A to Z Challenge 2016: O is for Odor

We are camped in a beautiful wooded campground by the Pacific Ocean.  We have been blessed with sunny weather.  The sky is bright blue, the birds are abundant, and the stars shine brightly at night.  As park hosts, one of our assigned tasks is checking each campsite after the campers leave to make sure everything is tidy.  We usually walk our route several times a day to pick up litter and chat with campers.

"Gawd, what's that smell?" I say to the spouse as we walk along the A Loop road.  "It smells like someone has been smoking weed all night!"

I look over at the folks in the campsite and they don't look like party animals, but since Oregon legalized marijuana, it has become more common to smell the distinctive odor in public areas.

After checkout time, the spouse and I went back to check the site.  The strong odor still lingered.  We looked around for the source of the smell.  No, we didn't find a bale of marijuana...that happens only once in a lifetime, but you can read about that experience here.  We found skunk cabbage!  Lots of skunk cabbage!

This stuff really smells, and it smells just like nasty, day-old marijuana smoke...or, um, I mean as I've been told.

It grows all along the Pacific coast in wet, boggy areas.  

When I made reservations for our camping trip this summer with the granddaughters, I avoided the A loop boggy area. 

I much prefer odor-free camping!