Looking Back - 4/13/2022 Silver Falls SP to Humbug Mt SP Oregon

 Road Trip Silver Falls State Park OR to Humbug Mt. State Park OR

Buried but alive!

This morning we woke up to 3 whopping inches of snow (which is a lot for April in the area, a record in fact).  I wasn't surprised because I knew it was going to precipitate all night and I didn't hear rain so it must have been snow.  We were pretty warm in the van with our down sleeping bags.  We have done below zero temperatures before.

I put on my boots and took care of restroom stuff for me and then helped Francis.  

Snow!

More Snow!

My next task was to assess the bins.  We stack and cover the bins because they don't fit in the van with the bed made up.  They looked fine but there was a peanut bag under the picnic table.  Upon further review, there were multiple things under the picnic table.  It turns out, in my haste to set up in the snow, I neglected to sort the bins according to food vs non-food.  The plan was to always keep the bins containing food in the van and put the bins containing clothing and household items under the tarps.  Some creature had gotten into one of our bins and helped themselves to a few peanuts and a giant bag of granola that Donna had made for us.  The bag of granola was completely gone.  I wish we had footage of the squirrel or racoon dragging the 1.5lb bag of granola away but we don't.  This bin will need to be sanitized when we get to LA.  

I used my need to get the coffee making stuff out of one of the bins as an excuse to put all of the bins in the Gazelle Gazebo and tidy up the violated bin.  I removed handfuls of peanuts and a few other shredded paper goods.  While the water for the coffee heated up.

Coffee, coffee, coffeeee! (our coffee song sung to
the tune of the conga, conga, congaaa song)

While I was finishing up the coffee making Donna picked up the litter that ended up under the picnic table.   We sat in the gazebo and drank our coffee and discussed how we were going to get out of there and contingency plans if we couldn't (keep in mind we don't deal with snow very often so it wasn't obvious to us at the time that escape was going to be fairly straight forward).

After coffee we packed up and chained up.  It was my first time putting on the new fangled cables.  Donna and I both read the instructions and after a half hearted "doing it my way" failed attempt, I followed the instructions and things went smoothly and we were off!

Off we go!

The roads really weren't that bad but it was good practice.

Soon we were out of the park and on a freshy plowed road.  We pulled over and I set out a tarp and attempted to take off the cables.  I didn't follow the instructions, instead I unhooked the front of the cables and attempted to back off.  20/20 hindsight reveals that my plan was not going to work 100% of the time.  For some reason my foggy survival brain thought I could back out of the chains with the back of the chains still hooked.  Luckily the right cable unhooked itself and came off but as I should have expected, if I had thought about it for half a second, the left cable wrapped around the drive shaft.  I only went about a half a rotation but that was enough to make me dig around and unhook everything and do a bit of tugging.  It could have been way worse but my plan all along was to only back off a tiny bit and if it wasn't working to reassess.  I did reassess, and figured it out without hurting anything on the car, or the cables, or even myself.  (while typing this I was reminded that I should pull the cables out of the roof rack and let them dry out).

While I as trying to unhook the right cable I went through all of the worst case scenarios and told myself, "When we get through this I am going to get something good for lunch" to keep me going.  Since the unhooking went quickly and there was no disaster, that need faded but I figured I would mention buying lunch to Donna.  She thought it was a good idea so she rerouted us through Keizer OR to, what I believe to be, the northern most In-N-Out.  

There are no In-N-Outs in New Jersey or New York
or even east of Texas

Here is our recorded drive for you highway and map nerds.

We arrived in Humbug State Park OR and it was raining lightly.  We set up camp quickly happy it wasn't snowing.  

The Dodge Grand Caravan that is making it all happen

The rubber boots we bought in Costa Rica worked fantastic!

We kept it simple for dinner.  We had Raisin Bran and Beer.  It was a good evening!

Local Hopwater is essential