to “See it all”, so that’s what we are doing.
Yesterday, Day One, we got up early(ish) packed the new Explorer full of roadtrip stuff and headed out. Our first destination was Astoria, OR and we made pretty good time there. Stopped in some small town in WA for a new sleeping bag and after driving in rain most of the way we hit Astoria around noon.
We stopped at the Wet Dog Cafe in Astoria for lunch and a tiny beer sample, crossed the Astoria bridge and back cause it looked cool, went and saw the house from Goonies and then hit the road.
Next up was Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach which was awesome. Just as we came around the curve for the town you could see this giant mountain of a rock looming from the ocean.
After an hour or two wandering the tidal pools around Haystack we jumped back in the car and made way for Tillamook to visit the factory where all our cheese and butter comes from. The factory was pretty awesome. One of the lines was pumping out 40 lb blocks of cheddar and it was pretty cool to watch all the industrial automation going on. We also picked up some fresh snacks and got to try “squeeky cheese” which is fresh cheese curds that for some reason squeek against your teeth when you chew them. It’s weird.
From Tillamook our goal was to head for Florence, where is where we are going to see some seals that live in caves, but first we decided to stop for dinner in Pacific City. We ended up at the Pelican Pub and Brewery which I will later write an entire book about. After that we were a little too tired and drunk to keep on to Florence. We ended up stopping at a really nice motel in Lincoln City, the Coho. We got a wide open ocean view and a great room for $100. This morning we got up early to get moving again and got to watch the moon, colored red by the clouds, set over the ocean.
Pictures and more words to come!
In which a blag.
November 14, 2010 10:07 am [No Comments]
This weekend has been super fun, and we’ve got fun stuff coming up and as always there’s been a ton of fun stuff in the recent past so I thought I’d write!
First up, brewery news. I’m super lazy and haven’t done shit. After the first mess of a brew I decided to get new valves, replacing the solenoids with ball valves. I’ve had the valves on my desk for like 2 months now and I got the cable I needed about 3 weeks ago and I just can’t find the energy to wire it all up. There’s so many little tiny wires to connect! Hopefully I get over the lazy soon, cause that brewery deserves to be used!
In electronics news, my BTPD kits finally sold out and I have been working on a new version. I ordered some LED modules from a company in China that I originally found on eBay and I am waiting for them to show up. They were way, way cheaper than Digikey, so if they turn out to be what I want and they actually work I will be able to drop the price on the kit quite a bit. I’m also redesigning it to be mostly surface mount and am going to try my hand at the reflow toaster method of surface mount soldering. My goal is to be able to do all the surface mount work in batches and then sell the boards as a “kit” which just means they need to solder on the LED modules and the headers or as a complete board for just a little more.
Also in electronics, I am checking out the ATmega32U4 which is a pretty badass little AVR. It’s a 32k mega with a USB controller built in. There’s an open source USB library for it so I bought a breakout board to play around with it. I’m also awaiting delivery on a Leaf Labs Maple, which is what I think is going to become my MCU platform of choice. The Maple uses a ST Micro STM32 MCU which is a SUPER badass little chip. 72MHz, DMA, tons of IO, tons and tons of peripherals including USB and the little things are only a few bucks. I think I’ll end up designing a little breakout board for them and doing more experimentation once I play with the Maple some.
So, I mentioned this weekend, which has been great. It’s been great because A Perfect Circle is playing three nights in Seattle, one night for each of their studio albums. We bought VIP tickets at the Showbox for the “Mer de Noms” night and the “Thirteenth Step” night. Those were Friday and Saturday and they were just great, great, great. I guess I don’t have much else to say about it. The music was awesome, the Showbox was awesome (as usual) and we just had a lot of fun.
One other awesome thing is that we finally decided to replace the slowly dying Explorer… with an Explorer! We have a road trip coming up and we were stressing over which car to take. My car was in the best shape but if we ran into any weather it would be a death trap. The Explorer would be ideal but it was on it’s last legs and might not survive the trip. So, last Sunday we decided to go look at a few new Explorers for the hell of it. We went to Kirkland Ford first cause they had advertised a 2007 that sounded perfect. When we got there they couldn’t find it so they showed us a brand new one but it was too expensive. Nice though. Then we ended up at Sound Ford of Renton cause they had a 2010 with 31k miles (clearly a fleet vehicle) that also sounded perfect.
I’m going to put up another post in a few days detailing my experience with Sound Ford of Renton so I’ll skip that for now. Suffice to say we found a perfect Explorer and bought it! It’s now sitting happily in the driveway on it’s new tires we picked up yesterday and is ready to ferry us to many fun new adventures. It’s a 2010 Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer Edition 4WD with a pretty sweet Black Pearl Slate (or something) and Tan’ish paint job and interior. It also has Sync, so we finally have a vehicle we can listen to all our music on. The music thing has been a major source of contention and it’s really nice to have.
In the process we traded in the old Explorer and Courtney’s Grand Am, so now the driveway seems much less crowded!
So that’s it for car news… what else?! We have an awesome vacation coming up but I will talk about that HIT BY HIT AS IT HAPPENS and afterwards, so I can’t say much there…
I think that’s all for now!