Happy 4th of July everybody…traditionally observed as the birthday for the country…but more on that a bit later…just wanted to wet y’ur whistle as they say.

First though…our trip from Fairfield CA to Foster OR including our escape from the DPRC, its associated disasters and nanny-state-itis, its high prices, and its mostly intolerant-of-the-views-of-others liberal population. We had a 2 day travel planned with an overnight stop in Yreka CA…as opposed to Eureka CA, there are actually two different cities there that are pronounced the same but with different ways of spelling the word…go figure. The first day we started underway preps about 0800 for a planned 1000 departure…we actually got on the road 10 minutes or so early…we pretty quickly got off the base, onto I-80 for 2 miles then I-505 for 50 miles or so and the remainder on I-5 headed north…all of it in pretty heavy traffic through mostly brown and barren countryside…not really anything worth looking at. We got into some hills in the afternoon as we passed into a more pleasantly green portion around Mount Shasta…so it was slow going up and down. I believe we found every idiot driver in the state that first day…not a drop of blinker fluid among them and absolutely no courtesy to their fellow drivers at all. There was a bit o’ excitement when Connie almost ran out of gas…she hadn’t looked at it until her low gas warning light came on…we pulled off at the first place after that where there was space for the rig and she had about 16 miles of gas remaining according to the dashboard…way closer than it shoulda been. After that…we continued on to our stop at Yreka RV Park just a mile off the freeway and quickly pulled into a beautiful, long pull through full hookup site F2. Since it was just an overnight…we did front jacks, slides, and power and that was the extent of our setup. After resting a bit we headed out to a local place for dinner…we weren’t that hungry so it was a couple of nice brews for us and we split a pair of appetizers…prime rib with mushrooms and potato skins…the former was excellent and we almost said we were done but thought a bit more would be good so we ordered the skins…which turned out to be more like stuffed baked taters instead…way more than we thought it would be so we ended up with leftovers for lunch.

Next morning…we started about 0700 instead of our normal 0800…between that and the minimum underway steps needed we were on the road well before 0800…we figured that being July 3 and the eve of the 4 day weekend it would behoove us to get to our next stop at Foster Lake Campground early so as to avoid the late afternoon post work rush. Again…straight up I-5 although at least the traffic was lighter most of the way. We pulled in around 1430, got checked in, and quickly pulled into our site 58. Since it’s a 6 night stop we did a full setup…then walked next door to the Point Restaurant for dinner…seafood and brews…and we now have a new entry in the “Connie meets the town drunk” category…yup, entry #7 almost 3 years from the previous Mikey at the Down the Street Bar in Casey IL…more on that later too.

Just to independently verify that CA thinks that they’re not part of of the USA and are a separate country known as the People’s Republic of Californiastan (DPRC)…as we passed the border into Oregon…we looked to our left on I-5…and there is a customs station for people entering the DPRC from Oregon. Just like any other state (like NV…there’s a similar station there)…US citizens are not free to enter the DPRC without passing through customs. They don’t check you papers…yet…but you get a whole bunch of questions that do not happen _anywhere else…in the United States of America. According to google…CA would bet the 4th largest economy in the world if they were not a state…so I think it’s time to just let them go and be a sanctuary state, no border controls, liberal bastion, giveaway state with the highest taxes possible instead of part of the US of A.

***Breaking News***

There was a 6.2 earthquake down in southern DPRC just north of LA this morning…for down there 6.2 is pretty small. One guy tweeted about the local news media making a big deal about a bottle of hand sanitizer vibrating across the table with the comment that “always having to manufacture drama must be a living hell.”

***We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post***

Before I get into that whole USA birthday thing…here’s the moon or frying pan photo I promised ya’ll a couple posts back and then plumb fergot to put the darned thing in the post. As I said before…although if you go back and look it don’t say it any more since when Connie noticed the lack of the photo Neil quickly edited the post to try and hide his forgetfulness…this is a series of 9 images. Of the 9…8 are moons within the solar system and the 9th is an image of a frying pan. Your job…should you decide to accept it…or even if ya don’t…is to figure out which one is not like the others…in other words, it’s homework. I’ll let ya’ll know the answer next time…although first correct entry in the comments section will get ya honorable mention in the post…so have at it.

Ok…Independence Day…routinely celebrated on July 4th…is universally recognized as the birthday of the country…only actually the truth is a little stranger than that. I s’pose ya could call it the nation’s birthday…but it all depends on how you define the word birthday. So what really happened back in 1776 ‘round this date. 

Well…the US Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress declaring the independence of the 13 colonies from Great Britain. It was ratified on July 4, 1776…hence the celebration today…but was that really the founding of the country? Strictly speaking…I don’t think it was…it was merely the rogue action of a bunch of what the King of England branded as traitors for signing the document. After all…what chance the 13 upstart colonies stand against the might of the mightiest country on earth…why practically none of course. However…although there was mention of the “13 United States of America” in the document…there was effectively not much of a national government until the Articles of Confederation were drafted and sent to the states in late 1777…and they didn’t come into force until 1781 when they were ratified. To my thinking…the ratification of the Articles was when the country could actually be legally stated as coming into existence…before that they were just a bunch of loosely affiliated rebellious colonies.

Still though…July 4, 1776 is the officially established date for the birthday of the country…so who am I to argue the minutia…but I thought it might give ya’ll something to think about as you celebrate the day…after all that’s what Ima gonna do.

In other July 4th related news…Nike recently released a sneaker line that features the Betsy Ross flag on the heel. The flag looks like this.

It is an actual flag from early in the history of the country…first flown in 1777…and features 13 stripes and 13 stars to commemorate the 13 original colonies. As a historic flag…it has been long considered a patriotic symbol.

So far…so good…Nike honored the country by introducing this shoe line shortly before Independence Day. So what’s the problem? Well…it turns out that this particular flag has been branded by the NAACP as “engaging in intentional acts of intimidation…rooted in an agenda to insult, injure, and incite”…this is because the flag was adopted by some right wing patriot groups in the 1990s to allude to parallels between the anti-government struggle (according to Wikipedia) of the groups and that of the American revolutionaries.

Anyways…noted unpatriotic American who should move to Venezuela Colin Kaepernick…he objected to the use of the Betsy Ross flag…so naturally Nike immediately cancelled the shoe…so I guess Kaepernick is the unofficial CEO of Nike. Talk about idiotic corporate following of political correctness BS…that takes the cake for this week but I’m sure we’ll see another example by this time next week.

Obviously Kaepernick has the right to protest under the Constitution…and far be it from me to infringe on that right…as opposed to him and his ilk who are perfectly happy to infringe on the rights of those they disagree with…but as an American I believe that honoring the flag, the country it represents, and those who have died to ensure the freedoms we enjoy in this country deserves a higher standard. As I said a few posts back…I think it highly likely that we’ve seen our last constitutional amendment due to the inability of politicians to compromise…but I for one would certainly support an amendment that made desecration of the flag or refusal to stand for the National Anthem a crime rather than a protected right. One can disagree with your government without spitting on your country. Why do we give air time and press inches to these hypocritical morons rather than to those that honor the country.

Ok…on to our latest Town Drunk…Darren. To briefly summarize what the Town Drunk means…ever since our first year on the road in 2012…Connie has had this bad habit of attracting the attentions of the local town drunk wherever we happened to be. I’m not sure why…originally I thought it was because every time it happened she was all purdy’ed up in a dress, heels, and makeup…but along about #4…who wasn’t actually drunk as he was a teetotaler but fit into the group of weirdos she attracts I decided that wasn’t it as #4 occurred when she was in shorts, t-shirt, and flip-flops. Best as I can figger it since…it’s just random. It isn’t the fact that we frequent dive bars as some of them have happened in more upscale joints, it ain’t how she’s dressed, and it ain’t even where we are in the country as it happens all over…it is just some sort of strange galactic gravitational pull sorta thing that pulls these weird men into her life. It’s always men…but not all men as most of the ones she meets are perfectly ordinary gentlemen…but then along comes the occasional weirdo to add to the list.

So…Darren. We’re sitting there at 2 of the 3 seats at the bar in Point Restaurant…Neil’s having a very nice Black Butte Porter and Connie is working on some strange concoction named Mamba by Gilgamesh Brewery…this is an ale made with black tea and tangerine peel…she liked it but I gotta tellya it was pretty gack…didn’t taste like beer at all but then she likes those gose sour things too so whatevers. Anyways…we’re sitting there and this inebriated fellow…it is the Town Drunk after all…he wanders up to the bar next to her and asks the bartender for another Bloody Mary…but he’s got all kinda special requests for her…he wants 4 stalks of asparagus, 6 olives, a lime wedge, and 2 jalapeño slices in it. He’s obviously done this before…and pestered this bartender before…as she says Ok and slowly makes his drink. He is also ordering some sort of coffee thing for his buddy sitting over in the corner at the one armed bandit or video poke machine or whatever it was…but he has to turn around and ask him three separate times before he remembers it. He’s waiting on his drink…and he turns to Connie and sez “I’m the only guy you know that got throwed in Jail in Yellowstone National Park.” Turns out he got arrested for drunk and disorderly in the park on Friday evening…ended up in the jail in West Yellowstone I guess, don’t think the park actually has a jail but mebbe it does…and spent the weekend in the hoosegow as the judge wasn’t in until Monday. Here’s a shot of ol’ Darren and Connie…clearly 3 sheets to the wind as you can tell. 

He slurped that drink down right quick…delivered the coffee whatever it was to his buddy over in the corner past her right shoulder…and went out for a smoke. Said he was coming back for another…but 45 minutes later when we left he was still AWOL.

We boxed up our leftovers from dinner…or more accurately the bartender boxed them up for us…and we got a serving of marionberry cobbler to bring home for later…which actually turned out to be the next day…we never heard of marionberry beyond the obvious reference to the former mayor of Washington DC back in the 90s…turns out it is some sort of hybrid blackberry that was invented in Marion Country just to the north of Foster. We figured that anything on the dessert menu with both berry and cobbler in the name just had to be good…I’ll letya know later.

Interesting stuff found on the net.

Cyas.