Monday, August 25, 2008

Camping and other updates

Like Dust, I've jumped off the bridge. As most of everyone knows by now, I'm on Facebook. Please bare with me while I try and figure out all that Facebook offers. I must say that I was pretty surprised to see nearly everyone I know on it. Friends in Iowa, Kansas, and Oregon are all on it. Everyone I know seems to have "jumped off the bridge."
I guess I like "user friendliness" of blogger, but Facebook offers a lot more. I particularly like the music section "social tunes." What a great way to talk to others about music and rate your albums.

In other news, I turned in my two weeks at Trillium today. It was a tough decision. I usually haven't been given much of a choice on leaving a job. Either I'm told to leave or I have to relocate. I really can't understand why some people job hop so much. So in two weeks, I'll start at Albetina Kerr as a Foster Care Case Manager----wow.

Last weekend was our big camping trip with our home group from church. I guess everyone knows by now, that I'm not a big camper. In fact, my camping trip with Dash, Dust, Dar, and A Forest was my first camping trip. This last camping trip had it's ups and downs however.
First off, the camp site was a 1/4 of a mile away from the cars. I arrived late when it was dark and wandered through the woods for a while until I found it. Anyway, being far from the car made dragging the gear a real pain.
My second problem was that the site had a no camp fire sign. How can you camp without a camp fire?
For Wah-Wah's early birthday present, I brought her a inflatable kayak. Unfortunately, we didn't have a pump that would work on it (one minor mistake). Luckily, Wah-Wah found a guy with the kind of pump we needed and we were able to inflate the kayak.
Here's some pictures of our camping weekend:



This was our camp site at Oxbow Park, just 15 minutes outside of Portland. The bigger tent on the right is ours. It was suppose to be a 4 person tent, but it was awfully tight. I guess it could hold 4 really small people or 4 regular people if they slept on top of each other.
Here is a picture of the Sandy River where we camped at. I think Wah-Wah took this picture since no one else was up this early. I spent Saturday afternoon just laying and relaxing in the river. Sure it was cold, but very refreshing.
Here are some of our fellow campers playing in the river.


Here's Wah-Wah bringing in her kayak after it's maiden voyage down the river. She took Nibbles down the river about a 1/4 of a mile. Apparently Nibbles hated it and screamed the whole time. I guess the kids will sit out on our next kayak adventure. We had to carry that kayak all the way back to the campsite so others could use it. Without a pump, we couldn't deflate it to carry it. I got to go down the river finally at the end of the day.


After getting back from camping, I went to go see Neil Halstead at the Doug Fir. Neil is a great singer song writer whose warm (yet often humorous lyrics) sounded nicely in the "log cabin" atmosphere of the Doug Fir. Neil's sound was pretty stripped down to just the basics. He even played a few tunes from his band- Mojave 3.





5 comments:

Portland wawa said...

Yes, the trip had its ups and downs. The hike out got me in really good shape, hiking our gear in and back, but definitely a down. I got to go for my run every morning in a beautiful forest, definitely an up. The kids had no running water to wash hands before eating so they both got intestinal problems yesterday, a big down. But the kayaking was a big up. Overall, I like camping. I just need to find a way to wash the kids hands.

shakedust said...

I've noticed that you've been going wild on the social tunes. I would expect no less. :)

So, you're switching jobs? You'll have to keep us updated on how that goes for you.

Four normal people on top of each other? That's a funny thought. Yeah, tent manufacturers must assume that most campers want to cram into the tent as tightly as possible.

T said...

Congrats on the new job. The camping trip sounds like an adventure! I'm with you--camping w/o a fire? What's up with that?! :)

GoldenSunrise said...

I hope you enjoy your new job. Camping does have its ups and downs. It is a lot of hard work.

Kim Gail said...

Enjoyed sights from your last camping trip… they are so refreshing.