All Things Profane and Sacred

I found out this weekend that it is not Lake Melmamoose, but Lake Memaloose. I also found out that when a trail is referred to as "easy" "not too hard" and "moderate" you should be prepared to scale cliffs. We additionally learned that we are all-J, me and the boys-soft and out of shape. Our adventures were many, so here is part one of our little drama:

I met J in Sandy when he was done working Friday, and drove with him over to his friend's house in Estacada. We dropped off my little weinie car that doesn't like driving up and down mountains and packed everything into J's car. Since we decided on the trip all last minute, I just had a lot of gear thrown in helter skelter-the three tents I found, J's backpack and some extra clothes, bedrolls, and the cooler. After picking through the lot for what we thought we'd need, we tossed some trash, left his friend a voicemail and the car's spare key, and took off. Hilariously, J's friend got home from work, saw a strange car parked next to his trailer and strange garbage in his can, and gathered it all up in a huff, putting the trash and a nasty note on my car. Then he went inside and listened to his messages.

Anyhow, we got out the mountain, and J's car is losing power and overheating. Then he remembers that his fan is not working. As we're stopped by the side of the road, a hillbilly with a gun in his lap pulls up to see what the problem is. He helped us to canabalize a wrecked, shot-to-hell car for the wire we needed to 'fix' the fan and continue up the mountain. Later, J's brother ran into the same hillbilly standing by the side of the road looking his freshly wrecked car. Apparently this guy took a corner too fast and slid off the road into the woods. Glad his gun didn't discharge into his passenger's face or anything like that.

We got to the trailhead a bit late, but it was still light. We ran into some day hikers coming down the trail and asked them how it was. They told us the trail was only about a mile, and was pretty easy. Well, a mile isn't much, so I decided we could haul along the cooler. We tied the bedding and tents onto us and started hauling and dragging the horribly heavy cooler over increasingly rough terrain. After about a mile of this, we decided to leave the cooler and come back for it after making camp. Another mile down the trail and we decided now was the time to double back, grab the necessities and ditch the cooler until we were ready to go home. I waited with the dogs and the packs while J went back and secured the cooler in a tree.