Category Archives: Roadtrips

A trip down to California

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Friday, 23-June-2023, through Sunday, 25-June-2023


The Summer Solstice behind me, I drove South.

Green Lakes, and its barrier mountains, receded behind me. Shasta loomed ahead, then passed beside me. Huge spillways loomed around me, and I ate a burrito as I entered Sacramento itself.

The drive was long, but I enjoyed it and appreciated the stillness and solitude. I continued my mental wanderings from my earlier backpacking trip, and took notes (speech to text, of course) as insights popped up.

It was lovely – I’ve learned to appreciate, and even seek out, long drives in the past few years. They’re a form of meditation for me, and they keep my hands busy while allowing my brain to wander… forcing it to wander, in essence, since I don’t have the limitless distractions that I have available at home.




I arrived in the evening, after being gifted a stunning sunset and equally stunning views of Shasta. We caught up, relaxed, and frankly headed to bed earlier than I normally would… but later than Mike and Michelle probably would have liked – impact of having a young one around.


The next morning we hit up an excellent brunch spot that Mike had recommended the last time I was down, and then kicked around town on the bikes – all four of us, excitingly, as this was James’ first chance to ride in his baby carrier, attached to Michelle’s bike!

We rode, checked on the setup frequently, and played around. We relaxed, flew the drone a bit, and enjoyed the sun and surprisingly moderate weather. In short – it was chill, and I adored it.



Sunday was my driving day… but not before another bike ride to breakfast where I was introduced to Acai bowls – for the first time, if you can believe it! I don’t know how I’ve lived in Portland so long and not tried them before… but damn if they weren’t amazing! Crunchy, fruity… all the good things!

Then the sadness of departure, and another gloriously long and meditative drive home – with my traditional stop at In n’ Out for dinner, of course. A drone flight or two, a leg stretch, and I was home before I knew it.

My friends come to visit – A day at the coast!

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Saturday and Sunday, 20-May-2023 and 21-May-2023

Ohh man… it’s been a while since I’ve gotten to hang out with Dave! I think the last time was when I was still living in Hood River… and all I really remember was that we had a fire on the porch, wrapped Dave up in a sheepskin rug, and had him pose with a dwarven sword and a battle axe.

Those’re the kind of things we remember.

Anyways, Dave and his wife Lakay came to visit in May!


Sunday, 21-May-2023

Twilight isn’t an ocean movie… but it did have a scene shot at Ecola Beach (supposedly), so there we found our destination for the day!

Breakfast was found… out? Somewhere? Huh. I can’t actually quite recall what we did for breakfast… maybe we did something quick at home? Interesting. We did something, at least, I’m pretty sure.

Anyways we went to the beach. Heck yeah!


We started the day off at Cannon, since that’s an absolutely eponymous Oregon landmark. Haystack rock, yo!

We walked, I flew the drone a safe distance from the birdys, we chatted, and we found a whole slew of gorgeous roses floating in the surf. I rocked the photography, Lakay got to dip her toes in a new Ocean, and it was an amazing adventure.



It even included crepes!




From Cannon, we headed to Ecola – supposedly the spot where they shot a few scenes from Twilight, but we weren’t quite sure… a few movie details didn’t quite add up, but you know what? Who cares – we had a blast, we got to explore and experience a glorious day… what more could you want?




After the adventures, we did a fun light dinner with Jess, before enjoying our last few hours before having to head back to the airport for a Sunday-night red-eye. We caught up, ate great food, and I couldn’t have been more thankful for the excellent weekend.

My friends come to visit – A drive around Mt. Hood

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Saturday and Sunday, 20-May-2023 and 21-May-2023

Ohh man… it’s been a while since I’ve gotten to hang out with Dave! I think the last time was when I was still living in Hood River… and all I really remember was that we had a fire on the porch, wrapped Dave up in a sheepskin rug, and had him pose with a dwarven sword and a battle axe.

Those’re the kind of things we remember.

Anyways, Dave and his wife Lakay came to visit in May!


Saturday, 20-May-2023

Technically this story begins on Friday night… but the summary for Friday was “Dave and Lakay got into the airport, we drove home, hung out for a bit, and then fell asleep.” Simple and easy.

The real adventure begins on Saturday morning.

Our goal for this visit was to… well, visit! But every good visit needs a framework, and we settled in on doing something I haven’t really done before – visiting spots from a movie! Lakay is pretty into Twilight, and since it was filmed in Oregon and Washington we had an awesome opportunity to check out a few spots from the movies. The main town of Forks, up in Washington, was a bit out of reach for a weekend trip… but thankfully a few spots were nice and nearby.

Our plan for the day was simple and elegant: Relaxed morning, movie location lunch, then do a clockwise tour around Mt. Hood!

Breakfast was a nice meal at home, followed by some catching up and prepping for the days adventures ahead.

Then, our first stop on the tour – The Carver Cafe! Apparently it was a whole scene in the movie, and the super neat part was that we got seated exactly where the main actors sat in that scene!



From there, the legendary Multnomah Falls! Kinda interestingly, I ran into a coworker there who owns property in Oklahoma near Dave and Lakay… kinda weird, but definitely cool!



Then, a quick stop for views of Hood, a drone flight or two, and a it of poking around the White River sno-park.



Finally, our ultimate destination of the tour – The Timberline Lodge! We got to play on the snow a bit, had an amazing dinner, and then got the best present of all from Mother Nature… a full lightening storm, shattering the sky off to the East of the lodge!



I can’t overstate how cool the storm was – Lightening is much more rare in Oregon than it is in a lot of other spots I’ve lived, so in and of itself it was a treat… but the storm was limited to one specific cloud formation off on the horizon, which meant we could easily just gaze over at it and appreciate the cloud-to-cloud bolts, and knew when to expect the air-to-ground strikes.

We seriously just parked by an overlook, and sat on the hood watching the storm. I don’t know how long we stayed out, but it was at least an hour or so until the sky got dark and the storm finally receded into the distance.

<I didn’t get any pictures of this… forgive me, but my photography-fu isn’t quite strong enough to capture lightening yet>

A seriously good end to an excellent round-the-mountain adventure.