road trip post for Wednesday 7/16

When I woke up this morning, this little fella was trying to sneak into my tent...
That'll put you off breakfast.

I only had about 200 miles to go today, so I had time to stop for pictures of motorcycle-attacking dinosaurs.

I got to Florence and met my stepmom Lark. We ran some errands and had dinner. She's moving to central Oregon, so she's in the middle of a lot of packing and coordinating. I can sympathize. But I didn't have to figure out how to pack up any horses or dogs.
This one reminds me of the 3 stooges. Hello, hello... helloooooo... Hello! The house was partly packed, so she put us up at a hotel, and she fed me too. As I understand it, some people have a very hard time being homeless. For me, it's working out great so far.

Lark gave me a few things that were my Dad's. Including some loose Vietnamese coins that he'd had for all these years. I counted them up, 65 Dong, and looked up the exchange rate. 65 Dong comes out to about .oo3 dollars. Not quite half a cent. 1 Dong coins might have more conversational value than monetary value. It'll be interesting to see what the Vietnamese folks think of the 1 Dong coins. Do they collect them like we collect pennies? Instead of empty water cooler jugs, do they keep them in empty grain silos or tanker trucks until they've collected enough go to the movies? Am I going to need a dump truck to carry around my loose change? I'll find out. She also gave me some US currency to help me along. It was much more compact.

Before bed, I walked down to the beach. The Oregon coast is my favorite place on this planet. It felt good to get my feet wet, even though it was cold, and think about going to the other side of that ocean.