"Alex"dote: Pine Cone Alarm Clock

7:30 am.

THWACK! woke me up.

THWACK...! and again... and again...

"What IS that?" Candice asks.

"Someone is throwing things at the tent," I answer.

THWACK!

I sit up, "If it happens again, I'm going out there."

THWACK!

"Right," I put on my pants and boots, "I'm gonna go out there."

I prepare myself for the cold morning air.

THWACK!

Outside, I look around and, dotted all over the floor surrounding the tent are pine cones.


THWACK!

Another one flies down with force from the tree above the tent. I look up to see a small brownish black squirrel. He laughs.

Yep. He actually laughed.

{Note: To give you an idea of what that sounds like, imagine the love child of R2-D2 and a clacker. It sounds just like that. Weird.]

THWACK!

Another pine cone.

I grab my hatchet and hit the tree really hard. This freaks out the funny little fucker enough for
him to call it a day, and he starts to scurry down the tree trunk.

Me being me, I'm not about to let this go, and so stand at the bottom of the tree, axe in hand, waiting for breakfast.

He sees me, stops dead, and then runs across a branch and jumps into the next tree. i follow along the ground. He jumps again. I follow.

A game of cat and mouse, squirrel and man style ensues until he eventually finds a way to a tree that i can't follow, proceeding to sit there and laugh.

I make us a brew and get back into the tent to recount the story to Candice whilst we snuggle to keep warm. We then had to listen to the squirrels scurrying around, trying to get laid in the early morning light. Lovely.

From Washington to Glacier

On the morning of the 23rd day of our trip we wake up in Idaho to a squirrel chucking pine cones at our tent. It's 30 degrees outside so Alex waits for a few more to hit before he goes to attack the squirrel. When he gets back to the tent he's freezing and I'm freezing so we do the best thing you can do in a tent to get it warm.
I fall asleep again and Alex goes out into the cold.

When I get out of the tent Alex asks, "So, what's for breakfast?"

"I thought you already ate."

"Well I did, but I'm still hungry. Aren't you hungry?"

"Not really but if you're hungry I'll make something for you."

"We'll if you're not gonna eat don't worry about it."

I feel bad that he's hungry to I make aggs, bacon and fried bread for both of us. After we eat Alex says, "See I tricked you!"

"Tricked me?"

"Into eating" he says grinning.

I scowl,"Sneaky man."

"You'll be happy you did. You should eat breakfast you know."

"Why? I'm not hungry in the morning."

"Because it's the most important meal of the day; it gives you the energy to drive and pack up camp and set it up again."

"True, true crazy man. True true." I am secretly glad that he made me eat.

We pack up everything for the third day in a row and head East toward Montana. We pass the small town of Murray whose claim to fame is that a great prostitute moved there about 150 years ago, you can read about it in the book Soiled Doves. Somewhere in the mountains Idaho fades into Montana and we drop down into a huge valley with a huge river. The rock in the mountains juts up at a 40 degree angle.

We keep driving and as the landscape changes from mountains to plains, we come to the town of Crazy Horse Plains. There Alex takes over the wheel. We head north from Plains into an Indian reservation, you could guess it to be one since it's about the shittiest piece of land around. We stop in the town of Hot Springs thinking we might be able to take a bath. No such luck; Hot Springs is full of trailers, broken houses, and broken cars. We stop at the community pool and see very large women and a multitude of babies. We hightail it out of there and as we go i see a man as old as the hills watch us from his broken porch. I wonder how many years he's been sitting on that porch watching strangers pass in and out.

An hour later we're in Whitefish, the hometown of a guy we met in Crater Lake. We go to the Bulldog Bar which he told us to check out. We get 2 PBRs for $2 each. There are football games on TV, Montana just won a game 38 to 0. People are coming in and out, getting beers, eating fries and burgers and hot dogs. The huge beer fridge is covered in bumper stickers from around the area: I like Dick (an auto repair guy), You can eat our cocks (a chicken farm), plus there are a bunch of Bulldog stickers (the high school mascot). We decide to splurge and buy a basket of french fries for $2 and eat them with ketchup and mustard. They're about the best french fries I've ever had.

After beers and fries we try to find a campsite on Whitefish Lake but have no luck. We check the map and decide to go to Hungry Horse Reservoir because it's closer to Glacier and it looks like there's disbursed camping there. As we're passing back through Whitefish we stop at the bowling alley (one of the only places that sells "takeout" liquor) and buy a bottle of Montana Gold Whiskey for $12.00.

By the time we find a campsite at the reservoir its getting dark and cold. After Alex sets up the tent and while I'm making dinner and he's chopping firewood it starts to rain. We go in the tent and put towels along the edge of the tent to help keep the water out. We eat and I pass out to the pitter patter of rain on the tent. . .

Only to be woken up by AKON, NICKLEBACK and COUNTRY RADIO being blared by a family camping down the hill from us. I try to ignore it and sleep off and on until they turn it off at 4:30 in the morning.

"Alex"dote: Candice-isms

Candice turns round in her seat to the hamster in the footwell behind her, "Pebble, we're at the Columbia River Gorge! It's a bigillion hamsters wide!"

Later she says, "Today I thought I was going to stay in Oregon, but instead I get to go into a new state...! ...And, it's only gonna cost 75 cents to go across the Bridge Of Gods!"

[Note: In fact the old man at the forestry information desk hadn't travelled across the bridge in quite a while..., it ended up costing a dollar!]

"Alex"dote: Traveling Writers and Photographers

Whilst I'm driving through the forest to Bagby Springs, on a one way road way too fast, Candice turns to me and says, "We're writers and photographers!"

"Traveling writers and photographers," I add.

"I always wanted to be a traveling writer!" she grins.

"And I always wanted to be a traveling photographer. Worked out nicely then, didn't it?!"

Bagby Hot Springs

On the second day we were at Umpqua Hot Springs, the naked teacher told us about some great hot springs in Northern Oregon; "The hot springs 're in tubs that they're carved outta Redwood trees" he said, "they're called Bagby Hot Springs".

While waiting for money to come through in Oregon we remembered these springs, "Why don't we go there tomorrow? That'll take a day" Alex says to me. Excited to go to a new place I say, "That sounds awesome!"

In the morning we leave our tent and its contents behind us and head southwest of Mt. Hood to Bagby. Alex is a the wheel, which means we're going pretty fast and I'm freaking out when we get close to the edge of the road which drops 200 feet down. Somewhere we make a wrong turn and the blue dot on our iPhone GPS starts wandering south into a vast green area. We decide to keep going figuring we'll meet up with a road that goes the direction we want to go.

We hear gunshots. We see hunters standing next to a truck with a map. The road winds down a mountain and we see spelunkers wearing harnesses and hardhats with lights. They're eating sandwiches. "I bet these mountains are full of caves," I say.

"Yeah," says Alex, "I'd love to live here and explore these mountains. There's gotta be so much out here."

We come to a road that goes the right direction. After a few miles we see a sign for Bagby and turn left onto the road. It goes through the bottom of a canyon along a clear river. A guy in a red pickup points us up a road to the springs.

At the parking lot we park, pack some beer, sandwiches and water and start the hike to the springs. We go through a Redwood Forest, the small trees are covered in moss so that they look like little haunting christmas trees. The path links up to a river, "We've gotta go down there on the way back" Alex says.

We cross over the river on a one-person-wide bridge. Then we go over a hill and see the hot springs buildings. They're all made of redwood. One building has little private rooms with a tub and bench in each. There's also an open area where a naked middle-aged man is relaxing and reading a book. We decide to go back to the private room.

The tub is already full. We pop two beers and sit in the tub reading the things people've carved and written on the walls:
- If the balance of dharma is disturbed, the world will loose its peace.
- We had a treesome.
- Dave and Hannah did drugs here. (in other writing) So did Bob and Sue.
- This is a bad day.
- Everything is changing, nothing stays the same, we keep moving, where do we go?

After soaking for awhile I start to clean myself. I remember that I stole a stone from the Pumice Desert in Southern Oregon; I get it out of my bag and use it to slough off dead skin and dirt from me and Alex.

After we're clean, the tub is disgusting so we pull out the huge redwood stopper and drain the tub. Then we let in the hot spring water which is steaming hot. I go outside naked and fill a bucket with cool water from the stream. I lug back 4 bucketfuls, Alex does 3 and I rinse my hair in the last one before we put it in.

After another hour of relaxation the sun is getting low and we need to be going back. I jump in the river for a minute on the hike back and Alex explores its banks. We leave the hot springs clean, relaxed and ready to move on from Mt. Hood.

Back To Basics

Last night Alex and I had a very interesting conversation about society. We brought up some points that I thought I'd share with you.

We are living about the simplest life possible right now. The only things we need to worry about are having a place to sleep, water to drink, food to eat, being warm enough and having enough money to get us to the next place on the map. Rarely do we worry about anything because we prepare well.

Drama was a problem for us before. We don't have any other people to worry about now, which cuts down on the drama in our lives drastically. Alex can tell whether people are going to invite drama into his life and successfully avoids those people. I can't do that and always end up in the middle of other people's drama trying to mediate. This is one of the many reasons I like being with Alex, I can avoid drama.

We don't have any jobs; to many this means that we are the lowest of the low. After traveling for three weeks, I realize that I am much happier doing what I love than making money in the city. Although I don't have a job, I have a purpose for this part of my life which is to figure out what to do with the next part of my life while enjoying myself along the way.

During our conversation we talked about what life was like in San Francisco. I had an apartment in SF because I wanted to live there. In order to live in SF I had to work a job in a company that I didn't like so that I could pay for the apartment. Then, on the weekends and after work I would spend money on things to distract me from the company that I didn't like. It's a cycle of spending money to make yourself feel good. You travel 45 minutes to work so you buy yourself a coffee because it makes you feel better on the way. You go to work and after you get a drink or 2 because that makes you feel better after work. On the weekend you pay for gas so that you can get out of the city because the people are annoying you. You buy drugs to distract you from the people and the place too and end up not knowing why you're unhappy.

I don't know if this is something that was unique to me, but I don't think it is. I know plenty of women who go shopping to make themselves "feel better". Plenty of people who go to bars after work to "wind down". Plenty of people who feel the need to "escape".

During this conversation we came up with an interesting idea. We want to buy a piece of land, somewhere near a river in a forest. On that land we want to build a small, sustainable house. The house will be four rooms, with room for expansion: a living room with a fireplace/ a nook and kitchenette, a bedroom and a bathroom. On the roof will be solar panels to run our computer, recharge our phones and our cameras, etc. Outside will be a porch, a garden in which we will grow our food and herbs, a cistern and an outdoor kitchen. Eventually we'll have a study with bookshelves covering the walls and a jacuzzi outside made from rocks found in the area.

From there, we can write, photograph, take tours, even start up a hotel or hostel based around sustainability. We'd welcome anyone who wanted to help us out, give them space to set up a tent and feed them. There would be very little money to spend and most importantly, we'd be doing something that's totally interesting for both of us. We'll call it the Back to Basics Social Experiment.

The Car So Far