A Mental/Visual Escape Today

Hi Everyone~


For reason's I don't really need to go into, I am taking a "mental health day of absence". Life hit me hard this morning and I decided it would be better to escape via photographs and Google rather than slip over the edge into darkness.


One of my favorite places to go for a 3 or 5 day get-away is a little town on the Oregon coast called Bandon. It is my dream to live there one day, but, until I am able to make the move, I grab a friend, load up the car and make the 12 hour drive west!

My last trip to Bandon was in mid September of 2010. My good friend Crystal decided to make the trek with me and showed up at my house around noon on "departure day". As I got myself into my Audi (a very fun car to drive!), Crystal put my wheelchair in the back and proceeded to grab her bags from her car. Neither of us know how to pack light and before long the back seat was filled with various bags and "must have" item's.


I was excited to hit the road, had 6 CD's loaded in the player just in case we ran out of things to talk about (we didn't), my ice cold diet Coke was in it's holder and I smiled as Crystal slid into the passenger seat... I was giddy!


Crystal, just as excited as I was, reaches into her handbag, pulls out a 45 pistol and say's to me "where do you want me to put this?" My mouth gaping, I said "what the hell Crystal, who do you think we are?! Thelma and Louise?!" Crystal looks at me as if I've lost my mind and says "I always take my handgun, you just never know when you might need one!"...I couldn't help but laugh, then I asked if she had a license to carry the gun, she said "no", I said "then it's not going with us!"...5 minutes later we were headed down the highway, unarmed, happily digging into the snacks we had brought.

We had such a fun trip! I think we talked the whole way, ate just as much as we talked, took pictures, discovered that the bigger the line is on a map showing roads indicates a better road, maybe even paved!


It took us 15 hours to make it near the coast. We ended up on a "goat trail" more or less, in a national forest, during a torrential downpour and at one point had a baby elk running down the road in front of my car. The poor thing was scared to death of the storm! The baby elk made it back into the woods and we found our way to a town large enough to provide a hotel.


The next morning we got up, had coffee and drove the next hour in glorious sunshine the rest of the way to highway 101, ending up in Bandon, ready to relax with a wine cooler!

The gun was never needed and we look forward to our next trip as soon as my cast comes off, I will map out the route for the next excursion....big lines on the map the whole way!

If you want to see a live webcam view of the beach and monolith's at Bandon, visit this link: Mongo's Webcam and Website. I visit this website every day to get my "Bandon" fix...it tides me over between visits! Note~ you can only view the ocean during daylight hours, during the night, Mongo has the camera focused on a fish carousel of some sort.


Take Care~