Long Day Hanging Out with Norm, Part 1

The day before Norm's actual birthday was the only day he had wholly to himself, and since both Dan and Lupita were working and my mom's errands were in a holding pattern for the day, we got to go do some cool stuff.

These next two posts may have funny names that sound like I was exasperated to spend the amounts of time together that we did on those two days, but when that person is like a brother mixed with a best friend and someone you haven't seen in a while, the day flies by and you're not sure how your feet ended up so sore.

The other weird thing for me about these next two posts is that they have very little to do with Dan and 'Pita's wedding. But they occurred while I was in Sac, ostensibly babysitting my mom.

The long day started when I rode Dan's bike over to Norm's, arriving after 5 am but before 5:30. We ate some eggs, had a cup of coffee, and maued through some nice Irish rolled oats. This was to be a fishing and hiking adventure outside of Auburn on the American River. We parked on the side of the road and walked into the park right as it was technically opening, 7 am.

To make sure our nicer Birkenstock sandals would be okay, we wore old flip-flops and were safe in the knowledge that we could abuse them as we needed. The decision had extra consequences for my feet, which hadn't been in flip-flops in years. But, as I maintained that day, and will continue to maintain, the raw-rubbing of the spot between my toes was absolutely worth it. It's the fatigue/stressed pain that still is present that I'm mildly concerned about, but it too is starting to cease.

So, as we left the car and headed toward the entrance, the Forresthill Bridge is visible, and maybe you an tell, but it's being worked on. It starred in the Vin Diesel film XXX (I think), as well as a post I wrote called One Time...

The early morning sun was wreaking havoc on my camera's light meter, but it did have this cool effect of making the powerlines almost invisible until they get the dark trees for a background.

You know me and shadow pictures...I think there's a line from Stairway here somewhere...

This is the "Watch Your Shit" warning. You could be fine, and then, without notice, you could be drowning. Yikes.

So, the following pictures really only kinda tell the story of the first half of our day. Right away we say this millipede cruising on our path, so we checked it out and moved along.

Like so many other of the sights along this trip, some things were just beautiful and part of our attention for moments only, beauty taken for granted. I tried my best with my camera, but you know how it gets.

Here are some cool looking old concrete anchors for the quarry excavation rigging that existed on this site in earlier times. I think they look cool.

Many of the places on the journey looked so awesome and inviting that it was hard not to just jump in. The water, pure snow runoff, is only really enticing when the surrounding air is about twenty to thirty degrees hotter than it was on this particular day.

Here we see Norm fishing. The rod and reel he had were nice and fancy, our friend Chris mentoring him on where he should spend his money.

Brief moments of nature. it looked so pretty, but there was far too much poison oak to just go traipsing around in it.

Here's another glassy reflection pool area. The water behind where I took this picture was pushed around a tiny island (that we explored one at a time since it was so tiny) and sped into a bit more of a rapid. It was the first place Norm caught any fish.

The first fish caught, one of the local rainbow trouts, put up one hell of a fight, more so, it seemed, that maybe it should have under normal circumstances. After we pulled it out, we saw what might have motivating it:

It had what looked like really fresh wound markings, markings that led us to believe that it could have been made by some bird of prey. It appeared as if this fish had survived a run in with an osprey and was a little gunshy about being hooked. We saluted it and let it go. Two rare survivals in a short time span for that trout. The odds just seemed preposterous to us.

This next picture is of a cave where they found wool mammoth carcasses, along with ancient wolves and giant sloths, and another creature I can't remember from the info-graphic. They were discovered by some German guy, forgotten about, sealed in by a forced avalanche, and rediscovered by stoner kids. Now the cave is gated off and we're not sure who's allowed in, but intrepid bloggers don't seem to be on the list.

This part of the day ended around 3 pm. We'd spent 8 hours at the Auburn Nature Park alone, and were wiped the hell out. After walking between nine and ten miles, we drug ourselves to the car and headed back to our respective places, ready to rest before phase two of Operation Long Day for Norm's Birthday commenced.