Category: Road Stories

Categories
Faith Florida Road Stories

Funny How Things Work Out Sometimes – Long Key State Park

2016-01-04 17.23.41We weren’t even supposed to be at Long Key State Park. After the Dry Tortugas, we originally had planned to stay at Bahia Honda for another five days to decompress. We knew we’d need to catch up on work and school and little to no driving sounded great. However, we found an open spot at Long Key State Park that fit our dates, wasn’t that much farther of a drive, and we had heard good things from other traveling friends so we switched up our plans because we like new places.

I’m so glad we did.

Sam was grilling outside at the picnic table our first night, and as a woman was walking up and down the beach she eventually approached him with a question. She had seen our website on the back of the Airstream, looked up the blog and realized that we were also a traveling family and desperately needed advice.

After that first meeting we hit it off. The Siminoff family have two kids that are right around our kids’ ages, had been on the road in their truck camper only a few months into their year long sabbatical and were really struggling with schedules, motivating their kids, and finding a balance. Ellen fired off question after question after question while the kids happily played in the bedroom due to the pouring rain outside.

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We loved talking with them. I can’t say we got a whole lot of school or work done those two days, but we definitely made some life long friends. We invited them over for a Family Home Evening where Sam gave a lesson on the prophet Noah and Ellen taught us how to make Key Lime Pie. Afterward the kids played Castle Panic, and the adults sat in the bedroom alternating discussions between theology (we are LDS, they are Jewish) and full-time family travel until far too late into the night.

You know when you meet someone and you just click? It was like that. Our time together was far too short, but we made the most of it.

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The spin-off from this meeting happened a few weeks later when Ellen and I were texting about their upcoming plans to fly overseas and tour New Zealand and Australia before finishing the United States. Back in college Sam and I participated in a New Zealand study abroad with the Recreation Management program and we were hosted by the most amazing elderly couple whom we’ve kept in close contact with over the last twelve years. Just recently the wife died, and Dave, our host dad, has been a bit lonely. He loves to travel, having taking us touring the South Island during our studies, and we knew he’d have great advice for the Siminoffs.

Before I knew it, Dave had offered to pick them up at the airport, and TOUR them around in his eight passenger van! I was so happy for all of them! If we couldn’t visit New Zealand and hang out with Dave, at least our friends could. Their meeting came a great time for both parties and from what I’ve heard everything is going swimmingly.

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Everyone once in awhile we receive affirmation that we are where God intends us to be. Its no secret we feel led to travel. I’m sure there are many reasons including personal growth, education, and opportunities to spend time together as a family. Most importantly the people we meet. When life and events come together so perfectly, I can’t help but be amazed at the love and understanding God has for our lives.

We love all the friends we’ve met along our journey and continue to be inspired and encouraged by everyone we meet!

Categories
Oregon Road Stories

Road Story – Garbage in Bend, OR

After we left Crater Lake, we headed to Bend. We wanted to visit a few things in the area and it was a good place to spend the weekend and attend church. We had heard from some fellow travelers about a boondocking spot on China Hat Road, just south of Bend. It sounded like a great location, so we headed there to check it out.

We found several roads that led off into the trees just inside the forest boundary. We pulled off to the side near one, and unloaded our bikes. We’ve learned that scoping out boondocking spots BEFORE driving into them is a good idea. Not only a time-saver, it can often avoid getting seriously stuck on a bad road, stuck in a tight spot, or executing a long, painful back-out. Jess and I took off in different directions on bikes, and ended up finding a great little spot under some trees, with only one slightly worrisome section of road to navigate.

We backed into the spot, and immediately fell in love with the spot. Not only was there some trees right next to us for the hammock, we had NO neighbors. I had expected lots of folks out for the holiday weekend, but we were the only campers there. We had a great time in and around bed. Church was only 5 minutes away, which is particularly amazing for a boondocking spot.
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One thing that we did notice is that there was way more garbage about then we usually find in a national forest. During one afternoon there, I grabbed some garbage bags and picked up garbage with the kids. We picked up cans, bottles, cigarrette buts, metal scraps, and even a cat scratching post. In all, we picked up about 6 or 7 small garbage bags of trash.

We later learned that our boondocking spot was a popular place for homeless folks to live. Other travelers had left after one night due to the ambiance of the neighborhood and lots of trash had been a constant problem. For the period just prior to our arrival, the National Forest had been closed for an Invasive Species Eradication. The closure must have cleared out that section, and nobody had returned at the time of our visit. As it was, we rather enjoyed our stay.

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Being a boondocking spot, there was no trash cans or dumpsters nearby, so we hauled the garbage into Bend on our way out. We looked for some place to throw it away as we ran our errands. Every dumpster we found had a warning sign that unauthorized use would be prosecuted. Not wanting to complicate our day, we kept looking. Our final errand was to fill the gas tank before our drive. I was pondering our situation when I spotted a cop parked in the parking lot nearby.

I pulled up alongside the cop and rolled down the window. After explaining our predicament, we got a smile in return. “You are clearly doing more good than harm here, ” he said. He glanced at his laptop. “There are 7 officers in the city right now, and none of us would cite you for dumping that trash in someone else’s dumpster.”

Well, Thank You Officer. We drove by the nearest garbage can on the way out of town. We ignored the sign, opened the gate, and unloaded our pile of garbage from the back of the truck. It was quite refreshing to find someone understanding and willing to help us remove garbage from the forest, even if it was technically ‘against the rules.’

It felt good to do a little cleaning during a visit to a National Forest. Unfortunately, on a stop at the same spot a few months later, we discovered plenty more garbage that had accumulated. We didn’t get a chance to clean much that visit, as we were evicted by Forest Rangers. But that is a different story!

Categories
Daily Life Road Stories

Road Story: Emergency Rations, Rain, and… Raccoons!?!

We recently experienced a massive wandering failure. I pray that sharing it will somehow prevent something this awful from ever happening again.

It had been raining for the last week or two, and we had a clear, sunny day. I decided it was a perfect time to dry out (and clean out) the back of the truck. Our truck functions as a garage for us. I have a locking, roll top cover that keeps the rain off, and we have normal garage stuff in there: Chairs, bbq, generator, etc.

Our site at Cape Disappointment State Park had some room to empty the entire bed of the truck. I laid the damp stuff out to dry and collected things that we no longer needed. After a leisurely stop at the beach, I loaded stuff back into the truck. We decided to rearrange a few things. In particular, I moved our box full of emergency freeze dried food to the back, to make it easier to access pending the purchase of an appropriately sized tub. As it was going to rain the next day (again…) I headed out before bed and pulled in the awnings and put everything away.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself when I stepped outside the following morning, having prepared for rain so well the night before. It had been drizzling, and everything was pretty wet. I looked around, planning what I needed to do to hitch up and drive, as we were moving today. As I approached the truck, I realized with a bit of horror that I had not completely closed the roll-top cover, leaving a section of the bed exposed. Smugness dashed, I looked in the back of the truck to evaluate how wet things were. I was both emotionally and physically unprepared for the results.

Stuff was wet all right, but the condition of the truck was way worse. Remember the freeze dried emergency food I moved? The box had been thoroughly soaked by the rain.

AND TORN APART BY RACCOONS.

I suddenly realized with horror that the powdery stuff I had seen all over the truck was not litter-fall from the trees, but the powdered contents of our emergency freeze dried food. Every single vacuum-packed bag had been extracted from the now obliterated box and ripped open. The contents were strewn all over the back of the truck.

Imagine for a moment what eating un-rehydrated freeze dried food would do to your digestive system. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t kind to the racoons, who appeared to have vomited and pooped repeatedly during their freeze-dried buffet. Obviously pre-occupied with their feast, they had given little care what they soiled. They left horrific messes in my toolbag, on our outdoor mat, and all over the small tubs we have in the back of the truck.

I was too horrified to fully process the experience. Jess came out to help me clean up.

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We pulled everything out that had been, well, messed upon. Feeling grateful to have a water hookup, I attached our hose sprayer and we began washing everything off into the grass. The carnage hadn’t spread very far back into the truck, so much of the contents didn’t even need to be removed.

It took us an hour to complete the cleanup. Though all of our stuff was now wet from being washed (and being rained on…) it was now clean. We reloaded the truck and cleaned up our cleaning mess.

The rest of our day turned out great, but in comparison to our morning, just about anything would have been awesome. Lesson learned.