We made it to the coast :)

Finally. Apparently central Oregon has been experiencing the most massive heatwave since 191? or what not.. It's about 55 right now in Lincoln City, and I'm freezing. One month will acclimatize you to extreme heat.

We were trying to imagine what the world would be like if alcohol were illegal and weed were not. If you could go to the store and buy a pack of spliffs, but you spent 50 to 80 bucks on a 5th of vodka and hid out in the woods to get drunk... Thoughts?

Esther, I will be a master of qwerty again by the end of this trip, but for now I really hate library keyboards. Grar.

So. We actually did finally have a day of rest. Made it a couple miles out of Salem and parked in a little grove off the highway. About 30 feet from traffic, on top of a 20 foot slope down to a river offshoot, just out of sight of everyone so long as we stayed sitting... which meant that we had to get up before dawn to break down the tent, then continue sleeping. We stayed there all day and spent another night. Much needed. Did laundry, then spent about 3 hours nakedly exploring the pond and its creeks while waiting for things to dry. It was lovely and completely isolated.

Miah got another flat in the night somehow. Everything's been going wrong with his bike. Went along the 22, got free coffee in Rickreal, a 'town' - dairy farm plus hardware store. The look the cashier gave us when we asked if there was a bike shop there was priceless. Had to buy water later... it's a nasty world when everyone has to pay for water. Utilities included in rent for the last 4 years has made me forget that sad fact of life. Anyways. Then Miah got another flat. BUT we still had a good day... saw interesting roadkill, a set of bleached deer? bones, a grungy little house with massive stone entrance thingies with lions on top guarding it.... silly people. Camped at the most amazing spot. There's a little town, Willamina, on the 22/18 jct, and we slept by its creek. Pretty sure it's an old lava flow. You could see the flows and fissures and bubbled out spots in the rocks... I took lots of pictures, but I forgot the camera outside AGAIN, so I'll have to wait.. again. Also there were probably 100 crawdads, and 10000 snails. Also also our tent collapsed.

Next day we ate fried chicken :) and I made a duct tape chessboard. Miah almost died of heatstroke, and I almost died of ground hornets. I'm walking through the woods looking for a nice spot to camp, find a good place, and the ground squishes down under my foot. I thought it was strange, but not alarming. Found a few other squishy spots, wandered out, and was waving Miah over when I saw the hornets angrily following me and connected the dots. Stupid stupid. Finally found a spot on the 18 near the something summit, heard scary animal noises during the night.. A big barking/huffing sound, and then later what sounded like a hyena yelping about 30 times. No idea.

Events of the night, though: We hear this strange clicking in the tent, figure it's a bug, but can't find it. Maybe an hour later it starts up again, so we get the flashlight trained on it and it's this ENORMOUS bug. Thought it was a spider at first, but it turned out to be a cricket. By enormous I mean its body was an inch long and half an inch wide, and it was 2 inches by 3 inches with legs included. Those of you with sensitive ears would have been squirming by about 3 seconds after we saw it. Thought it was funny how unconcerned we were with being visible due to the light.... we saw that thing, and our tent was mandatory glow land til it was gone. Then later we found a spider in our oatmeal... nasty bastid.

Yesterday we were setting out from cricket land when we met a bicyclist who used to be a mechanic. He was super cool. Helped us figure out what's wrong with Miah's bike - apparently the rear axle is broken, so now we're hunting for the elusive bike shop. He even followed us down to a town, charged our phone, and bought us beef jerky. He's headed to the Olympic Peninsula and Seattle, so if you meet an old bike dude named Mark tell him he's awesome.

We Followed the Salmon River for a while. It was AMAZING. Probably part of the same flow that we saw at Willamina. Under this beautiful bridge is a tiny rushing creek/river thing, with those same bubbly rocks and all, and those hex-shaped spiraly rock formations. Best part though was this one fissure that just opened up SO suddenly. Shallow creek, it gets darker, and all of a sudden the whole thing just drops down. We watched rocks go under til they disappeared, and they were still going. Also the bank was all undercut. I really wish we had scuba gear or something. Even an underwater flare to drop would have been awesome.

Made it to Lincoln City late afternoon, met a newbie biker girl, followed her to 6 dollar camping, hung out with these two awesome biker guys, nearly got into capitalism AND god arguments, etc.

AND THEN TODAY WE TOOK A HOT SHOWER. You have -no- idea how wonderful hot showers are.

Now to head south and hope that our bodies adjust quickly to the 50 degree heat difference.