Visiting Sheena: Non-stop smiles, laughs, acid trip, a wonderful group of welcoming women, and camping in the beautiful outdoors!
I flew up to visit Sheena in Oregon! Finally got some camping/outdoor time in and it was awesome. Having the means to take a last-minute trip and enjoy the excitement of plane travel again has given me the bug again. For so long I felt stuck, in more ways than one, and the trip up to see Sheena and meet all of her incredible circle of women friends was the perfect welcome back into what I hope will be even more trips to come.
Adelle dropped me off at the airport, and I was flying out of San Diego before noon. The airport situation was easy, except I got tired of not having a bag on wheels QUICK! I had to take my bigger duffel bag since I was taking more of my camping gear (tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, etc.)
On the plane, I was seated next to this older, gray-haired woman, and she was as sweet as can be. She was also a VAL! She lives in Salem, OR, so she was just visiting San Diego and I can’t remember who she was visiting but I recall her saying how much she loved Chula Vista. She also kept telling me that I was going to do all the greatest things in life that I wanted and that I should make the most of life. It was sweet to hear that encouragement, I assured her I’d do my best to do all the things I wanted to do in my young life while I was still able to, and that I’d continue to be diligent about wearing my earplugs in loud settings! Haha.
I landed in Oregon around 2 and Sheena picked me up.
From there we went straight to the grocery store, Fred Meyer, to pick up my contributions of food for the group share. We stopped for McDonald’s before making the drive out. Yummm. The drive out to our campsite at Lake Timothy in the Mt Hood area wasn’t bad at all, about 2 hours only. Goes without saying but it was just stunning up there. Plush and green!
Sheena caught me up on what’s been going on with her. She had actually just broken up with her boyfriend Steve the day before 💔 Sucks.
I’m so inspired by her though. Her level of self-work, emotional maturity, and comfort with navigating conflict is incredible. I’m sure having a therapist has helped a ton. I really need to seriously think about getting on the therapist train. I only ever hear great things.
Anyway. When we arrived at our campground, we settled into our campsite, a nice big corner spot right next to the bathrooms! Also, the campground was not even a month old yet, so the bathrooms actually smelled good, and the floors were clean, UNHEARD of. It was great. We set up our tents, unloaded, had the music going, and waited for her friends to start arriving.
Pictured above is the group of us. In order from left to right are Annabelle, Rebecca, Monica, Me, Liz, Patty, and Sheena. The dog pictured is Stacey, Rebecca’s dog, and somewhere on the ground not seen is Liz’s dog, Frida, as in Frida Khalo.
I felt immediately comfortable around each and every one of her friends. Everyone was so genuine, kind, funny, smart, and just had such depth to them. She has really cultivated a strong circle. I would like to expand my circle of trusted friends into something that resembles what she has.
The level of openness. It was nice to be able to reconnect with Sheena again in this way. She is my favorite person to enjoy the outdoors with and I owe a lot of the trips I have experienced in my life to her, for coordinating and making them happen. I miss that so much.
After this trip, I am definitely looking forward to taking more trips up to see her and doing more in that area.
On Saturday, we all did acid! 🙈 Sheena and I did a full tab, and the other girls all did a half tab, except Liz, who did a half of a half, haha! The trip was amazing, I couldn’t stop smiling, and I always laugh a ton when I trip with Sheena. She gets the giggles like no one else I’ve seen, it’s pretty hilarious.
We spent that day walking the trails around the lake, hung our hammocks up, and just enjoyed the views and each other’s company.
There was only one moment for about 40 minutes where my trip got so intense that I felt like I was moving in slow motion, and seeing everything move in slow motion.
The photos Sheena took somehow got warped and they just so happened to perfectly reflect what I was seeing there for a while.
It was really HOT too which I don’t do well in the heat while tripping, so that was giving me some anxious feelings.
Also on Saturday, thick smoke from some fires elsewhere in the state or neighboring states rolled in and thoroughly ruined our view of Mt. Hood. It was also pretty smelly! Owell! That’s the PNW for you.
While still tripping, we all took the walk back to our campsite to regroup, try to eat, drink, and then head down to the lake to chill, and put our toes in the water. I stayed ashore and let my trip fizzle out, while all the girls except Annabelle took their floats out onto the water. That’s when I saw this adventure cat!!
So cute!
After our dusk time at the lake, we all went back to camp to transition into the night. Liz brought a game that included a bunch of cards that had different prompts of various depths geared toward getting to know one another. That was such a cool thing to bring to a camping trip. I would love to do that again. I need to ask Sheena to get that deck info for me so I can have that on hand. We all spent the rest of the night chatting, munching, and listening to music before it got too cold to stay up any longer (campfire ban for obvious reasons).
All in all, I enjoyed the trip so much and although it went by in the blink of an eye, we made the most of it and I can’t wait for the next one!
View of Mt. Hood on Friday night, before the smoke rolled in on Saturday.
Side quest!