The Road Trip from Birkfest to Camp 18

Jenny and I took a road trip with Ella in tow on July 5th and made a loop starting at Highway 202 (Nehalem Highway) out of Astoria to Jewell, OR then we took Hwy 47 to Vernonia, OR then took Timber Road to Hwy 26 then took 26 east to Camp 18 which is east of Seaside. After eating we took 26 and 101 back to Astoria.

It was a beautiful day in NW Oregon and a fun little afternoon jaunt since neither one of us had been to any of these locations before. It’s always been fun to go where we’ve never been before and see new places and people.

Birkenfeld County Store, home of "Birkfest."

The first stop, and one of the coolest, was when we stopped at the Birkenfeld Country Store northwest of Jewell. When got out of the car we could hear live music coming from the store, as it turned “Birkfest” was in full swing. We met Mike the owner of the store, a real character to be sure, who told us he was having a little music festival on the back deck of his store.

While we were there a 15 year old kid named Nolan Garret from Tacoma, WA was doing a set. Wow! For a 15 year old kid he could really play a guitar and sing. His Mother who was in the audience gave us some background; he started playing the guitar when he was 8 years old. He’s a very talented kid with a bright future and after she asked me 3 times, I caved and bought his $10 CD.

We stayed and watched him play a few songs and after we got back in the car to leave Jenny and I had a good laugh about stumbling onto Birkfest. The random nature of driving through and stopping there when it was going on cracked us up. The store is the only business for miles out in the middle of nowhere. Hilarious! Mike the owner said they have live music every Saturday night so we may try to go back out to his place. The burgers and sandwiches he was serving looked great so we plan to go back and make an evening of it sometime.

We then took a detour to see Fishhawk Lake. It’s a cool little place tucked away off the road. It amazed us how many homes bordered the lake. I’d never seen a drain like the one that’s right near the damn. It’s not a big lake but a very beautiful area. We heard Steelhead can be caught in the lake.

Then we took a drive by the new school they built in Jewell. It’s very nice building and somewhat extravagant for a small community their size, I wonder how much it cost the taxpayers?

So it was off to Vernonia after that. We first stopped outside of Vernonia and took a walk by Vernonia Lake. We drove through town after that and saw how the Nehalem River flood of 2007 damaged the schools, one was still standing. It shocked us just how big the town of Vernonia was, so I’m sure that many of the town’s resident really suffered after the flood.

We left Vernonia and took the pretty drive down Timber Road to Hwy 26 then over to Camp 18. We’d lived here for 6 years and never stopped at Camp 18. We heard it had good food and that on occasion they’d have a buffet that was supposedly a good meal too. They weren’t having a buffet when we stopped in so we had dinner instead.

The Cabin is a huge structure and we were impressed how many people were in the dining room when we walked in. I had the Lumber Jack Porter House Steak; Jenny had the Razor Clams and a small steak. The Beef Barley soup was very good but I'll be honest, there are better steaks to be had in the area. It's a fun little tourist place but the food was average. I didn’t know they had a little memorial museum dedicated to loggers that have died in Oregon. I thought it was very cool and a nice tribute. All in all it was a fun and full beautiful day to be living in NW Oregon.

Smog, Climate Change and Energy are 3 Seperate Issues

I got into a debate with a Global Warming Alarmist from LA today on a message board and thought I’d share this rant. No sense wasting it on one person. If you have a few minutes, watch all or part of this video for some background.

The Global Warming Swindle

LA does have some smog and it does need to be dealt with but one EPA sized rule does not fit all. Remember living in the bubble of LA is different than living in the fly over states. Air quality needs to be addressed in big cities but even with the smog it's NOT causing global warming. Smog and global warming are not connected and never have been. The facts don't fit the argument and today the smog is not as big a problem as it was because cars are burning cleaner fuel and are not admitting as bad of emissions as 20 years ago.

Even if the air quality in LA still needs improvement we shouldn’t destroy the entire nation’s economy by spending billions on energy systems than have a huge deficit on cost and delivery. Especially if it can only be counted on to meet less than 10% of our energy needs right now. It’s a real fairy tale to believe that solar, wind and bio-fuels are going to heat and cool every house in the US or power every car, ship, truck or train that moves food and every other essential consumer products we need.

I’ll give one truly ironic and moronic thing I love about California greenies that drives me crazy in this fantasy that is global warming. Some think electric cars are the answer. Really? First where does the electric power come from? Power plants. What do they use as an energy source to fuel power plants? Coal and natural gas. When I lived in Sacramento 10 years ago (another city with smog problems) the people of California didn’t want any more power plants built because they burned coal or natural gas.

Well Gee… how the hell are you going to power electric cars if the power grid in cities like LA and Sacramento are maxed out already? Electric energy is not an invisible source of energy. I’m amazed how stupid people are in just this one case alone. Then the other issue is the manufacture and the disposal of the car batteries if millions are put into production and used. The chemical waste created by batteries would be far more harmful to the environment that any diesel or gas burning vehicle.

Just like power plants some don’t want solar farms either in California. It’s the same moronic thinking that is getting us all nowhere. Why are we letting California control the narrative on the whole climate change and energy debate? They don’t have a clue. They want Solar Energy but not at the sake of Turtles. Click on the link below to read to see firsthand the madness of  it all.

Mojave Solar Project Killing Threatened Desert Tortoises

Bio-fuels have proven to be a disaster. First you must use energy to plant the corn, then energy to harvest the corn, and then use energy to transport the corn to a processing facility, and then use energy to process the corn into fuel, and then use energy to transport the fuel to dispensing facilities. Wow, very efficient system there isn’t it? More energy is wasted in making the energy than any benefit of using it thus it’s a negative outcome not just from an energy standpoint but from an economic outcome. Not only that but the corn used to make the fuel is causing worldwide food shortages and driving up the price of foods that use corn additives.

The farmers planting the corn for bio-fuels love it because they’re receiving massive government subsidies to grow and plant corn for bio-fuel. We shouldn’t have to subsidize another grand and stupendous failure like this one period when oil, natural gas and coal are in abundance.

Wind and solar are a joke too, because they cannot and will not work in certain areas of the US because of weather conditions. I live in NW Oregon wind and solar is impossible here just as it is many parts of the country. It’s total nonsense that the people of LA or any of the other big cities can dictate what energy policy and air quality policy is going to be when nothing compares to their problems.

Nuclear power plants is one of solutions I support, but it’s the same thing, waste is created in the process so Greenies don’t want them. In France they’ve been safely using them for years.

One thing is certain we can’t let people who believe in global warming destroy our free society by letting a few cites with some smog problems dictate energy and economic policy to the rest of us. Oil, natural gas and coal in combination with the other useful alternative energy sources can and should be used but this straw man called global warming needs to be burned at the stake because man isn’t causing climate change.