Schlepping Sully Part I

Hopi pronounced Hoppy

For the last two weeks I've either been driving to Montana, writing in Montana, or driving home. I logged 2927 miles. I decided to drive because I reread Steinbeck's Travels With Charlie this summer, and used to love to drive. When I moved to Fort Bragg from Miami I took a circuitous 9000 mile route, rambling through the five states that I had never been to: Arkansas, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, and Montana. It took me seven weeks of traveling back-roads in the RV I bought expressly for the move. I was accompanied by my parrot, then only 11 years old, a tame white dove who sat on infertile eggs the entire trip in her basket which hung in the bathroom off the shower head, and an albino

Rosie

red rat snake--one of my going away presents. Rosie lived 9 years. In Nauvoo, IL, I picked up a stray kitten. That trip was 22 years ago.

My trip to Montana started with a 10 hour drive up the coast to Yachats (pronounced Ya hots), OR. A dear friend moved there a few years ago and this was a chance for a visit. She took me to Newport where we visited the Hatfield Marine Science Center. They had truly interesting exhibits, but you know my fondness for octopuses. They have a Pacific Giant octopus on 'octocam' which they feed on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 1 pm. If you go to the octocam at that time, you can watch them feed her. http://hmsc.oregonstate.edu/visitor/octocam (if link doesn't work, copy and paste into your search engine.) 

Waves at Point Cabrillo for example

Another stop we made was to a memorial for two young men who were killed when a sneaker wave swept them off the rocks. I was so moved by the memorial one of the boy's mother had erected at the site, that I took pictures. Here on the Mendocino Coast, not a year passes that we don't have a fatal encounter with the sea. 

They were standing on the rock at the top of the picture

 

And were swept into the crevice.

The memorial on a prettier day by Linda Watson

So who is Sully?

Wait for Part II in a few days.