Friday, May 25, 2007

Party in Rock Creek

This Memorial Day weekend our good friend Shilo decided it was time to throw a party at his parents farm in Deadwood, OR where he grew up.  It was called something like "party in Rock Creek".  The town of Deadwood is pretty much in the middle of nowhere in Oregon.  Even the guidebooks I have for hiking and backpacking list no hikes or anything spectacular in that area, yet I thought it was beautiful. 
    It took Eleanor, Toshi, Chris and I an hour to drive to his farm.  I was extremely hung over from a party at Eleanor and Anna's Friday night after kickball.  I don't know why I drank so much that night.  I guess it was just because I was destressing from the past few weeks.  I didn't even wake up until 1pm on Saturday and barely dragged myself together to hit the road with those guys.  On the way we stopped at a couple yard sales to buy some really eclectic stuff (didn't see anything that interested me though).  Right before we got to Toshi's I spotted a huge bald eagle out the window on a branch overlooking a river.  We all jumped out to go look at it but spooked it before we could get a great photo.
    When we got to Shilo's farm I was a bit freaked out at first because it appears like the kinda place people get murdered in movies in when they break down with their cars.  AarongoatEvery vehicle in the area had either an animal skull or doll head screwed into the hood or bumper.  There was a wierd Native American sweathouse in a field (which later I thought was really cool because Shilo's family has a strong connection with the Native American community there), a car graveyard down by the river with about 5 wrecks slowly sinking down into the earth, and a crazy amount of animals
running amuck.  There was a big sexually frustrated bull in a coral that kept bellowing his disgust at a younger bull put in there with him and there were two beautiful horses that shilo's family are trying to breed in the other coral.  There were also sheep running around the yard, goats up in the hills, and a cute baby goat that we passed around the party a bit who was only 2 months old so everyone could hold it and pet its soft fur.  Apparently the baby goat has a nervouse defect or something and has trouble finding it's balance.  I even heard shilo trying to pawn the goat off on Dennis to take it back to Corvallis as a pet!!
    At first I was a little wierded out by the amount of local older people showing up in ti-dye'd shirts but then I just got used to it.  It was definitely a local hippy party forCrawfish
sure.  Everyone brought dishes for the potluck and the food was consummed almost instantaneously.  There was a court for basketball and Eleanor also set up croquet.  I spent some time wandering around the farm checking out all the cool eclectic stuff in the yard and hunting for crawdads in the stream that circles it.  I guess that's the one cool thing about having a farm at the end of a road in the middle of nowhere... you can do anything you want with the place and who's gonna care??   I went around Rock Creek and gathered up a cupfull of huge crawdads to cook up and eat but decided not to when I couldn't find a proper way to steam them over the fire so I threw them back.
    After the food was devoured they opened up the barn doors, wheeled out some Band
huge speakers and a DJ with a laptop and a bunch of the locals with guitars, drums, and even a saxaphone (which Eleanor even played later in the night) held a jam sessions for several hours.  RobinSax
even joined in with her violin for a bit.  The jam session later turned into a dance party to electronica from the laptop while Shilo's best friend Jessie and I hung out by the big bonfire and cooked up some of his own farmed beef, and Elk that he had shot the year before.  I now believe that elk is my favorite type of meet.  It was sooo delicious, as was the fresh beef that he had raised on grains and hay. 
    At around 2am I decided I was pretty burnt out from everything and headed to the Shotgun
tent to watch a movie on my ipod and hit the sack.  I wasn't really drinking because of the night before at Eleanor's.  At about 4am Eleanor joined me in the tent and quickly passed out hammered next to me!  :).  In the morning we all woke up and departed for various places on the coast.  I lost my Reef Fanning sandles somewhere in the cleanup.  I assume somebody probably took them home by accident.  Oh well... guess I'll have to buy a new pair for the summer.  That pair was getting pretty worn anyway.   



Great party at Rock Creek!!!!


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