Tripometer – 8243
Gas Gauge – 625.372 gal
Location – South Beach State Park, Newport, OR
Lodging – $31
Cans of OFF – 4
By morning Kelly was ready to personally seek out the fog horn in the night and bring it swift cruel justice at the hands of a heavy implement. The noise cancelling headphones that she’s been wearing to sleep every night are excellent at blocking out repetitive sounds like traffic or trains, but at a frequency of every 30-40 seconds the headphones can’t block out the majority of the fog horn sound. The horn isn’t the classic fog horn we all think of either… it’s best described as the sound a swimmer hears at the beginning of a race, except it’s about 3 times longer. The duration between the horn blasts is just long enough that you can’t anticipate when it’s coming next. Kelly is referring to this as a form of aural Chinese water torture.
Knowing that we are going to be on the road for the next week driving to southern California, we took today to clean up the trailer, top off the pantry, and do the laundry.
Kelly and Ranger took the car into town this evening to go to a few little shops. Ranger had the best time this evening, though. He had his first up-close encounter with sea lions. The look on his face and the confusion apparent in his actions was enough to make several people on the pier laugh out loud. Ranger appeared to take it all in in this order: 1) They smell amazing. 2) They are HUGE. 3) They bark, only I can’t understand of word of it. 4) Holy Hell, they like to swim too!
While going to the camp showers late at night Paul noted that when the campground quiets down you can hear the sea lions in town loud and clear… Oh, and the fog horn.
Special Note: Picnic tables are hell on your posture. We have 4 folding chairs of two different types on this trip. All of them are lower than a standard chair and this makes sitting at the picnic table in a folding chair awkward. We also have a small folding table that IS the right height for a folding chair but isn’t always set up if we plan on moving sites in a day or so. Consequently, we have found ourselves using the picnic table in our campsite to do much of our day-to-day activities. The lack of a chair back on a picnic table bench is really making us miss our dinning room and office chairs at home.