on tour: seattle, portland, eureka, sf, fresno, sb, sd, phoenix, slc, boise

I'm so excited you guys are coming this way. I Live about 30 minutes north of Salt Lake City in Ogden and would love to have you guys over for some organic dinner and my lovely wife's unbeatable homemade pies if you have time. If you still had open time in the area maybe I could help coordinate a film screening with Q&A after or something up here in Ogden. Let me know how I can help. This is my first forum post but I heard about you on The Survival Podcast and have listened to and enjoyed every single one of your podcasts, love your articles and would love to meet/help you in any way I can. I am smitten with Permaculture and am a new "master gardener" with Permaculture stars in my eyes. I am also the director of the Ogden Bicycle Collective (a community bike shop like Free cycles in Missoula). Let me know if I can be of help.
josh

Geoff Rich wrote:WE could use some support with some of our logistical challenges. For example:

1. We have some down time in Newport, Oregon, and Paul wants to gaze at the Ocean. We are looking for a safe, cheap, legal place to park the Land Whale while we overnight there.

Greetings Permie Whalers!

Joanne is correct the best place to park the Whale would be South Beach State Park ( http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_209.php ) in South Beach, which is just about 1/2 to 3/4 miles south of the 101 bridge in Newport. They also have a dump station there and easy access to probably the least populated beach area in Newport. The Nye Beach area in Newport (on the coast side as opposed to the Bay side of town) has plenty of nice restaurants and hang out locales for music, food and locals, though you'll find an abundance of tourists as well. You might check out Cafe Mundo ( http://www.cafemundo.us/ ) for good eats and local entertainment or Nana's Irish Pub. I no longer live in Newport though I lived there from 99 to 2011 and know the area well.

We'll propably attend the Petaluma talk (we need some seeds anyway).

Besides checking the Muni schedule, you should check the various Ferry schedules. Blue and Gold and Golden Gate Transit. You could probably take a Golden Gate transit bus into the city from Petaluma. We'll still be working on the terraforming of our front yard that weekend or I'd volunteer as a chauffeur. We're participating in Santa Rosa's Cash for Grass program. The cardboard is going down over the lawn this morning.

Julie

The tour begins.

We are lumbering down the road. Our portable high speed internet is working. We are currently just a bit south of seattle.

We should arrive at our first destination in about four hours: friendly haven rise farm with Jacqueline Freeman:

ditto on what Julie said...

Re. the land whale in SF question; you may google whether you can park
it at either the Larkspur (more likely) or Sausalito ferries. A wonderful
way to travel to the city and once there you can tram it...

Also the Marin Airporter runs up into Sonoma and all the way down to the airport - quick and cheap and more comfy than the public bus system.

Joanne Daschel wrote:Geoff,
A good option for parking the land whale is South Beach State Park on the south end of Newport. http://cms.oregon.gov/OPRD/PARKS/Pages/reserve.aspx
Joanne

Done! Thanks Joanne, great tip!

Timothy Brogan wrote:The Nye Beach area in Newport (on the coast side as opposed to the Bay side of town) has plenty of nice restaurants and hang out locales for music, food and locals, though you'll find an abundance of tourists as well. You might check out Cafe Mundo ( http://www.cafemundo.us/ ) for good eats and local entertainment or Nana's Irish Pub.

Yes! Paul & I happened upon the Nye Beach area the last time we were in Newport. (The beach podcasts where we talked about pelicans, listeners questions and books, if I recall correctly.) And we ate at Cafe Mundo, which was a fun little place. Thanks again for great info, Timothy.

Maybe we need a beach potluck Monday night (8/27). We'll be at South Beach State Park, space A05, though it says we can't check in until 4:00.

Blammo! Flat tire!

Called "good sam". It is gonna be a while ...

Really fantastic to be at Jacqueline and Joseph's farm. More like vacation than work. Got some really excellent video yesterday. Gonna get a podcast today.

Just got back from the Beaverton Oregon event. Good times. I even found fellow permies in my area!

Thanks to all who work hard to make this stuff happen.

2. In San Francisco, California, Paul has his heart set on gazing at the Palace of Fine Arts (one of the most beautiful things ever created out of concrete). I have my heart set on NOT driving the Land Whale in San Francisco. I would like to find a safe, legal and cheap place to dock the Land Whale more or less outside of the City and then take public transportation to the POFA and back.

I suggest you reconsider and drive in SF. The Palace of Fine Arts is almost at the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge. You can visit there, then just go due south on Van Ness to an on-ramp to get you across the Bay Bridge. Simple, no big hills, and SO much more time-efficient than avoiding SF entirely. Just my two cents...
Wayne

This thread is now three pages long! Note: speaking gigs are listed in the Aug. 24 post and the updated tour schedule is in the Aug. 20 post (updated Aug. 23).

Geoff Rich wrote:WE could use some support with some of our logistical challenges. For example:

1. We have some down time in Newport, Oregon, and Paul wants to gaze at the Ocean. We are looking for a safe, cheap, legal place to park the Land Whale while we overnight there.

2. In San Francisco, California, Paul has his heart set on gazing at the Palace of Fine Arts (one of the most beautiful things ever created out of concrete). I have my heart set on NOT driving the Land Whale in San Francisco. I would like to find a safe, legal and cheap place to dock the Land Whale more or less outside of the City and then take public transportation to the POFA and back. If someone were willing to get us parked and drive us there and back, that would be very cool, but it will be on September 3, Labor Day, and who knows what will be going on in people's lives. [Yeah, I'm gonna check the MUNI holiday schedules--thanks for thinking of us!]

There will doubtless be other conundrums, problems, opportunities, mysteries, snafus, etc. that we will be dealing with while keeping Paul's Tour on the road. Keep checking back on this thread--YOU my be the answer to what we need!

Thanks, everyone, for your good wishes for a safe journey!

In San Francisco, you can also park along the coast at Ocean Beach https://maps.google.com/maps?q=ocean+beach+sf+parking&ll=37.780484,-122.451553&spn=0.067702,0.154324&client=safari&oe=UTF-8&hq=ocean+beach+sf+parking&radius=15000&t=h&z=13. You can catch public transportation along the main streets, like Geary and Judah.
So excited your comin' to town!
Becky

We are now in california.

Geoff blogged about our time in oregon: http://permietour2012.blogspot.com/

My crappy laptop ate my creswell presentation "urban vs. rural" so I had to cobble it together the day of the presentation. I think what I presented was a bit choppy, but seemed to go over okay. I liked the pizza! Wow! And lots of fans.

Got word today that we will be meeting up with toby.

Time is mother nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.

This tour has been mega packed. And on top of that, access to the internet has been spotty. I have excellent video footage and podcast stuff to share.

Stealing some pics from geoff's blog: http://permietour2012.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-friend-for-life.html

Steve Heckeroth's electric tractors were excellent. I was bummed about the natural swimming pool because Steve was away from home for a month. He got home just a couple of hours ahead of us. And during his absense, the pump on the swimming pool died. So it was not in it's normal crystal clear shape.

But! I did see the BEST outhouse or composting toilet ever. A living piece of art. A huge stump was hollowed out with a chainsaw and then polished. Amazingly beautiful. But even more importantly is the engineering



This is a dry operation - no pee. The poop falls onto something that resembles a grate. Every six months there is a way to pull the grate and push it back in - so the material falls to the next grate. There is a series of four or five grates like this.

There have been over a thousand poops in there already and nothing has yet made it to the last part where material would be over two years old and can be used as compost.



Got to catch up with marina and robert at dell artimus farm. Two good podcasts.

I saw some amazing stuff at chaffin orchards. They are doing paddock shift the right way. And they bear the label "predator friendly" which means that they have very few problems with gophers and voles and the like. They gave us a HUGE gob of excellent food. I also ate an orange right off a tree for the first time.

We went to woodleaf farm where Carl is just starting to consider permaculture techniques, but is already way ahead of organic.

Steve is a genius with engineering an art. Definitely level 9.

Got to see Toby Hemenway and he let me infect the brains of his 50 students at thepdc he was teaching. I got to sit with him for about 30 minutes before racing off to my presentation in petaluma. We ate the best sushi I ever ate, but the restaurant forced an 18% tip which pisses me off.

I presented at "The Petaluma Seed Bank" - what an awesome place! Not only was there a huge crowd, but I had fun with them. Paul Wallace, the seed bank owner, showed me his uber cool expansion plans. the cool thing is that it is obviously a former bank with 20 foot tall ceilings! What a funky cool place. We were cruising the aisles checking out all the cool stuff!

James was our host in Petaluma. He got us to all our spots on time, found a restaurant, and then made us breakfast.

We are now just minutes outside of SF. I have left the details up to Geoff and Jocelyn. My impression is that they were polishing the SF strategy as I slept. I think we are going to bring the land whale into town. Wacky!

Tonight we will see Gelnn Kansinger!

How about a schematic of the outhouse engineering to help us visualize it Paul.

Max Kennedy wrote:How about a schematic of the outhouse engineering to help us visualize it Paul.

It will have to wait until I get home. I just thought this was so important that I needed to share it right away.

That outhouse is awesome! It wouldn't be out of place anywhere (even a McMansion).

A few of those, strategically placed throughout the National Parks system, could easily squash the stigma most Americans have towards outhouses.
Everybody would want one! (I know that I do!)

Paul it was great to see you in Santa Barbara. Thank you very much for all you do. I hope you enjoyed your pie.

The pie was excellent! It was thick - like not runny. I'm quite sure it was a blackberry pie. Was that from you?

The pie was home made by my wife from our polyculture blackberries. It is our way of saying thank you for all you do.

The palace of fine arts is breathtaking. Geoff took a pic of me for his blog

If I had time to write a blog post about our visit to Chaffin Family Orchards, I would have written this and taken these photos: http://www.holisticsquid.com/glamping-on-the-farm/.

(I wish.)



Actually, they didn't have glamping (glamour camping) available yet when we were there. Chris told us they were planning to add it as another facet to their very diverse income streams. Smart folks.

But you had the land whale. Isn't it glamping on wheels?

Adrien Lapointe wrote:But you had the land whale. Isn't it glamping on wheels?

Oh, good point! Though we didn't have a hand-crank coffee bean grinder on the wall.

Yeah, it does not come included with land whales. What a shame!

Wow Paul,
sounds fabulous!
Would have to find a house sitter able to look after my Wyandotte hatchlings, but can't think of a better way to see a bit of the USA & do a bit of trans Pacific Permie networking!
That's if you want a crazy Aussie Permie along for the ride. Finish my design course 1st weekend of September & have to look at my own finances.
Also have my dad in a nursing home here, not in good health!
Not a good time of year to leave my chickens. If heat strikes. When are you looking at going & for how long?
Cheers
Fiona

Fiona Ludbrook wrote:Wow Paul,
sounds fabulous!
Would have to find a house sitter able to look after my Wyandotte hatchlings, but can't think of a better way to see a bit of the USA & do a bit of trans Pacific Permie networking!
That's if you want a crazy Aussie Permie along for the ride. Finish my design course 1st weekend of September & have to look at my own finances.
Also have my dad in a nursing home here, not in good health!
Not a good time of year to leave my chickens. If heat strikes. When are you looking at going & for how long?
Cheers
Fiona

Hi Fiona, we already went! This tour was August-September of 2012. If you're new to the forums, you might not have noticed that this thread is 3 pages long. (!) There are page numbers at either the far top right or far bottom right of the thread so you can move through all the posts. (This thread has some big pictures in it, so depending on your screen or browser, you really have to scroll a long way to the right.)

Paul created a thread called next tour, though there did not seem to be much interest, so it did not move to the planning stages.