A Sneak Attack

For the last couple of weeks, I've had a pretty tough time sleeping and I couldn't figure out why. Since leaving Bend about a month and a half ago, we've stepped up our exploring game and been putting some serious miles on our feet so my sleeping problem wasn't for a lack of exercise. We've been exhausted on a daily basis so falling asleep has been pretty easy. But for some reason, at 3am, every morning for the last couple of weeks I've been waking up...and once I am awake, I'm awake.

At first I thought that I might be stressed out about something and that was keeping me up. It turns out that since quitting work over a year ago (yes, it's been over a year...woo hoo!!!), I don't really have any stress. The biggest source of stress that we have is figuring out what we are going to do tomorrow and to be honest, as much as I might cry about it, that just isn't very stressful.

My next thought was that since we changed climates when we got onto the Oregon Coast, maybe the dampness and humidity was keeping me up. But then I thought, “I've lived on a boat for the last 20 years so being in the desert for the last handful of months shouldn't have dried up 20 years worth of mildew in my veins.” I just couldn't figure it out. So every night, at 3am, I have been woken up by a mysterious villain so I could lie awake for a few hours thinking about my problems and stresses (which I don't have).

I know this little problem of mine is going to worry you sick and keep you up at night so before that happens, I'm going to tell you that the mystery has been solved. In our home on wheels, we have a smoke detector that lives directly above our bed on the ceiling. This little guy apparently has a built in safety feature that is supposed to remind me to change its batteries. When the batteries get low, our little friend sends out a friendly reminder in the form of an extremely loud high pitched scream that would wake the dead (me). This scream of insanity is less than a second long and repeats itself every 12 hours until you get the picture and change the batteries. Since the deafening noise only lasts for less than a second, it was long enough to wake me up, but not long enough for me to catch the culprit. It was a sneak attack. Just so we are perfectly clear...I don't like sneak attacks.

Of course Brenda was never privy to the sneak attack because she wears safety gear at night in the form of ear plugs that would protect her from such a joyful event. She wears said safety gear because she says I snore like a wild animal, but I don't believe her. I've never once heard myself snore.

This so called wild animal is a creature of habit. A couple of weeks of being woken up at the same time will force me to wake up on my own at that time. Tonight I woke up right on cue at 3am...actually it was 2:59am...one minute ahead of schedule...just enough time to be ready for the attack. Since I didn't know this sneak attack was coming, you can only guess the surprise that I had when a blood curdling shriek came from directly above my head.

My reaction time is surprisingly good for coming out of a deep sleep just one minute earlier. In lightning quick time, my reflexes ripped our friendly smoke detector out of the ceiling, opened the door, and threw it as far as humanly possible. This little guy was amazingly aerodynamic. He made it 8 campsites over before coming to rest next to a family of 4 cramped inside of their tent. They are going to have a rude awakening at 3am tomorrow night. I may throw them a new battery as well and see how long it takes them to figure it out.

Besides the sneak attack, we have been having an amazing time along the Oregon Coast.  It has been truly spectacular.  I have been up and down the coast a few times over the years but for some reason, it seems especially spectacular this time.  It could be because we had more time than we have ever had in our pasts trips and are not trying to rush through everything so we can cover the whole coast in a long weekend, which gives us more time to appreciate it all.  Or it could just be that it is more spectacular than normal.  Who knows?

During our trip up the coast, we have visited a handful of lighthouses, climbed Oregon's tallest sand dune (it was a lot of work), climbed the 2 highest peaks along the coast (they were a lot of work too), seen more wildflowers than I have ever seen anywhere else (really beautiful), hiked miles and miles of the Oregon Coast Trail, eaten lots of fresh seafood (mmmmmmmmm), and spent quite a bit of time with our tosies in the sand on some incredible beaches.  It's really been fun. 

   

This is Thor's Well full.

And this is Thor's well emptying.  Supposedly this hole empties into the underworld...we didn't jump in to find out where the underworld actually is.  My guess is that it is somewhere near Kent.

There are about a cajillion wildflowers on this mountain.  Unfortunately my cell phone camera didn't really pick them up.  Trust me, they are spectacular.

We just got above the clouds on the way up to the summit of Saddle Mountain.  

Still in the clouds.  Really a spectacular hike.

If you haven't guessed this is a lighthouse.  We saw lots of them.

Yep.  These are sand dunes.  The far away one on the left is the tallest in Oregon.  Trust me when I say it's tall and a lot of work to get to the top of it.