Why is it that when your alarm goes off very early in the morning, it’s never easy? Without fail, it’s a borderline miserable experience. No matter how early you go to bed the night before, and even if you’re getting up to do something you enjoy or go on vacation. When that alarm goes off....it plain sucks.
How do you fight that urge to stay under the covers where it’s comfortable and get some extra sleep?
I tell myself, “Let’s dominate today."
"Let’s go make something happen."
I get into this mental battle with myself because ultimately, some days, our brain wants to fight back.
You say to yourself:
"No, I don’t need to go to the gym today I’ll take the day off."
"It’s 40 degrees outside it’s too cold."
"I forgot to set out my clothes it’s too late."
"I didn’t realize you were soft?"
"My bad, I forgot that you were mentally weak."
"Oh okay. Let’s go then. I’ll show you."
It may seem extreme, but sometimes you gotta have that battle in your head to fight the urge to be lazy. Life will give you off days. Not something I came up with, but in fact I read it from ex Navy Seal, Jocko Willink. And I believe that fits in perfectly with imposing discipline in your life. He basically said “life” will give you off days. You get sick. Your kid has to go to the doctor or something. Taxes need to be done. You're on vacation. Traveling that day….unavoidable and unpredictable events will happen in life that will provide you with off days.
Attack life.
I didn’t have to fight that mental battle this morning. The alarm going off still sucked don't get me wrong. But I wanted those pictures. Ian wanted those pictures. Tristan wanted those pictures. We were counting on the other person to get up. That’s all the motivation I needed.
We get up and hit the road, not a far drive, I believe it was only 20 minutes or so if I remember correctly. But we wanted to get a head start so we could get to the Natural Bridges and set up before the sun came up. I really wanted to hit Gold Beach during sunrise so the plan was Natural Bridges and then drive up to Gold Beach afterwards.
It was pretty, but to be honest I think I speak for all three of us (Ian, Tristan and I) that we were slightly disappointed with the sunrise. Disappointed isn't the right word, I think we just hoped for something a little more 'epic'. It was pretty, and provided a different atmosphere than last nights sunset as you can easily tell in the pictures.
Really cool though, and I’m glad we got up for this. Ian and Tristan captured some incredible shots this morning though. Much better than what I captured. It’s kinda fun to see the three of us take pictures in the same places and see how differently they turn out. We all have a unique style from one another and aim for different tones.
We went up to Gold Beach and Cape Sebastian and took a few more excellent photo’s there; to me this was the highlight of getting up early. We thought it was so cool we actually went back to get Wyatt and Charlie because we thought they would appreciate it also.
After we picked them up, we didn’t go all the way back to Cape Sebastian but pulled off just south, at Myers Creek and spent a good amount of time on the beach there while the tide was low. This entire area is beautiful, absolutely stunning. I see why everyone wants to live out here.
I get it.
Where else do you get views like this in your backyard?
Don’t get me wrong I think Florida beaches are better and more enjoyable but there’s no denying the unique landscape here you don’t get anywhere else.
Myers Creek was a fun pitstop, and we experienced the tide coming in. Places we were standing and taking pictures disappeared in a matter of minutes. It’s insane how fast the tide comes in. You could almost walk into the little cove there when we first arrived and 30 minutes later you’d be swimming.
After Myers Creek we worked our way north into Gold Beach for some grub. ‘The Barnacle Bistro’ that sounds like a fun place; good reviews too? Let’s do it.
Come on, look at those fish tacos!
The food here once again hit the spot, wasn’t the best place we ate (that’s coming up though)
But awesome food, if you’re ever around Gold Beach, go check out the Barnacle Bistro.
I gotta tell you, I know it’s a tad creepy, but I’m really glad google tracks locations where you’ve taken photos. In the future I’ll have to do a better job of writing down where I went and in what order I went places. But using the photo location has saved me so many times on where we ate on this trip, or what order we went somewhere to hike.
Granted, I could also not wait until 8 months later to write about the trip and that might help too. But I love that feature on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9.
(Come on just sponsor me already Samsung how many name drops do I need to give you.)
We continued our drive north and made a stop at ‘Battle Rock’ in Port Orford, Oregon. Pretty cool place and has some historic significance to it. We also stopped at a lighthouse on the coast and walked around a bit.
Reverse path and now we are headed south again into California. Our stop for the night is Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park!
We didn’t do much for the rest of the evening. Considering we were in Port Orford after lunch, we had a long drive here so we just took it easy for the night and camped in the Redwoods. We had a good hike planned for tomorrow morning we were looking forward to though.
