expeditionLIFE: Americana ~ blog 2

After two fried eggs and half an afternoon hemming and hawing, getting clothes together, and loading the camper, grandpa and I were off.
I’ve driven I-5 South from Seattle to Tacoma or Port Orchard to Seattle innumerable times but the scenery slides by with the patient ease of newness.
The little nooks and cupboards click firmly into place filled with toolboxes, extra socks and various soups. There also many flashlights aboard our vessel. The camper, I just noted to Ben, who I don’t think heard me, puts me in the mind of being an astronaut; the bubbled convex windows, the cubbies of food stores, the low ceilings and the ability to climb back from the pilots seats while lumbering down the highway to the shifting room the contains all the amenities of a home, only in miniature. There is the sink, the fridge, the micro-microwave, the stove and table, the bench, the bunk, the toilet and the shower, the last separated by a sliding partition.
I said astronaut, but Huguenot or argonaut would work too. The point is the camper ( which needs a name, any ideas? ) is not a mere vehicle...it is our vessel, our ship. We pilot and live aboard her, there are pine needles woven into her matted carpet, she smells like an old book.
A cacophony of squeaks and grunts gives the camper the feeling that it is breaching some harsh atmosphere in an alien world.
We got turned around a few times, making u turns in strip mall parking lots, looking for on ramps, drinking generic root beers.

We drove maybe 5 hours today. Port Orchard to Newport, or whereabouts.
It was an exceptionally beautiful April day, Mt. Rainier was clear as a bell with its little cloud toupee. And then Mt. St. Helens, then Hood then the costal range which runs, like I-5, clear from Mexico. Ben and I like to talk politics, probably because have twin ideologies, and enjoy verbally butchering the people and ideas that make the world a darker place than it has to be. He told me about some stuff “back when”, back when the highway wasn’t there, back when the toll was 10 cents, back when he sold newspapers during the war, back when before they put chemicals in everything, back when.

We hope to get here before the sun went down but missed it by a long shot. Pulling into a state park after the ranger have gone home and everyone is cozied up to their fire is always a little disorienting.

Walked the little trail to the beach which thunders dimly through these thin walls. There was one small fire and lots of washed up kelp.