unclemac
Gold Member
- Oct 12, 2011
- 7,004
- 6,891
- Primary Interest:
- Beach & Shallow Water Hunting
Now I have told you about my middle son “good luck boy” but I have only hinted at his amazing powers. I have 3 sons but they are spaced pretty evenly over about 30 years. As each one was growing up I would spend their years from ages about 5 to 13 or so traveling around the world (but especially the west). It was always just me and him (one at a time) until the first one got too old to want to go and the younger one was begging to go. The oldest one is a “Jonah”. And that’s not to insult him…it is just plain fact. Every time we went ANYWHERE we ran into unforeseen problems. It got to be such a cliché that when we would start on a road trip we would wait for it to happen so we could relax in knowing the rest of the trip would be smooth.
But “good luck boy”….now that is another story. When he was about 7 or so I put him in the car on a Friday night after work and pointed the car south…with no destination in mind. We would do that kind of thing all the time…often driving 5 hours ONE WAY for a burger at our favorite joint and then turning around and heading home. Well we drove for about seven hours or so to a place called Umpqua Dunes in Oregon. We found a cheap roadside motel and spent the night. In the morning we got up and decided to poke around the dunes. Now if you have never been to the Oregon dunes you should know it is a mini Sahara desert of sorts of huge sand dunes right on the Pacific coast. Most people go there to play on the dunes but don’t make it to the actual beach because walking more than a mile up and down steep dunes of loose sand that slides with every step is pretty dam much not fun. But my son wanted to and since by then I had learned to follow his hunches, we did so.
Wow…all I can say is wow! When we got to the actual thin strip of beach we found bottles EVERY WHERE! We were loading up our pockets and that got ridiculous, I tried taking off my coat and making a bundle but that didn’t work….(remember we still have to go BACK a mile plus over difficult terrain)… Finally, in keeping with “good luck boy’s” good luck, we found one of those big plastic 5 gallon buckets that they sell laundry detergent in and loaded it up. We loaded it, our pockets and our free hands….and we still had to leave bottles on the beach! But at least the ones we left behind were unremarkable, unmarked and very common. Here are a few of the kinds we found, they were all about the same age it seems, all cork tops, with the corks inside. I always wondered if they came from some newly washed out dump. I wonder what washed up the day after we left, or the day before we got there.
But “good luck boy”….now that is another story. When he was about 7 or so I put him in the car on a Friday night after work and pointed the car south…with no destination in mind. We would do that kind of thing all the time…often driving 5 hours ONE WAY for a burger at our favorite joint and then turning around and heading home. Well we drove for about seven hours or so to a place called Umpqua Dunes in Oregon. We found a cheap roadside motel and spent the night. In the morning we got up and decided to poke around the dunes. Now if you have never been to the Oregon dunes you should know it is a mini Sahara desert of sorts of huge sand dunes right on the Pacific coast. Most people go there to play on the dunes but don’t make it to the actual beach because walking more than a mile up and down steep dunes of loose sand that slides with every step is pretty dam much not fun. But my son wanted to and since by then I had learned to follow his hunches, we did so.
Wow…all I can say is wow! When we got to the actual thin strip of beach we found bottles EVERY WHERE! We were loading up our pockets and that got ridiculous, I tried taking off my coat and making a bundle but that didn’t work….(remember we still have to go BACK a mile plus over difficult terrain)… Finally, in keeping with “good luck boy’s” good luck, we found one of those big plastic 5 gallon buckets that they sell laundry detergent in and loaded it up. We loaded it, our pockets and our free hands….and we still had to leave bottles on the beach! But at least the ones we left behind were unremarkable, unmarked and very common. Here are a few of the kinds we found, they were all about the same age it seems, all cork tops, with the corks inside. I always wondered if they came from some newly washed out dump. I wonder what washed up the day after we left, or the day before we got there.
