You may or may not have noticed a delay in our weekly posts. We took a road trip to a nephew’s wedding in Graeagle, California, and made some stops along the way. In the old days, we would invite our friends over for a long, boring slide show of our vacation. However, rather than easily loading slides into endless slide trays, we need to edit and upload each image. This makes the “slide show” much shorter and less tedious for the viewers, but leaves us saying, “Is that all we did?”
Our first stop on our way to Graeagle was a short hop to Ilwaco, Washington where some good friends were camping at Cape Disappointment. We were also able to cross the bridge over the mouth of the Columbia River to Astoria, Oregon, to have dinner with some old neighbors.
Unfortunately, we only had one day in Ilwaco and did not make it a little farther north to Ocean Park, where we spent a memorable July Fourth holiday a few years ago and met a kindred spirit, Bruce, who is also driven to picking up trash. We found an article about him, Bruce Hardcastle. Next trip, Bruce.
This is nature making a flowerpot from a rotting post. We took a quick walk along the beach with the lighthouse peaking over the ridge.
And, of course, we picked up some trash along the way.
Not much, but it was a short walk.
Our next stop was another short hop to Cottage Grove, Oregon, for dinner at a brewery with our cousins. Cottage Grove celebrates some movies that have used it for some scenes such as “Stand by Me,” “Animal House,” and “The General.”
Finally, there was our ultimate destination, Graeagle, pronounced “Gray Eagle,” where the wedding was held. We thought the name was unique and researched its origins. The town was originally a lumber town, known as Davies’ Mill. When, in 1918, the California Fruit Exchange (CFE) acquired the mill and surrounding land. They needed a fresh name, so they organized a community contest. The winning entry, by a bookkeeper, combined the nearby Gray Eagle Creek into one word, dropping the “y,” resulting in Graeagle. So, by that logic, it could also be called Graeaglereek. You could also drop a few more letters, but that would just be Greek to us.
They do have a railroad that travels through the area for the purpose of disrupting weddings.
And there was some wildlife to view. Granddaughter practicing her beam routine.
The lizard was doing push-ups. We found out later that they do this to attract mates. If we had known, we would have stood farther away.
After the wedding, we visited a high school/college friend and his wife, who own a 324-acre ranch with a lake near Madera, California.
They have a small herd of cattle that came in to greet us in the mornings.
The cows are on the other side of the fence. It took us a while, but when we hung around them enough, we were eventually able to recognize the cows from the bulls.
And, one morning, we had a wild stampede across the patio.
Okay, it was a couple of families of turkeys, but they were wild. We are pretty sure one of them knocked over a flowerpot. It was a bit tense.
As we were leaving our wonderful stay at the ranch, we were stopped by a train.
Wait! I think my replacement router is in that car!
Our next stop was in Santa Rosa, California, where we had a nice visit and dinner with another college friend. We also made a quick stop at the Russian River Brewery to pick up a case of Pliny the Elder beer for our cousin in Oregon.
On our way back, we stopped in Roseburg, Oregon, for the night and saw this sign.
The Umpqua Dairy is located in Roseburg, and the billboard is touting it as the Weber Award Winner. Big deal, we had never heard of the Weber Award. But it is a big deal in the dairy industry. The award recognizes the top plant based on the quality testing program, 3rd party audit scores, and Plant safety scores. Umpqua Diary won the award out of sixty to seventy competing dairies. So, Umpqua is the cream of the crop, so to speak.
We arrived home on Saturday afternoon, and the car’s trip information indicated that we had driven seventy hours and one minute. Damn that last stoplight.
Okay, enough of our travelogue, back to the real world. We were gone for almost two weeks, and the trash accumulated. Our first outing on Monday was very long, but it got easier through the week until Saturday, when we clocked 8.7 miles, were out for five hours and forty-six minutes, and walked over 26,000 steps. Woof!
This is weird.
A new driver bumper sticker with a sad hamster meme with a pink pacifier in its mouth. It makes no sense to us. Now, if it were a “hamster on board” sticker, it would make total sense.
Someone clearly had a bad hair day.
We could make use of it if Chuck had some hair. Okay, we could also use it to comb through our trash.
At the park-and-ride, another Smart Bong was made by people of questionable intelligence.
On the other hand, given the color of the liquid, it could be a urine bottle with a highly sophisticated filtration system. Or both.
Another discarded recreational nitrous oxide container.
Normally, these are no laughing matter for us because they are heavy to carry. But the joke’s on the litterer. There was a recycling bin about thirty feet away. We had a good laugh over that, and no laughing gas was used. We checked, it was empty.
We picked up another cell phone, a Galaxy S9, in excellent condition.
This is the twenty-fourth phone we have found. It is locked and has no SIM card, so we had no way to return it to the owner. These phones are still for sale on the Internet for six hundred dollars. As theft protection, these phones need to be unlocked from the owner’s Google account to repurpose them to a new owner, so this is a brick. They should have a way to send a message to the registered account, but we have not found anything like that. It’s an impressive paperweight, though.
A lost silver necklace.
It is stamped with 925, meaning it is sterling silver with 92.5% silver content. It’s in nice condition, and we will add it to our collection of found jewelry.
Here’s another thing we don’t understand, yes, there are a lot.
In the area of the park-and-ride and the freeway ramps, we find packs of cigarettes with only a few missing. It’s like they are playing russian roulette with lung cancer. Statistically, 10-20% of lifelong smokers get lung cancer. So this person is only smoking 10-20% of each pack to reduce the odds. Smart. He also makes the Smart Urine Filtration Systems®.
We picked up a security camera.
It was unsecured.
Yet another fork in the road.
This was very confusing because it is not on Google Maps. Yes, we are really running low on fork-in-the-road jokes.
We are entering the election primary season.
We are voting for Epoxy Floors. The only candidate tough enough to fill the potholes and shine afterward.
Someone lost their keepsake from the Hollywood Wax Museum.
Amazing. They look so real.
Stoners Zeke and Zak, after a long evening of crafting DIY bongs from bottles and straws, get hit with the munchies hard.
They roll into a 7-Eleven and grab a hot-and-ready pizza. In true baked brilliance, they slap it on the roof of the car and hop in.
A minute later, they take a sharp right turn like they’re starring in “Fast & Famished.” The pizza? Gone. But the haze? Still thick.
Ten minutes down the road…
Zak: “Yo, Zeke… I’m still hungry.”
Zeke: “Say no more. Let’s find another 7-Eleven.”
That wraps up our travelogue/TrashWalking week. Our inventory:
$4.05.
The first two coins, the dime and quarter, were found during our travels, but the rest were found this week. The total was bolstered by a find of eighty-three cents near Safeway and two muddy dollars in a gutter. Does that qualify as filthy lucre? We took it anyway.
8 Tools, a saw blade, two sockets, two screwdriver drill bits, a screw driver, a tire pressure gauge and an auto emergency multifunction tool.
The emergency tool is for exiting a car in an emergency. It has a pointed hammer for breaking a window, a seatbelt cutter, a sharp nail to deflate airbags, and a small light powered by an AAA battery. We’re thinking that you should test this device to make sure you know how to use it. But then there’s the cost to replace the window, seatbelt, and airbag.
8 Urine Containers.
These were mostly standard water bottles. One was a McUrine cup, and another was a blue bag with a plastic frame holding the bag open. Maybe that guy was a bad shot.
4 Used Condoms.
The first was in the middle of the street, the second was in the park-and-ride, and the last two were across from the apartment buildings on Riverside Drive. That location is in full view of the apartments. Someone must have requested an encore.
3 Articles of Clothing. A dirty t-shirt, a kid’s hat, and a fake bow tie.
We think we know why the kid tossed the hat.
7 Roadkill. Three rats, two snakes, and two squirrels.
Also,
- 5 Realistic wax figures.
- 2 Flowerpots, one natural and one broken.
- 1 Horny lizard.
- 1 Stampede.
- 1 Hamster on Board sticker.
- 1 Urine filter.
- 1 Expensive paperweight.
- 1 Silver necklace.
- 1 Insecure camera.
- 1 Lost pizza.
Have a great week, and be sure to keep your turkeys under control.
Trash Walking 