The One Where We Depart on our Journey and Visit Ape Cave

July 8, 2024. Day 1 of trip

Tim:

Today I woke up at 430 AM, with a sense of excitement and a sense of anxiety. Mainly I was eager to get started on our grand adventure.  The feeling was similar to the one you get when you are about to make the first big drop on a rollercoaster. As the rollercoaster slowly ascends, you know you want the upcoming thrill, but the final moments before the drop is a little nerve wracking. Preparing for this trip has been extremely stressful, and I have been waking up too early on multiple occasions.

Heidi had set an alarm for 600 AM, so I tried to get a little more rest, but I was too activated to fall back to sleep. I tried for about half an hour and then Annalise and Ranger bounced into our bed about 500 AM, and we were all up shortly thereafter.  We have been sleeping in our rig for the last 10 nights, ever since we got rid of all of the beds in our house. We have been sleeping in our rig each night, and then returning to our house for meals, showers, and final move-out preparations.

Our driveway is steep and has a sharp curve which made it impossible to park it there. When it snows, the driveway is an amazing sled run, but it not suitable for an RV. Fortunately, I have a friend who lives only ½ mile away who owns 5 acres of property. He graciously allowed us to park our rig behind his barn from the day we took delivery until our day of departure, 87 days later.

After awakening at the crack of dawn, we ate breakfast in the Rig (cold cereal and yogurt), and drove back to our house to perform our final move-out walkthrough. We’ve spent the last several months purging, and have eliminated about 80% of the objects we used to own. We have enjoyed our house, but it is not a viable option to keep this house and also travel for 400 days. We thought about renting it out, but we had a terrible experience in the past when we were inadvertent landlords and vowed never to do that again. The decision to sell our house was one of the biggest decisions we made in preparing for full-time living. Annalise picked a quart of red currants from our bush so we could bring a little taste of home along with us on our journey. 

We completed our final walkthrough, took a selfie in front of the for sale sign, and left our house on Tarnahan for the final time. I thought I would feel a twinge of sadness as we drove away from the home where we have lived for almost 6 years, but the main feeling was simply relief. We hitched our trailer to Red Rover and departed at 1102AM.

Our general traveling plan for this journey consists of: Tim & Dexter in Red Rover towing the trailer, and Heidi, Annalise & Ranger in the Toyota Highlander.  We decided that it is better to have 2 vehicles on the trip in case of any type of problem, and it also makes it much easier to take day trips in the SUV instead of the big truck.

Heidi:

After driving away from our home in Happy Valley, Oregon, we headed to explore Ape Cave and stay near there for our first night of this epic road trip. Dexter and Annalise love exploring caves, so Tim thought this would be the perfect first day activity.  

We all donned our headlamps and set off down the hot trail (it was 90 something already that day) to the cave entrance.  Once entering the cave, we had to decide whether or not to explore the upper or lower cave.  There was a sign describing the lower cave as an “easy” hike and the upper cave as a “difficult” hike. So, of course the kids picked the upper “difficult” hike. Insert eye-rolling emoji here. 

We set off and things didn’t seem so bad at first. We had to do a bit of bouldering and then more of it, then more of it until we came to what seemed like a fork in the road to me.  On the left hand side it looked like we would have to crawl on our tummies in order to continue and the right hand side looked almost impossible to scale.  I declared that I was not about to crawl on my belly in the 42 degree, damp cave and that I would be happy to turn around and head back out and explore the lower cave.  Of course everyone convinced me to stay and turn to the right and scale the boulders even higher.  What had I gotten myself into? 

Countless times I got my foot wedged between rocks climbing up and felt like I would certainly twist my ankle.  Even more times I had to squeeze sideways through tight spaces in order to take what looked like an “easier” route up.  There were even times where we would have to push each other up and over huge rocks in order to make it.  It was not easy!  

One of those times there was this huge slick, smooth rock that seemed totally impossible.  I helped Dexter up and over as we were in the lead. Dexter offered to help pull me up, but I waited for Tim to arrive as I did not want to pull him headfirst toward me if he couldn’t support me.  I found some decent-ish foot holds and gripped the corner of the rock as best as I could with my right hand and got successfully over, or so I thought.  As I was coming down the other side, I lost my grip and my footing and landed not so gracefully on the jagged rocks on my right hand side.  I yelped and screamed and Tim and Annalise were asking if I was ok as they did not and could not see any of this from their vantage point below us. Luckily, I could move and it didn’t feel like anything was broken. However, I had two huge gashes in my right hand that were bleeding quite a bit and my right leg was hurting pretty badly, but not so bad that I couldn’t walk anymore.

After I got up, Annalise and Tim finally were able to reach us and evaluated me. Of course today I had moved into a smaller purse for the drive and did not have the bandages that I usually carry with me.  Annalise said that she had a pad, so I opted to try that out.  Once she handed it to me, I realized she had taken her pad off in the cave to give to me.  Oh dear!  I was not about to put a used feminine pad over my wounds!  Tim had a napkin with him that he brought in from the car as he has been having a cold, so he gave me the cleanest part of that that he could find so I wouldn’t drip blood all over the cave.  Needless to say, I was ready to get out of that cave asap.  

Unfortunately for me, there was a ton more scrambling up rocks and walking over jagged edges and needing to support myself with my hands to be steady.  None of this felt amazing since my whole right side was in pain.  A nice kid up in front of our group offered me an ace bandage, but I declined.  I was certain we would be out of there soon and I could treat myself with something once we got back to the car. 

The hike just seemed to keep going and going.  We finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel though, literally.  It was such a welcome sight. 

Then I noticed the ladder we needed to use to climb out of the cave.  It went straight up, then pretty much straight horizontally before we could get out.  I did not enjoy climbing that ladder out of the cave.  The heat of the day hit us immediately upon exiting and we saw a sign noting that we had yet another 1.5 miles to reach the parking lot.  I was not a happy camper as my entire right leg down to my foot was feeling miserable. 

We finally made it to the car then back to the RV where I treated my wounds and took a lot of ibuprofen.  I am now the proud owner of several giant bruises on my right side and some really cute gashes in my hand.

Tim has always said that suffering is good because it builds character.  He said that I should get the suffering award of the day for today. The kids were wondering if the Suffering Award of the Day (SAOTD) was going to be a thing on this trip and what the prize would be. 

Tim:

After our hike, we returned to Cougar RV Park where I made grilled cheese sandwiches on my 22” Blackstone griddle. We finished the night be watching an episode of survivor on our 42” TV.  I added a soundbar to the TV after our first outing, and the improvement in sound quality was dramatic.

A note about suffering:

Our theme for our trip is inspired by Romans 5 verses 3 and 4, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” A similar thought is found in James 1:2-4, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

The way I figure it, if we are enjoying ourselves, that is great because we are having a good time. If we are suffering, that is also great because suffering leads to endurance, character, hope, perseverance and maturity. I think this is key insight to living a good life: enjoy the good times when happen and enjoy the bad times since the bad times are what actually cause you to grow as a human.

With that in mind, I am going to pick a person each day to get the “Suffering Award of The Day”.  For Day 1 of our trip, the SAOTD goes to Heidi for scraping her right hand, elbow, hip, thigh, and knee when she fell at Ape Cave, and then had to keep hiking for another hour.