Easter Weekend

Hopefully everyone had a great weekend and found all the Easter Eggs in the lawn. Otherwise you might discover a stinky surprise when you bring out the mower in a few weeks! Laura and I spent Friday evening with friends, grilling and dying Easter Eggs. We spent Saturday around the house for the most part. Laura did have some work at the lab for several hours after dinner, but otherwise we were doing things around the house. Easter was probably the highlight of our weekend, we spent five hours of it hiking in the mountains. Temperatures reached close to 70 and I was regretting wearing my jeans by the second mile of the trek. We ended up hiking to a cache and we were hurting from the hike! We hiked ten miles and luckily for us, six of those miles were in the valley, but to get to the cache we had to really climb! We hiked up to an elevation around 6,000 feet, and our valley trail was around 4,000 feet - that means we gained 1,000 feet every mile! That's hard work!

Oh! I forgot to mention the snow we encountered at the top of the mountain! You can see there were still several feet of snow on the ground and we had to cross it to get to the cache, but that wasn't so bad. We were actually a little warm from the hike and cooling our feet in the snow was a nice way to cool off. There were places where the drifts were still as high as us, but we found the low areas to cross and get through the snow without incident. You can see, in the picture, the tree Laura is crossing is covered in snow to the left, and the snow just keeps going! This was a fun first for us, we had our t-shirts on and hiked through snow drifts...

We returned home and cooked up an Easter supper before collapsing from exhaustion. It's been awhile since I was in bed by 10:00 p.m. but my eyes were heavy by 9:30 and I wasn't gonna make it much longer. This morning, Laura and I are feeling the workout, but we are glad to be back and hiking around. We have some major hikes planned for this summer so we best be in shape by the time we start those!Our trip from Fort Bragg, California to Coos Bay, Oregon was a nice drive along the coast. We stayed the night in Fort Bragg at a small local motel. The motel owner also owned the market across the street and when we checked out of the motel (at the market) we received a cup of hot cocoa and we were on our way again. Highway 1 was nice along the coast, but once it leaves the coastline and heads inland to Highway 101 it becomes a winding road! Don't get me wrong, the road along the coast is winding as well, but at least there is some ocean to look at. Once you head inland there's a lot of trees! Well, that sixty miles of winding road was starting to take a toll on my health. I haven't been car sick since I was about ten years old, but I was getting there in a quick hurry. I suspect part of the trouble was that Laura was driving the car and I had trouble anticipating the movement of the car. We pulled over for a few minutes to stretch and get some air, and take a picture.I'm smiling in the picture, but the world was spinning! I decided to drive the car the rest of the way to the highway, and that seemed to help a lot. It's been awhile since I felt that bad from riding in the car, but that was a harsh reminder that it's still possible!

It's wasn't long before we were at our first tourist trap of the day, the Chandelier Tree. We payed our $5 and drove through the middle of a tree! There wasn't anyone around so we hand plenty of time to take some pictures, but when we were leaving the lines were starting to form. We spent most of the day driving so we could spend a few hours at Klamath Overlook in Redwood National Park. We thought it might be a good place to watch for whales and spend some time relaxing. Unfortunately, we didn't see any whales but we did enjoy the cool breeze and the warm sun. The view wasn't bad either! We remembered to bring the binoculars on the trip, so we spent a lot of time watching boats on the ocean and watching the seals play in the water down below us.Our last tourist trap before reaching Coos Bay was the Paul Bunyan & Babe the Blue Ox figures. You might have seen them on tv advertising another over-sized truck with all the features imaginable. That's Laura sitting on the fence. We made it to Coos Bay, Oregon just before sundown and then headed out to see if we could find a campsite. When we showed up at the camp site there was a lake where the tent camping was supposed to be, so we went back to Coos Bay and stayed at a small motel for the night. Good thing we did - it didn't rain overnight but the humidity was 97% and everything was soaked.

Today we've already had some rain and wind, it doesn't look to improve much today either so it looks like a day spent indoors staying warm. Cool temperatures have returned and are here to stay for a few days. Until again

-=Nolan=-