Hippie Camping
Posted on May 18, 2008
Filed Under Collegelife '08, People, West Coast | Leave a Comment
The train ride to Salem was pleasant and the landscape we flashed through was scenic and soothing to watch. Mountains, green forests and vast fields. The train was a bit early so we tossed some Frisbee on the parking lot until our ride came. Sam Haydon, Erik’s room mate, pulled up in his Ford F-150 truck (notice that also this time a gigantic car picked us up from the station) and we loaded our stuff onto the truck. We were very tired when we came to his house, so after some eating, chilling and unpacking we went to bed. I have to add that the day we came, the temperature in Salem was the highest ever for this time of the year, a bit over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (For Swedes: almost 38 degrees Celsius).
The following day we slept in and when we got Sam’s dad made us a humongous American breakfast, with everything that is supposed to be included. Sausages, bacon, hash browns, eggs, juice and coffee. Nice! After breakfast Adam came, he is a friend of Sam’s and he had had 300 lbs. (For Swedes: almost 140 kilograms) of linoleum floor dropped on his foot. Sam had taken him to the hospital and now they were back. Our plan was now to drive to the coast to a cabin that belonged to another friend, Jake. After about three hours of packing, grocery shopping and waiting (for Jake, who was stuck in traffic) we finally got on our way. We drove through extremely thick, green forests, across big plains with vineyards spread out on them, through tree covered mountains, and after one and half hours of following Jake and Adam in Jake’s old green Datsun, we finally hit the coast and the Pacific Ocean. Pacific City. Just north of there was the cabin, a few miles from the sea, in the forest.
The cabin was a really old fisherman’s hut surrounded by different kinds of buoys that Jakes grandfather had collected during his years as a fisherman. Jake, by the way is a really funny guy. He looks like a hippie with long hair, tattoos, big mustache and bandana. One of his goals in life is to leave smallest carbon footprint possible and he really likes politics. He would like to live out there and grow his own food and hunt and fish to survive. Pretty impressive I would say. The other friend, Adam, who had obviously had gotten too much floor on his foot, is a metal worker who lives close to Sam. He loves hunting and he does snus (for Americans (not the ones that have been to Sweden though, because they know): snuff, dip). Pretty much a Redneck, as Sam would say.
So when we got to this cabin we set up camp, grilled hot dogs and sat around the campfire and talked till bedtime. Frida, Erik and I took a walk to a place called Sand Lake. It was an enormous beach in the middle of the woods. It was like a tiny perfect desert (if deserts can be perfect) surrounded by trees. In this gigantic sand pit loads of quads (for Swedes: Fyrhjulingar) were speeding around. They jumped of the dunes and slid around in patterns and the drivers seemed to have loads of fun.
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