No Redwoods so far. Only Oregon desert. I took a bunch of photos and there’s some explanation there too.

Click here for a bunch of photos.

There will be little, if any, internet contact from here until Sunday.

Edit:

Was woken up last night by what seemed to be (and probably was) hundreds of coyotes serenading me all around the tent. They howled for about a half hour and then stopped. It was one of the coolest things I ever heard.

Herc: “Hey smartz, wake up. Do you hear the coyotes?”
…
Smartz: “Yeah. I heard it but I just thought I was whistling through my nose.”

I’m not really a baseball fan. I think it’s generally boring and the professional players are paid too much. Ryan, however, loves it. I’ve always wanted to like it – yet another fun thing to do with Ryan is always great. So when I heard about such a thing as Civil War era Base Ball (yes, it was two words then), I wasn’t sure what to make of it. On one hand, I’m a huge Civil War buff, but on the other, I really don’t care for baseball. But if you combine the two, making it Base Ball instead of Baseball, perhaps I could at least sit through it.

And wow was I wrong. Apparently, I love Base Ball!

This vintage game is played twice a year on the Fort Vancouver grounds in Vancouver, Washington. It pits the Fort Vancouver Shermans against the Vancouver Occidentals – both teams existed in the 1860s.

The 1860 rules are a bit different than modern rules. First of all – no gloves. The teams had uniforms, of course, but those uniforms did not include gloves. Those came in the 1870s and 1880s.

Now, the rules… a striker (that’s batter) can be called “out” if the ball is caught, even on the first bounce. If there are runners on base and the ball is caught on the fly (before it bounces), no runners may advance, but if it’s caught on a bounce, they may advance one base.

Other fun rules are – no balls. Ever. The pitcher can throw what we’d call “balls” all day – there’s no walking (the 1864 rules changed that, allowing the umpire to decide if the pitcher is being a jerk). If a ball is struck, hits the ground in play and then rolls or bounces into the foul area, it is still a fair ball. There’s no catching the ball with your hat, either. Oh, and a striker can only “strike” if it’s a swing and a miss. If the pitcher throws good balls, the strikes does not have to swing at them (the ump can choose to override this, but has to warn the striker first).

There are other rules and you can read them here.

That brings me to my next point. There is a Vintage Base Ball Association. There are two such organizations, actually. Mostly east coast. In fact, on the same day as this game, there was a tournament in Gettysburg featuring six teams (one of the teams was actually called The Somerset Frosty Sons of Thunder!).

So anyway, with this game, I wasn’t sure who to root for. The Shermans had players with great names like “Tiny” (who was huge) and “The Coffin Maker.” The Occidentals, however, had great uniforms. Clearly, I was going to have to wait to see who would become the underdog.

After just two innings of play (just like today, there are nine), The Shermans were up 8 to 1. I guess it was time to root for the Occidentals. Good thing too.

Over the next few innings, the Occidentals got their crap together, stopping The Shermans from scoring so much and even scoring a bit themselves. By the 5th inning (I believe) the score was 9 to 5. Then, in the 7th, The Occidentals poured it on, scoring run after run with two outs on the board. Bully for them!

During the game, sometimes the crowd got a little rowdy, hurling a jib/jab at the players. A member of the Occidentals, being the recipient of such a remark, called out to the heckler’s wife, “Ma’am, may I ask where did you get your talking mule?” The mule spoke again and the player loudly remarked, “Now ma’am, I’ve seen a talking mule before, but never one quite so ugly!” Fun!

The score at the bottom of the 8th was Occidentals 12, Shermans 10. And with the Shermans at bat at the top of the 9th, striking three balls, all of which were caught on the first bounce, that’s how the game ended! (I could be a bit off on the scores.)

So there we go, my first Vintage Base Ball game. I was won over and excited! I’ve been to tons of Civil War reenactment and have never saw anyone play a game of base ball. Why not? What a great way to pass an afternoon.

There is another game this year, same teams, same field. It’s in August and I’m most definitely going.

You folks on the east coast, however, have it lucky. There are vintage teams all over the place. You can check that out here. Not surprisingly, it seems to be big in the Chicago area. New York also has some teams (hear that, Ryan?). Ohio too! There is (was?) a Pacific Northwest Vintage Base Ball organization, but the website seems to not have been updated in years. Such a shame! I admit, I have dreams of Ryan returning to Seattle, he and I putting on some floppy uniforms and playing some ball.

Well, either way, though I can’t enjoy it as often as those in the mid west and east coast, I’ll have to settle for enjoying it just as much, but only twice a year.

I took some photos of the game – you can see them here.

We’ve been to Mount St. Helens twice – both times to the more popular Johnston’s Ridge area. There are two other sides that aren’t as easy to get to, but (from what I’ve heard and experienced yesterday) very very worth it.

You can skip right to my pictures here and/or read on.

Our destination was Windy Ridge, on the north eastern side of the mountain. It’s actually only five or six miles from Johnston’s ridge – you can see the visitor center if you squint – but it takes much longer to reach it. That and (as we often do) we decided to take the scenic route.

This scenic route took us clear around the “other” side of Mt. Rainier, through dense forests and by rushing streams. This was a good reminder of what Mount St. Helens used to look like. Mt. Rainier National Park is wonderful and eventually we’ll get around to exploring it.

For now, however, I’m sticking with Mount St. Helens, so we continue south.

South doesn’t mean warmer. Although when we’d leave the car, we’d start to sweat – it was really sunny and very hot (for 3000 feet up), there was quite a bit of snow on the ground. I even played in it a bit.

The “back road” into Mount St. Helens starts in Randle, WA on US 12. This had been closed for a long time due to a land slide. It’s the same land slide that I talked about here. This past weekend, the road had been reopened and access could now be had to Windy Ridge (our destination). It was still accessible from the south, but we were coming in from the north. Actually, here’s a map…

Hope that worked. You might have to zoom out a bit…

Anyway… This road, Forest Road 25, was beautiful. Like the road around Rainier, it was thick with vegetation, green and sprawling. When reaching the park property via Road 99, you stop at overlooks and interpretive points that tell you what happened here.

Bear Creek was the first and after driving through replanted douglas furs which were nearing maturity, the view of a devastated, gray and skeletal landscape took your break away. Bear Creek was is about 13 miles away from the mountain. You can see it very plainly from this spot, which is why a photographer picked it to take the only series of photos of the landslide and eruption in 1980. He barely escaped with his life, somehow outwitting the hot ash traveling at 300mph.

I won’t explain each stop we made – there were many. But the closer we got to Windy Ridge, the more complete the devastation. On the outer areas, like Bear Creek, many of the trees remained standing. Closer, however, they were uprooted or simply blown off their roots.

Few things could grown here – some flowers, some small scrub brush and the occasional pine tree. As we wound closer, we got a view of Spirit Lake with thousands of logs still floating in it from the blast 30 years ago. The landscape was baron, like a desert, by the time we reached the end of the road. Looking out over the “pumice plain” was like looking out over the Mojave.

The blast had sheered what was once an old growth forest, uprooting trees, rocks, soil, everything in its path – leaving nothing but bedrock covered with ash and humongous chunks of the mountain. Several miles away from the point of eruption, little hills dot the landscape. Some are as large as 200 meters high. These are actually chunks of the old Mount St. Helens, launched by the explosion. Some chucks are 100 feet in diameter.

Anyway, this is a crazy place that very clearly shows the power of nature. 30 years past, it’s regrowing at a very slow rate. At first they figured that by now, we’d have a small forest in the pumice plain. But still, nothing is growing there but for some lupine and scrub brush.

Before leaving, I needed to see if I could get a photo of four volcanoes in one shot – Mount St. Helens, Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood and Mt. Rainier. I was seeing Adams and hood pretty clearly for most of the drive in and had just noticed that Rainier was poking it peak at me, so we climbed a huge set of stairs (360ish) to the top of a little mountain. I got some photos, a huge panarama. Lucky day for me!

I think I’ve fallen in love with this place. We’re even going to start hiking some of the easier trails (at first). There’s some much to see here.

On the way home I even got a bit of a surprise!

Amazing day. Very very amazing!

Click here to see the pics!

As threatened, here are the pictures from Tuesday’s activities. We trip trapped to Cannon Beach (home of Goonies Rock) and Mt. St. Helens. We had a real fun time.

You can check out the pictures here!

Today Smartz and her mom & dad (who are visiting from Pennsylvania) took a little trip to the Pacific Ocean. We hit some fun stuff along the way and made a whole day out of it. Our original plan was to make it to Canon Beach, but we didn’t even make it.

We’ll hit that tomorrow.

We did, however, see Mima Mounds, the town of Raymond, Long Beach, Fort Stevens (a Civil War fort!), Fort Clatsop (Lewis & Clark’s winter camp) and the beachy town of Seaside, Oregon.

I took lots of pics and you can see them all here.

Tomorrow is Canon Beach and then Mount Saint Helens! Possibly a fun thing or two along the way.

Back east, one of my favorite summer time things was going to Civil War reenactments. Sure, they’re often silly, completely inaccurate and full of scary right wing/borderline racist politics, but they were also taken seriously by many who attended, very historically accurate by some and contained zero modern day politics if done for the right reasons.

I was able to ignore all the bad and focus on the good for a lot of the time. Besides, they had hand cooked kettle corn. If that’s bad, I don’t want to know what good is.

But that was the east coast. I knew there were reenactments on the west coast, but dared not venture out to one. That is, until this weekend.

A gal at the print shop and her boyfriend are into reenacting (and also play in a metal band). We were invited and accepted. This is the biggest event of the year for them.

“The West” in Civil War Reenacting circles is generally Missouri and Tennessee. The actual West isn’t really considered. And Pacific Northwest is barely a footnote. It’s like an island out there. A very under populated island.

Anyway, this event was their biggest and there were maybe 300 reenactors total (in uniform). That would qualify as a pretty small event back east. But back east is where the history is, so I get that. I was actually surprised that there’d be this many reenactors here.

I took a few pictures (30ish) and you can check them out here… It’s a bit different this time, I did it as a slide show (you can undo that too, if you like).

And now that you’ve done that, let me move on.

I used to be a reenactor, portraying Union artillery. I liked firing the cannon, of course, but really disliked just standing around wearing something blue. I wanted to go as Confederate infantry, but never really got around to it.

See, my “problem” is that if I’m going to do this, if I’m going to shell out the cash to buy the uniform and gun, etc etc etc, I want to do it right. Very right. If I’m portraying the 26th North Carolina, I want to research exactly what that unit wore. Which uniforms were they issued? Which period of the war would we be portraying, which guns did they use? How about hats, vests, shoes, shirts? These are all just as important as knowing the history of the war, the battles, the regiment, etc. If you look as authentic as possible and you act as authentic as possible, it makes the whole experience much more enjoyable to you as well as the spectators.

So if I were to get back into “the hobby” (as it’s called), I’d want to do it very right. However, from what I saw yesterday, most folks aren’t really doing that so much. That’s fine, to each their own. To do this, you kind of need a friend so you don’t stand out as the jerk who’s trying to be better than everybody else. That’s really not why I’d be doing it. I’d be doing it because if I’m going to drop the coin on such a thing, I’d like to buy the right stuff (rather than just wearing something blue or gray).

There’s not a whole lot of units to join up with. There are zero Virginian regiments in Washington, but there is the 26th North Carolina. Thankfully, much research has already been done for their uniforms. In Oregon, there’s a 4th Virginia company that’s doing their best to be more focused on historical accuracy. I like that, but it might be a bit too far to travel for events.

Ideally, I should be back east for this. But I’m not. If I want to do this, I’ll have to do it here. Could be fun and interesting. I’m still considering it. We shall see.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens. I was really young and living on the opposite coast when it happened, so I can only vaguely recall hearing about it in passing. I know that my mom bought a little bag of ash and gave it to me.

Yesterday, we planned on taking a trip to a bead store and to a flea market. We couldn’t find the flea market, did the bead store (it’s the world’s largest) and then I looked at a map, did a little mental math and said, “Let’s go to Mt. Saint Helens.” It’s hard to say no to such a great idea!

We’ve been meaning to go for a long time now and after a really great trip complete with cloudless skies and 80 degree temps, we’ll be back!

You can check out all of my pictures here.