Kryptic’s Thoughts

It seems it always does get a bit “deep” in my vicinity!!!

Smile nice for the camera...

Show me some teeth in that smile!!

It’s been a bit snowy here lately.

Record breakingly snowy actually.

So. Taking great shots of expansive views depicting snow covered mountains and trees is out of the realm of possibility. At least, for me.

I don’t own chains.

Since looking at the “big picture” is out…

Looking “small” filled the viewfinder.

Photos dedicated to the memory of John Jasper. Godspeed…

Yesterday as I was pouring my first morning (ok, morning for me is about noon to the rest of you…) I looked out the kitchen window to see what I thought to be a small female hummingbird trying to drink for the frozen feeder. I was stunned and tried to figure out if I was sleep walking again or if this was reality… I got out an “Ughhh…” and then Rose saw it too!!! And just that quick she was gone. Rose refilled the feeder and today at about 1pm, in a balmy 45 degree temperature, she returned and drank her fill. She came back several times during the afternoon so she must have been very hungry. Hummingbirds usually go south for the winter, at least they are supposed to, so this is really unusual. I’m not sure if she just got caught off-guard by the snow storm or if she like so many other creatures of late has forgotten the migration pattern. Does anyone know if they have done studies on bird brains (I know, I know… I couldn’t resist the phrase.) to determine if they are experiencing an increase in dysfunction of normal “instinctual” activities? Similar perhaps to Alzheimers? Just wondering…

Anyway we will keep the feeder full and see if we can find a way to build a bird house that she might use. Perhaps in spring we might have baby hummers!!!

August 2 – 3, 2008 Long Beach, WA

When we went to visit Margot back in July, she invited us to go camping with them this summer. I hadn’t been camping since I was a teenager and I had never camped along the Oregon Coast. Going with experienced campers took my anxiety level down a notch or two and getting to know Margot, Eddie and Noah, Eddie’s youngest son, was an exciting prospect!! So, we agreed to meet in Long Beach, WA (funny how I always end up in a Long Beach in one state or another…) and start the camping/sightseeing trip there. All the campsites in Long Beach proper were booked full. But, just a few miles away in Illwaco, WA, there was a KOA that had openings and we all met there.
The weather was overcast, cold and damp but, the campground itself was lush and green. There was a rec room with video games and a little store, which Noah really enjoyed. The showers and restrooms were very clean and the staff was fantastic. It’s a great little hideaway that I’m sure we will use again. We got the tents up and Eddie did wonders keeping the fire going with the damp wood we purchased at the campground. Rose keep the coffee brewing and we all just chatted and caught up until bed time.

That first night we awoke to the sound of something “large” breaking twigs and branches, sniffing around the backside of the tent. I had see a very large black bear going up the side of a hill as we were driving into Long Beach, so the sound was a bit terrifying to me. After a bit of listening, Rose go brave and stuck her head outside the tent and looked. There looking back at her were a small herd of deer!! They were right beside the tent and wondering about the campsite! What a wonderful feeling to be camping and have nature come to you!

Marsh's Free Museum

The next morning after breakfast we all loaded up and went into downtown Long Beach. It’s a very tiny place but very quaint and inviting. We wondered the shops and spent some time looking around. My favorite place is “Marsh’s Free Museum”. What a trip. They have every “old-time”, this or that, you can think of adorning the walls. Carnival games from the 1900′s thru the 1950′s are displayed among stuffed deer, birds, lions, whales and coyotes. They even have versions of every mythical creature reported by those lovely sensational magazines. No aliens though… drat. I did however catch a glimps of a “Jack-a-Lope”!! It is a nick-knac shoppers paradise. Loads and loads of touristy things to catch your eye and make you wonder why. Great place to just wander, giggle and admire the antiques.

After lunch at the Long Beach Tavern, we headed out of town toward the beach. Most of you know that Rose and I are geocachers. Yes, we use billion dollar satellites to look for Tupperware hidden in the woods, quite frequently. As there are over 600,000 geocaches all over the world, there is a very good chance that where ever you are, there is a cache. As luck would have it, right there on that beach, not far from where we were walking, there is a cache. So Noah, Eddie and Margot were introduced to geocaching. Margot and Eddie thought it was fun, but Noah being 12, well, he’s twelve. If it isn’t a video game or a fart joke he really isn’t interested yet. So we made the find, took some more pictures and headed back to camp for dinner.

That night as we were dropping off to sleep, we heard the sound of soft scratching at our tent door. Chills again. Then came a soft “meow”… We opened the tent and in walked a full-grown male black cat. He walked the perimeter of the tent, sniffing everything including us then laid down in the middle of the air mattress and purred loudly soaking up as much attention as he wanted. He reached out with his paw and touched Rose’s face, just like her cat Red does, and she was completely won over. He nestled in and whenever his senses picked up sounds outside of the tent he would go on alert until he figured out what is was. The sounds turned out to be the deer returning for an encore visit. Once he everything figured out he settled in and slept peacefully. We closed up the tent and did the same for the next four hours. The next morning he followed us out to the bathrooms and disappeared around a corner, presumably, to go get breakfast. He was much to friendly and cared for to be a wild cat. We found out later in the day as we were leaving that his name was Sampson and he belonged to them. We thanked them for sharing and thanked Sampson for making us smile.

Bend, Oregon that is…
Meet Margot.

After losing contact some thirty odd years ago, these two sisters have been reunited.

The internet is a wonderful thing. A return to her maiden name, a write up in a local paper about her new business, a Google search and WALAH!! Reunion.

After the initial exchange of information and telephone numbers via email and a very long phone call, they agreed we all should meet in Bend and spend the day together. A nerve wracking (for Rose and Margot) week later we drove to Bend. We decided to meet at the restaurant across the street from the hotel on Thursday morning. All I could say when Margot got out of the car was, “Wow!”. The resemblance was uncanny. They both look very much like their dad. We sat down and they started catching up and filing each other in on the last thirty years. The conversation and laughter continued through breakfast. They were instantly comfortable with each other. If you didn’t know that it had been thirty years since they had seen each other, there would have been no way to discern it from their interaction. They fit together just like “peas and carrots”.

Margot’s husband Eddie was working, but would catch up with us “girls” in the evening; or so we thought. After breakfast we decided to go to Margot’s to see photos of her two boys, Eddie and his two sons. When we arrived, we got to meet Eddie in person! He hadn’t left for the job site yet and was blown away by the resemblance just like I was! Same body type, same movements, same facial expressions, similar voices and same whole hearted laugh. After an hour or so of interrupting Eddie’s time to work on his plans and bid proposal, we decided to head over to the “High Dessert Museum” and let Eddie get back to work.

If you ever find yourself in Bend, Oregon, make sure to visit this museum. This is the best small museum I have ever been to! It is thoughtfully designed to showcase not only the animals they care for, but to allow the natural wildlife to participate. The pathway through the museum guides your eyes to the best views of the natural of the landscape, allowing full appreciation of it. Along the path you will come across beautiful sculptures of various animal artfully placed to highlight the beauty of each location and draw you eye to a closer look at what otherwise might be missed. A stream stocked with trout meanders through the exhibits providing a bit of lush green contrast to the otherwise dry desert pine environment. The animal habitats are top quality and all of the animals I say seemed alert and engaged. A wonderful thing to see when you’ve seen so many animals at various zoos or animal parks looking miserably bored.

The living history part of the park was like walking into the past. Not one of the actors ever broke broke character. They were all very well knowledgeable and comfortable interacting with the guests. It was by far the best “living history” experience I have ever had. We stayed until the museum closed and enjoyed the place so much we hung out around the picnic tables outside of the enterance. We all enjoyed the scenery and chatted until it was time to go to Bend’s free music in the park offering at Drake Park, called “Munch ‘N Music”. There were 20 or 30 different food vendors and I swear half the town must have showed up! The place was packed! Eddie had arrived before we did with lawn chairs and had staked us out a place right up front. It was fun to watch people dancing, laughing and just enjoying the late afternoon turn into evening. We said our goodbyes and promised to keep in touch. We left Bend, Margot and Eddie exhausted and elated. We go back soon I’m sure.

Geocaching days are some of my favorite days. I am constantly amazed at all the places I get to visit pursuing this hobby of mine. It has been a great way to become familiar with a new city and its local hangouts.

Today I got to see a very “artistic” piece of art; spent time at the mall, but no money; played in a canoe; found the stairway to heaven/nowhere in a cemetery, found an unexpected little treasure and bushwhacked my way around a lake. All in all, a very enjoyable day!!

Rose and I managed to find eight geocaches today before we ran out of daylight. There were two that standout in memory. One involves my head in a canoe, the other stinging nettles and mosquitos. At the backpackers supply I looked right over the top of the cache and didn’t see it several times. On the second trip to the location Rose put her hand where I only put my eyes and came up with the cache. Yep I felt like a dumbass. Somedays are just like that. One of the next caches we did is called Genesis:Chapter 1. It’s a puzzle cache, meaning that the latitude and longitude coordinates are not directly given to you. Instead, there is some sort of puzzle for you to work out to obtain the coordinates. God knows I love puzzles and I’ve finally found a hobby that is often mentally more stimulating than it is physically challenging. Then again, sometimes caches are both.

Genesis was one of those puzzles that I couldn’t put down and couldn’t solve right away either. When I finally saw the answer staring back at me from the page, I literally slapped my forehead and said, “Duh! Shit! I’m a dumbass.” That was back in January. I put this cache down that day and didn’t think about it again until yesterday. The dumbass thing seems to have become the theme for the day, but I digress… So, anyway, we head out in the direction of the cache on this wide well maintained trail that goes around Waughop Lake. It’s 7:30 and still very light out, since the sun doesn’t go down here until about 9:30 p.m. in the summertime. The guidance arrow on the GPS unit turns and we are on another smaller but easily traversable trail. The arrow turns again and we are looking into what looks to be a deer trail going back into the brush. Ok what the hell, let’s do it. For 345 feet we scramble through tall grass, blackberry bushes, go over and under fallen trees and finally arrive at the cache site. Now, to find it. Finding a 4″ x 6″ camouflaged container in the half light caused by tree cover and dense undergrowth, is not as easy as you might think. You have to walk into stuff that s thigh high and feel around. I’m searching in one area and Rose another when I hear, “God damit!!” Expletive, expletive,expletive. I turn around and see Rose Jumping up and down with this look of extreme pain and I run over there. I look her over and I can’t see any blood, she is moving too much for anything to be twisted or broken, so I ask her what is wrong and she says, through gritted teeth the words: “Stinging Nettles.” I look at her blankly. She is still writhing in pain and all I can say is, “I don’t know what that means?!?!?” She laughs and grimaces at the same time and says, “I forgot how much this hurts!!” After a little awhile she shows me what stinging nettles look like, a good thing to know around here, and said,”I’m the dumbass that wore shorts caching in the woods!! I should know better!” Just about this time we hear the sound of two men talking and bicycles. We walk about 25 feet in the opposite direction from which we had come, and walk out onto a well used bike path about 10 feet wide. This is when I started to itch all along my left arm. I already felt like a huge dumbass for not looking closer at a map to find this trail, when I realized that it was dusk and the mosquitos were out and hungry and I was dinner. I also realized that I didn’t have any mosquito repellant. So we made it back to the Jeep and by the time we got home the welts had begun to rise on my arms and back and Rose’s ankles and calves were stinging like crazy. I hit the caladryl and she hit the showers and that is the end of our “dumbass caching” day
Perhaps we should have read “Geocaching for Dummies” a bit closer.