The House that Bigfoot built

Like I said in my last post I had taken cute grand daughter up to Mt St Helens recently. When we hit the road for this adventure she asked where we were going. "To see a Volcano!" was my reply.  That was very cool with her.
I promised her that on this trip we would find Bigfoot. This got her telling me all she knew about Bigfoot.
She was very surprised when I pulled into this place. This is a concrete statue of the big guy at a place called Bigfoot Country near a town called Kid Valley Wa.

 For those who may have not heard of such a thing, Bigfoot is supposedly a creature that is hidden in many of the forest of the US. This thing is supposedly 7 to 8 feet tall or maybe bigger. More on that later.

Cute grand daughter and I had taken a hike out this trail that ran through a typical part of western Washington State forest. It had been cut down and replanted in the past and now the trees were all covered with hanging moss. Rather cool sight on a beautiful sunny day. As we walked into this small piece of forest and hiked over a couple of streams that crossed the trail I started seeing a lot of trees broken down and laying at odd angles. Must have been some crazy wind storm.
I stopped and took a picture of the cute grand daughter with her twice as tall as she is walking stick near a double tree arch.

 Tree arches are caused by heavy wet snow pulling a tree over and bending it's top to the ground. Those trees are actually pinned under logs to keep them arched.

I took the cute grand daughter back down the mountain and went to dinner at Micky D's with her grand mother, my cute girlfriend. We took the cute grand daughter home and returned to our own home.
That night I asked the cute girlfriend if she wanted to go on a small adventure, and that it required a little bit of hiking. She wasn't sure but she seemed interested. One of her feet has been misbehaving and causing her pain so it was a touch and go situation.
She agreed the next morning, and I took her to breakfast and we started up the Highway to that Hiking trail.
She found some flowers to take a picture of right off the bat. It looked like this but was purple.

There was also some skunk cabbage blooming thank goodness no smell.

I had brought her up here for a second set of eyes on what I had seen here on this trail. She has a good head on her shoulders and is very smart. I think I knew what all this crazy tree activity was. I told her what I saw and she looked at it with a critical eye.

She was very interested in what I was showing her. There are multiple trees laying at odd angles all along this trail.

 Trees die and fall down all the time. Some fall and land up against other trees.

This can happen occasionally, but in a whole bunch of places in one area seems to be a little weird. What is even weirder is the fact that these two trees haven't fallen on to this tree like this because they are dead and uprooted. These two trees are bent at there bases to cross like that. Above on the picture with the cute grand daughter with those two arched trees, that is how you start a tree to bend like these above.
This video shows the trees whole length. Push play then stop the video instantly, the trees bases are seen there. They are bowed and bent so that they cross this upright tree.

The path goes right under these two trees. If you peer into the woods you can see more trees leaning like this. I didn't hike into the woods to inspect the other "leaners", the litter on the ground was hard to navigate on. Looking at these was interesting enough.

 These trees have been manipulated, to say the least. I know mother nature can do some magical things, but I'm lost on how this was done by heavy snow. This trail sits at about the 1000ft level and in this temperate rainforest area it more likely rains here more than it snows. Most of the time snow bent trees straighten back up and reach for the light again.

Broken branches have been "placed" in certain place, this does not happen by accident.

This one is at the southern part of the trail, and the next one is at the northern part of the trail.

Crossed sticks mean anything to anybody. Stop maybe?
This isn't Forest Service land, and I have never heard of them doing this type of barricading. It is weird.
Those trees that were arching over the cute grand daughter had been set to bend down by putting them under a log.

Here you can see that those bent over saplings are crossed and wedged under stuff. Is this some sort of trail sign or something I don't know. Could a man do this, yes but not by himself. The wind and snow can not do this.
Here you can see over the top of one of the bent trees and look down the hill to a small gully, with more trees leaning on other trees and also some broken trees.

Something is different about this place.
When I was out there with the cute grand daughter we found a nest where something had been sleeping under a log. When I took this pick I looked over my phone and saw an interesting structure behind this nest.

You can barely see a little hollow dug out where something had rested. I'm not sure what this is though.

That structure between those trees, it had a hollow area inside it. It had the look of being stacked or laid there as like a shelter. Both times I was there I didn't have the shoes to go meandering out into this area. Checkered Vans never work as expeditionary shoes...next time I go out there I'm going to where my hiking boots and bring a flash light.
Cute girlfriend said she though something had been digging around in this dead bug eaten stump so we inspected it a little and I took a picture of this near it's base.

I'm sorry there is nothing there for scale, but this indentation was pretty big, a lot bigger than my heal.

I have been tap dancing around what my theory is on what made all this tree bending mysterious stuff. I hesitate to say it out loud. If it gets out that you think this stuff is real most people think you may have stepped off the deep end. People think you sit in your mothers basement with an aluminum foil hat perusing the seedy side of the internet sniffling a lot and eating ding dongs with greasy fingers...sigh

I will stand tall now and say that I think this might be....might be...Sasquatch/Bigfoot related. I have one more piece of evidence to show later that may better support this. I will only say this is a theory at this point.

How weird is this guy that writes this Larsen Adventure Chronicles?  I'm your average Joe Six Pack that drives a truck for a living. I have been to college, but as you can see by my writing I have failed my mother tongue in grammar. I'm now in my Fifties and try to lead an interesting life and try to take in life as it comes at me and see it for what it is and shy away from those things that seem just too fantastic to be real.

That being said I have always been interested in this little bit of folklore called Bigfoot. I look at it as a theory.
I don't like it when someone asks if you believe in something. Belief is for something like god, a wispy entity that you have to have faith in. A faith that lets you believe god is in your life.

People go about this stuff all wrong in my eyes. They do treat this as a belief and not as a more scientific theory. I went out to this place to debunk what I saw. I'm ok with the possibility that some humans have been playing in the woods and bending trees.

This Bigfoot thing goes way back to the 70's when I was a kid. It was a real big thing back then all the news reports of people seeing a large upright creatures in the woods. The cheesy monster movies made during that time. That type of pulp was good enough to interest a 10 year old boy. I would read stories about things like this from those old things called books!...I know kids now a days don't know what they are...grin

The name Bigfoot actually goes back to the late 50's. During this time people heard about the Yeti/Abominable Snowman from the explorers of the Himalayas and creatures of this nature entered into the popular press. Don't get me started on the press. They are part of the problem with things of this nature. They are notorious for printing sensational stuff to sell newspapers. This is also part of my theory against Bigfoot. Fabrications by the News to the point of making things up.

How funny as I write this a large not all that tall hairy man in dark cloths just walked by the front of the house....lol

In 1958 the term "Bigfoot" entered the lexicon when a bulldozer operator in Del Norte County California noticed very large foot prints around his equipment. This bulldozer road crew had been making roads into the hills near Bluff Creek area of California and the locals had heard about these mysterious "Big Foot" prints and a reporter from the Humbolt Times shortened it to Bigfoot and the name is now part of history. Follow the link above fore the Wikipedia article.

The press may have been trying to sell newspapers on this story but the funny thing is that stories like this go way back into the early 1800's.  Back then they called them "Wild Man". They are still finding old time newspaper articles that all describe the same creature. Very interesting to read these old article even just for history sake. They just don't write like that now today. Link is above click on Wild Man.

Like I said this is all pulp for the geeky ADD mind, but as my dad always says "you have to beat the wheat from the chaff" on things you see and read, with the internet this is doubly so.

What took a wild turn in all this Bigfoot stuff was when these two guys came out of the woods near Bluff Creek California with what they said was film of one of the creatures. This is the now world famous Patterson-Gimlin Film. If these two guys hoaxed everyone on this it is a beauty. The person in the hairy suit has breasts and you can see the muscles move under the suit. Which of course points away from it being a hoax. Here it is on Youtube.


This is not the whole film, there is more to it, but it show something walking in the woods.
This film has been analyzed to death over the years, but it does pique the interest.

While I was searching for this clip on Youtube I found this link to the show Survivorman. I guess he went out with this guy to a place that is supposedly hot with Sasquatch activity. I don't know how long this link will be up but I will put it here because the first thing they talk about is the wood structures, some like I photographed.
This link may go dead after a while, but there are other links on Youtube that show more about this wood structure phenomenon.


The reason I started this two part blog out with the town I live in is because back in 1924 This was Bigfoot central. Some miners had a claim up near Mt St Helens and had come back to town to tell this wild tail of how they shot an Apeman and his whole family came down upon these miners and there cabin and they barely made it out of the mountains alive. They were rounding up a bunch of men with rifles to get the Apemen when one of the local Indian Elders came forward and said not to shoot them because they were one of the hidden tribes of Indians that lived in that area. After that Kelso was kind of a hot bed and there are still siting in this area up to this day. Click on 1924 to see the link to this story.

I had read that story in my youth and was reminded of it when I was researching my new town here and that story popped up in the search.

Now we have Reality TV Shows like Finding Bigfoot, and now it looks like Survivorman all hunting Bigfoot and every state seems to have a Bigfoot research group of some sort. If you want to see how many reports there are of Bigfoot you should go to the BFRO site They have reports for almost every state except Hawaii. Some of them are rather scary tail of what people have seen.
This is one of my favorite reports from that website. Don't read it late at night! Report 2782
This is one from a river just south of here. I have actually been to this river. Report 7382

I'm so leery of writing this because some may think I have finally slipped into la la land. Here is a perfect example why. When the cute girlfriend and I went to look at these structures and were about to leave from the site, a couple drove up in a Toyota. They asked us how far out the viewing site was. I told them it was a one mile hike. The didn't want to go that far, and were about to get back in their car when I told them there was a viewing platform a 100 yards in. I made the mistake of telling them if they went any farther they would start seeing some interesting stuff. That was when the cute girlfriend said that I "believe" in Bigfoot. There is that stupid word. I wish she hadn't have done that...lol  This guy and his wife start talking about Chemtrails and the local monster they had back east where they were from. I felt they were now skeptic and I showed them what I had just found. Here is a video I posted on Youtube of what I had found. You will hear my voice but it trails off at the end.


 I was looking at this uprooted tree because it looked out of place. The tree didn't fall there. There is no hole in the ground to show that the tree fell in that spot and the root ball is sitting on top of some mossy branches.
This tree was moved to this location.
This is right next to the path. I walked over to it and was looking it over. It is moss covered. I was wondering if I could lift it and where I would lift it from. It was too big to lift but I looked in the area that I would have lifted it from and I saw a hair wedged into the moss. I told the cute girl friend to come and see what I found. It wasn't a very big specimen and I didn't have a good hold on it and I dropped it. There was no way to find it in all that forest litter on the ground. I was about to walk away when I looked again and saw the hint of a strand of hair sticking out of the moss. When I first pulled on it I was thinking tree or moss fiber. I pulled out an 8 inch long strand of brownish red thick coarse hair. It has a fine wave to it and is thick like horse mane hair.

Big whoop right...lol
It is interesting at least to me. Do I have a specimen of Sasquatch hair...maybe...maybe not. The hair was embedded in the moss like a hair would be that was trapped in it while it was being carried...arm hair?

What do I do with it? Well I keep it for now and put it up as possible Sasquatch hair...and I might show it to someone who asked to see it. I think I have contaminated it too much to have it tested. I'm not going to delude myself that this is real Bigfoot hair, but finding it where a being would lift that log is a little strange.

I leave it up to you. This article is here for you to read and inform, but as my father always says you have to beat the wheat from the chaff....and that hair and my silly theory of this being caused by Bigfoot maybe chaff.

I'm ok with people not believing me. Skepticism is what is needed here but not to the detriment that we don't look at this scientifically. Skeptics need to keep a watchful eye on things to see if something is not right or if someone is hoaxing. Have I been hoaxed...maybe...if I have I have something new to blog about. The hair is a problem though.

Skepticism vs denial. I have seen too many people just jump up and yell hoax at every possible mention of this topic. I'm not sure what there reasoning is. I think it is fear of the unknown myself. They have no room in there life and what is around them that there could actually be a large biped other than humans on this earth. Yet history is full of giants, ogres, trolls that live under bridges. Most of the tribes of America have stories of such a beast and they all have different names for it. There have been sitings of such things in all continents except Antarctica. Many reliable people have seen something that they can't explain, hell even Teddy Roosevelt told a story of a beast just like Bigfoot.

This is what I'm really up against though as far as my theory goes.




This is just my experience and what I saw, and my presentation of my theory. I have now confirmed what all my good friends have thought for years...I'm nuts....grin

4th of July in Kelso Washington

Yesterday was the 4th of July, my first here in Washington State.  Well my first in 46 years, I was born in this state. The weather on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, were very hot and muggy, kind of above the norm for this part of the country. I was expecting to be sitting out by our pool all day with all that heat but the day started out kind of cool.  It was a quick weather change.

Last week the Cute Girlfriend had bought a pool for the Grandkids, although I think it was more for her so she could sit in the water....grin.  It is one of those plastic pools with the blow up ring around the top.  The set up in instructions says it needs to sit on flat ground.  The lot we live on slopes down to a river, so level ground is not an option here. There is sort of a berm to the south of the house where the land looks like it is level. Key word is "LOOKS".  I set up the pool in the "level" area and started to fill it. I knew I was in trouble when all the water started pooling all on one side. I dumped out the water and stuck a shovel in the ground to see if I could level it...NOT.  We had a friend come over with his tiller and loosen the soil up some. I raked it all flat the day after and set up the pool and started to fill.  Again there was still a slope.  I had even mounded up the soil, let's call it grass, on the down hill side. The water started pushing the edge down hill up over the mound I had made.  OK put on my engineering hat.  Cute Girlfriend and I went to Home Cheapo and bought some sand and a rebar stake.

I had a straight 2X4 at the house and a torpedo level. I drilled a hole in the 2X4, through the 4 inch side so the stake would go through it and I could spin it in a circle with the level on the board to level the ground. I put the hole in the 2X4 at the 6' mark to make a 12' circle with little tail past the stake in hope to keep the whole area flat. I took to leveling and filling. As I went around something would change and when I would start to get back to the starting point something would be out of wack.  I cut off the tail end of the 2X4 near the stake thinking it was riding up near the stake throwing off my level. I re-level the circle again and had all sides level. I even pulled sand from the middle to make the base kind of cup a little.

Set up pool start refill. The water filled the bottom of the pool evenly but as it got to the top it was still leaning down hill. At that point it was just going to be good enough. At least it was shallow enough so the youngest grandchild could keep her head above water.  I'm not claiming a success on this one but I'm not calling it a fail. The kids all spent the hot days playing in it. My water bill is going to be huge with all that dumping of water to get it level.  Oh well the kids had fun.

Ok so we have the back yard mostly set up for the 4th. Fireworks are legal hear in this part of the state, understandable so, it is so wet here nothing can catch fire. As is normal for this time of year, the week before the 4th the fireworks stands pop up. You can even buy those mortars here in this state and fire off your own sky ward fireworks. This is counter to where I use to live, Southern California, where the sun shinning through a piece of broken glass can make the whole place go up in smoke.

On the 1st the fireworks started to go off. On the 2nd they were even lighting them off during the day, On the 3rd the neighbor hood to the south west of us, he whispers, trailer park, had them going until late in the night.
Cute Girlfriend had got some deals on fireworks on that "Groupon" site and she came home the other day with these boxes, and the usual party pack of fountains and sparklers.

Poor Cute Girlfriend had to work on the 4th, so I kissed her as she went out the door in the morning and set up the house a little and put out the Flag.

You can see the pool back on the left. That Flag is a real one with stitched stars and everything. I believe it is one of those flags you can get that has flown over the US Capitol. I got it from my Grandad.

I set up a launch pad on the dock back by the river. Here is our dock.

We live in a town called Kelso, named after Kelso Scotland, it is on the Cowlitz river, which the river in our back yard drains to. On the west side of the Cowlitz is West Kelso and the City of Longview Washington.  They are kind of the twin cities here in Washington State, well besides Walla Walla, oh man is that an old joke. Longview has a big festival around Lake Sacajawea, a nice park and walking path encircles the lake.
That is where they light off their fireworks from and they have bands and food booths put up by local Churches, Rotary, Swim Team and the like, plus the usual swap meet type booth.

After the Cute Girlfriend got home we loaded up the truck with grandkids and headed down to the lake to see what was going on. They had bands there and all the fun foods like Fried Twinkies, Garlic Fries, Fried Oreos. We got the kids faces painted.  Girlfriend found a nice summer dress with a tag on it that said "FREE" on it, of course the guy at the booth said it was $45. We had a little fun with that one. We saw a guy with a Nimbus 2000 on a table I spotted Harry Potter's Broom first...grin. One of the grand daughters saw some other Harry Potter stuff there and she got a wand, fancy stick with a jewel rock stuck on it, and some potions, one smelled good the the other NOT.

There was this one smiling young man with a booth that had all these color photos he had taken. He was 17 and had a very large portfolio of photos that he had taken. He was very good. Everyone seemed to come by and tell them of some of the pictures they had taken and he kind of just smiled and just semi-engaged in the conversation. I noticed when I started talking about the pictures I had taken in North Dakota he just smiled big and was only 1/4 there with me....lol  I asked him more questions about how he got his shots and if he enhanced them and he told me how he took the picture and what filters, that got him a little more talkative. He was definitely the artist type, the good with his photos type, people skills need polishing type. He was young though and had a passion for his work. Cute Girlfriend and I liked the picture he had of an abandoned farm house with the stary Milky Way behind it. It was a long exposure shot with a flash light in the upstairs of the house for effect. We bought it. He talked of his work like it was and addiction so, as I handed him some cash for the picture I told him we were helping fund his habit. The picture of a picture does not do it justice.

A big plus what the story that went with the photo. He said this house was rumored to be haunted. He wanted the light effect in the upstairs of the house so he went up there to put a flashlight in a room. He said as he was going up the stairs he spooked some owl and it scared the crap out of him. He just threw the light in the room and ran out of the house.  I loved that story....lol

So we got some Fried Twinkies and Oreos, and my favorite the Garlic Fries and headed back home to start the grill and get ready to light off our fireworks. After dinner we sat a little and watch TV and played on computers.

At dusk I went out and wet down the grass around the dock and also wet the dock down, I had put 4 concrete pavers down to protect the dock and give the fireworks a good base to go off on.  Cute Girlfriend had got some of those "punk stick" lighters, but they were nowhere to be found, darn ghost moving stuff again.

I get everything ready and have a nice butane lighter to get things started. Every time I tried to light a firework it was like something was blowing out the damn lighter.  A slight breeze was blowing and no matter how I blocked it somehow it blew out, darn ghost again!

My good lighter with the flame out on the end of a tube to keep your hands singe free stopped working. none of the other good lighters we had could be found. Ghost?  We dug up some more lighters that were just as problematic, but with some fancy hand positions we got all the fountains lit off.  Cute Girlfriend had got these firework boxes, something I had never seen before, that said "Attitude Adjustment", great a Hank Williams Jr. song....lol  I thought they were just more fountains. Being from California you never get something that shoots into the air.

So I put this box on the launch pad. I'm a little dubious, because it has a fuse taped to the outside of it and say "LIGHT HERE" on it.  I still think this is a fountain when I light it and have the hose ready figuring it will burn down the dock as the fountain lights the paper around it.  I'm walking away from it with my back turned until I get away from it. A small boom happens, I spin and follow the sparks up. POW! We have a real fireworks show in a box. It even has a little grand finale. Very cool. Buying more of those next year!

Kind of funny to watch all the personal aerial fireworks displays going off all around you. Rarely saw that in California, very illegal to do it.  Cute Girlfriend said when she lived in Vancouver Wa. she never remembered this much fireworks going off around her house.