Year: 2017

A Very Mysterious Package

Chris7 Comments

A month ago I received a mysterious package containing a message in a bottle, clippings, printed emails, a pendant marked with symbols, a message written in pictographs and a modern nautical map of part of a certain part of the world.  (I’m being intentionally vague to prevent this from being easily found via search engines.)

It appears to be some sort of puzzle-solving game surrounding a lost treasure.  Seeing as how it arrived soon after my birthday, and how my brother was acting coy in denial, it would appear to be a gift in the form a puzzle game to solve!  Looking on the web, I saw that others have received these packages many months ago and have formed groups to try to solve them.  However, I’ve avoided looking too hard on the web since I don’t want to spoil the fun of figuring it out.

More recently, I received a second package containing hand-drawn, pseudo-aged map fragments, a contract between pirates, pages from a diary and more printed emails.  So… aye!  We have lost treasure and pirates!

Darlene and I finally spent some time on this last weekend and found that solving the code puzzle in the first package ended up pointing to the longitude and latitude of an island that was then confirmed in a diary page from the second package.  Seems strange to me that it works this way – that a solved puzzle is simply revealed in the later package.  Instead, I would expect solving one puzzle would lead to the key to another puzzle, rather than being simply given away.  We’ll see, I guess.

Without giving too much away, the contents of the second package made it possible to use the message in the bottle and the amulet to pinpoint another location on the modern nautical map, so we’ll see what comes of it.  That appears to be all there is to figure out so far.  There clearly must be at least one more package coming.

Update: Yes, a third package has arrived!  This one is pretty cool too.  A wooden box retrieved from the sand, containing an animal horn with carvings on it, all wrapped in oil cloth:

  

Surprisingly though, the carvings on one side of the horn only confirm what we previously solved in the first two packages.  (Drawing of the lines on the map and interpreting the message-in-a-bottle as to how to project from the intersection points of those lines.)  On the other side, it does have a little treasure map of the island marking out a trail to follow but I don’t yet see what we can do with it.  And I’m pretty sure we’re not expected to fly out to the location to investigate the island in person.

Another package to come?

Update: Oh, yes.

  

And now several theories confirmed, regarding both the content and the intention of the packages – which I will refrain from divulging to avoid spoiling anything for anybody, except to say… very cool!  Also, I guess my title for this post was much more apropos than I could have known.

Layover on Mt. Shasta

ChrisLeave a comment

Last stop on our return from Oregon was a couple of nights near and on Mt. Shasta in California.  We enjoyed a lazy morning after camping out off a forest road an hour north (with Shasta in view) and then drove up to Bunny Flat on Mt. Shasta at 7000 ft. and spent the afternoon hiking a couple of miles up to the Sierra Club climber’s hut (built in 1923!).  We found a nice spot to camp afterwards just below Bunny Flat.

  

This ended Pan and Hera’s longest outing in the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle – three weeks!  They seem to have adapted quite well to traveling in it and it seems like we could go indefinitely now.  Yay!

Click through for the full gallery of pictures and video.

Newberry National Volcanic Monument

ChrisLeave a comment

Heading south from Mt. Hood in late June, we stopped off at the Crooked River gorge in the Peter Skene Ogden State Park between Madras and Redmond.  We were a bit bewildered by how many people were gathering and setting up lawn chairs as if waiting for a big event.  Unfortunately, we made the mistake of asking. ;-)  Turns out they were all there awaiting the passing of an historic steam train engine (Southern Pacific 4449) to cross the bridge.  It was due within the hour so we relocated the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle and decided to wait.  After a couple of hours though, it became clear from news being relayed around that there had been delays and it was still an hour or so out.  So we bailed.

Our destination was actually the Newberry National Volcanic Monument and this proved to be a nice place to spend a few days.  We camped the first and last night on some forest roads and one night at one of the campgrounds in the caldera alongside Pauline Lake.  We had a crazy red sky sunset one night, enjoyed some early morning kayaking on the completely still water and a nice trail ride up to near the caldera rim on our mountain bikes.  We hiked the mile-long Lava River Cave lava tube and checked out the lava tree casts.  There’s actually plenty of other trails and caves to visit too but we had to move on.

    

Click through for the full gallery of pictures.

Antique Flying and Driving Machines

ChrisLeave a comment

While we were in the Columbia River Gorge area last month, Darlene and I had the chance to spend half a day at the Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum in Hood River.  This place is only ten years old but it has a huge and fascinating collection of antique, but still operational, cars and planes.  They hold numerous events and classes.  For example, every second Saturday is a “play day” where they bring out and fly or drive a number of the cars and planes to let people experience them.  They also hold classes to learn about and get to drive antique Model T’s (which sounds very cool) or drive classic cars from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s.  They do restoration work on site, and they host an annual “fly-in” event where you get to see a lot of these antique planes in the air.

I particularly liked how they juxtapose old airplanes and automobiles from the same era.  And I thought it was pretty interesting how old cars look so different and so obviously antique; whereas airplanes from the same time period don’t look so different than planes today.  It was also fun to be reminded of how seat-of-the-pants flying and driving was back in the early days.

Click through for the full gallery, which is only a sampling of what they have on display.

      

Columbia River Gorge

ChrisLeave a comment

After picking up Darlene from the Portland airport, we headed over to the Columbia River Gorge for sightseeing, hiking and mountain biking.  There was certainly a lot to see and do and we ended up spending over four days in the area.  We started with the road up to the Vista House on the historic highway 30 (west to east) and enjoyed the view.  The campgrounds were full that night on the south side of the river so we had to cross over to the other side to find a place for the night.  We snagged a spot back on the south side at mid-day and hiked the lovely loop trail from Multnomah Falls up and over and down to Wahkeena Falls (and various falls in-between).  We started the next day with a shorter hike from the campground to Upper Horsetail Falls before heading out to go tour the Bonneville Fish Hatchery and then the visitor’s center at the Bonneville Dam (both very cool and interesting).

We stayed at a great county park outside of Hood River for the next two nights and enjoyed a full, long day of really fantastic mountain biking trails at Post Canyon.  And then, on the last day, we burnt up half the day checking out the huge number of old airplanes and cars at the Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum in Hood River.  (I’ve put up a separate post and gallery for this place.  We both thought it was really great.)  By afternoon, we had made it up to the Mt. Hood ski area for a rest stop for the kitties before heading onwards and south for new adventures.

Click through for the full gallery:

      

 

John Day River Basin

ChrisLeave a comment

  

After dropping off Darlene at the Portland airport, Pan and Hera and I headed east for a week, to follow the path of the upcoming total eclipse and find a nice possible campsite.  We checked out the countryside from Madras to Unity and in the process discovered the gorgeous, extensive and richly varied landscape of the John Day River basin.  Along the way, I visited portions of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, including the Painted Hills area and the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center.  I certainly was not aware that central Oregon had such an important mammal fossil record.

I decided not to try to capture the constantly changing landscape in pictures as I would’ve been trying to pull off the highway every few miles.  So this gallery consists only of pictures and video from the places I stopped overnight, or where I went hiking or biking.  One frustrating aspect of this area though is how much of the John Day River basin is private land and not accessible to the public – no trespassing signs everywhere, even on county roads that lead to public lands.

    

Click through for the full gallery.

Road Trip to Portland

ChrisLeave a comment

In early June, we packed up the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle and headed north to visit Glenn and Michele in Portland for what would end up being a three-week road trip with the cats on board.  We took a leisurely three days to get to Portland, stopping overnight at Lake Shasta, spending an afternoon in Ashland, staying at a campground along the Rogue River west of Grants Pass, visiting the surprising Applegate Trail museum along the I-5, and overnight at the Waterloo Park riverside campground before finally reaching Portland in time to greet Glenn and Michele as they finished a half-marathon.  Somehow we took practically no pictures on the way up there.

  

For the weekend with Glenn and Michele, we went out and found the first ever official geocache and discovered that Pan likes to geocache (or, really likes forests anyway), did some hiking and more geocaching in Forest Park, and went flying the drone around Saint John’s Bridge on the Willamette River.

Darlene only had a few more days before she’d have to return to work, so we spent an afternoon in Oregon City, including visiting the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center (fascinating place to visit!), and then two nights at Silver Falls State Park where we enjoyed a really fantastic day-long hike on the spectacular “Trail of Ten Falls”, before returning to Portland to put her on a plane home while I continued the adventure with Pan and Hera.

Click through for the full gallery of pictures and videos.

Hoan and Quyen’s Family Visit

ChrisLeave a comment

Hoan and Quyen returned with their kids to visit over the 4th of July weekend.  This time we visited the surfers and sea lions along Cliff Drive, the juvenile elephant seals out at Año Nuevo, the lighthouse at Pigeon Point, the sea cliffs near Pescadero Beach, the whale skeletons at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center and the crabs and sea stars in the tide pools near Natural Bridges State Park.

Click through for the full gallery of pictures and videos: