I Spent the Morning Reading About Bigfoot

I've been a Bigfoot blogger for ten years now. Go ahead and laugh if you want to. It is weird how these things happen.

There's always been curiosity about the big elusive creature. Does anyone forget the first time they saw the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot video?



When my 2 youngest children were about ages 6 through 10 we took a lot of "home school field trips" and several times were in Trinity County, CA - to visit Weaverville, the Joss House, the museum there, and the area around Clair Engle Lake, aka. Trinity Lake. As we approached Trinity Center, CA - there was a Bigfoot statue, and I was immediately drawn to it. "This is what I've been looking for," my heart told me. "They're here."

Ever since I first heard about the town of Happy Camp, I wanted to be there. Happy Camp, CA is a very remote small town in the center of the Klamath National Forest in Northern California. On January 11, 2000 I moved into a cabin-like house there, surrounded by the forest. The house was just outside of the town, in a semi-secluded area. There were other houses nearby.

The town of Happy Camp is full of Bigfoot statues now, but when I moved there, the only Bigfoot statue was the one in front of the post office.

There were also "Bigfoot footprints" painted on the sidewalk in front of the liquor store, and many of the businesses in the town were named after Bigfoot. There was the Bigfoot Trailer Park, Bigfoot Towing, and the Bigfoot Car Wash. That was in 2000 - several years before JavaBob opened his restaurant, JavaBob's Bigfoot Deli. Now that is closed but there's a place called the Bigfoot Store that has a deli in it, across the street from where JavaBob's restaurant was.

Brandon Tennant of Idaho, and JavaBob Schmalzback in JavaBob's Bigfoot Deli late in 2005, in Happy Camp, CA. At the time we met Brandon Tennant, he was doing research while organizing a Bigfoot conference held in Pocatello, Idaho in 2006.

Bigfoot Lives in Idaho
Brandon Tennant illustrated this.
Buy at Amazon.

I was always curious about Bigfoot, and wondered why so few of the Happy Camp local old-timers had anything to say about it. They acted like it was a joke, but they loved the annual Bigfoot Jamboree, a three day annual festival over Labor Day weekend.

By 2005 JavaBob was president of the Chamber of Commerce and I worked in a small office across the street from his deli. The chamber needed a focus for marketing Happy Camp and chose to market it as an artist's retreat town. I told JavaBob that we already had a theme in the town - and it was (and still is) Bigfoot.

Monsters, Myths, and Me
By Robert (JavaBob) Schmalzbach
Buy at Amazon

Anyhow, I got serious about wanting to find the truth about Bigfoot. I wanted to know why this town claimed a theme of Bigfoot but then denied any knowledge of Bigfoot sightings in the area. So I bought the domain name for my blog, Bigfoot Sightings, and started doing research.

I've never seen one, but many credible people have, and I know they're real. I collected no less than five Bigfoot sighting reports about sightings that happened within a mile of the cabin I lived in, there in Happy Camp.

When I moved to Idaho in 2013 I wanted to be able to continue Bigfoot research in the forests around where I live, in Northern Idaho. I live in Post Falls, which is on a prairie. No Bigfoot here! And I have no car anymore... so I can't do field research. But I do intend to continue working on my blog, which has been silent for many months now. I spent this morning "cleaning it up" - ie: making format improvements - and reading the amazing comments people leave there about their Bigfoot sightings.

I do believe I'll be blogging more there, soon. It is time for me to compile the rest of what I know about Bigfoot sightings in the Klamath River Valley.

... I said yesterday that I might write more about Keith today, but I'm just not ready. Maybe soon, but not today.

Update 8/23 - I decided to write about Keith on my other blog: How Comforting it is to Know He Takes Care of Us

Bigfoot - Bigfoot Jamboree - Bigfoot Sightings - Bigfooting

Just Bigfooting today, in my mind... because I've been focused on Bigfoot since 2005. That's five years of thinking about a marvelous monster I've never seen. Seems strange to me that I'm spending so much time on this! I started my Bigfoot research as a service to my community but since then have realized that (1) many people in my community don't appreciate my effort, and (2) many people in my community don't appreciate me, and (3) I often fantasize about living somewhere else.

That's not about Bigfoot, however. There are many factors that go into my community perspective. I dream of going elsewhere because I like to roam, I like to experience new places, and I'm an adventurer and always have been.

I haven't been to our community's Bigfoot Jamboree in years. Has the sheen worn off for me? There are many people in the community I love to pieces but when grand hooplas materialize I retreat. The last time I was there was to see Matthew Johnson give his talk about his Oregon Caves Bigfoot sighting experience - he told us what happened to him, his reactions to seeing a Bigfoot, and what he's done since to look for more Bigfoot evidence in Southern Oregon.

I started my Bigfoot blog way back in early 2005. It was one of the first Bigfoot blogs on the internet - I didn't know of any others at the time. I tend to be a trendsetter. Now there are dozens of Bigfoot blogs. A good idea whose time had come, perhaps?

Digital Camera Binocular, With Night Vision

I'm putting this link here to remind myself to buy one of these when we can afford it.

Digital Camera Binocular - Night Vision

Why would I need this?

Well, I'm looking for visual proof of strange beasts who dwell in the night.

I imagine myself hearing bumps in the night while sleeping in a van in the forest, then grabbing my night vision binoculars to look out the window, to see --

Well, I won't see a thing without the night vision.