Traveling to Crater Lake

Today we traveled south from the Sisters/Bend area to just south of Crater Lake National Park.  Our RV park here is small, quiet, and peacful.  A huge surprise as we were checking in, someone tapped me on the shoulder.  It was Carol and Steve O that we know from our community back in Tucson. What a nice surprise.  They are staying in their RV just a couple miles down the road with two more folks, Linda and John M, also from our community.  What a small world.  We are looking forward to visiting with the four of them later this evening at their place. 

The park here is on a small, spring fed creek, and they offer free use of canoes to those staying here.  Kathy and I have already tried this out briefly, enough so to know we have a lot to learn about canoes.  It was fun though.  This place also has a pickleball court, so we intend to try to get a game going this afternoon with others here in the park.  Tomorrow we plan to spend the day around Crater Lake, day hiking, exploring, and picnicing.

Here are a couple pictures of our camp.

Patchworks of Creativity

On a Saturday in July, 38 years ago, Jean Wells Keenan hung a dozen of her students' quilts outside her quilt shop, The Stitchin' Post.  This seemingly small gesture quickly grew into an annual event in Sisters, Oregon, now the nation's largest outdoor quilt show.  Kathy and I just happened to be here for this annual event, which took place today.  More than 1300 quilts, ranging from hand-quilted heirlooms to contemporary art quilts lined the buildings, fences and railings.  The quilts were made by quilters from all over the country, and even  outside the country. There were thousands of people there for the show.  I have never seen anything like it.

I had fully intended to follow Kathy around for a bit, then dodge off for some geocaching, only to pick her up later in the day.  No way.  This was amazing. We strolled the streets of Sisters together for over four hours, and still didn't see everything.  It was like a town art festival, really.  These quilts have so much creativity, thought, and effort in the design and construction, I just walked around with my mouth open.  It was very cool.  Some pictures follow.

After the show, we went back to regain our composure at the camper, then, later in the day, we drove south a few miles to Bend, Oregon, where we had the pleasure of having a great dinner out with our friends Jeanne and Roger H.  They showed us a little of the downtown area, and then we ate at the Deschutes Brewery, the makers of Mirror Pond IPA and other Mirror beers.  (This is a make of beer we often buy back home in Arizona).  Roger led us down to show us the actual "Mirror Pond" that the beer is named for.  It is a dammed section of the Deschutes river, now a popular swimming and rafting area in Bend.  It was a fun time, and great to see our friends.  We look forward to their annual return to our community in Tucson later in the year.

A quiet day

I understand that King George III wrote in his personal diary one day, "Nothing of importance happened today", or words to that effect.  The date was July 4, 1776. (you can tell he forgot to read the headlines on the web version of the Wall Street Journal that day)  Actually, we Americans love this story, but the truth is that old George could never have known what happened across the ocean on the same day.  Times were different.

This morning,  we sadly left our friends in Eugene, and traveled to our next RV park just south of Sisters, OR.  We restocked, set up camp, did laundry, and rested a bit.  Nothing of importance happened today...  to quote the phrase.  This statement, of course, only applies to us, and we were happy about the situation actually, and enjoyed the rest.  Tomorrow will be a different story.

A Day of Touring

Our Eugene friends, Jim and Darlene K toured us around the Willamette Valley of central Oregon today, and we visited several beautiful and interesting spots.

Our first stop was the very beautiful Silver Falls State Park, located east of Salem.  This park has a number of spectacular waterfalls and nice trails.  We hiked to a couple of the many falls, and were all spellbound at their splendor and setting.  After our hike, we had a delightful picnic lunch in the shade of fir trees right near the park's lodge.

Our next stop was the little town of Albany, where we visited the efforts of the community to create a carousel, (if you can believe that), in the historic style for their town.  Beginning in 2003, community members, led by artists and craftsmen, began carving and painting the 52 animals and 2 chariots needed for the carousel.  In addition, they are working to restore a 1909 Dentzel carousel mechanism that will hold the newly carved figures.  It is a labor of love for the many volunteers working on the effort.  Each animal can take as much as 2,000 hours to carve, with another 400 hours to paint.  You have to see the pictures below to get an idea of what is going on there.  The whole scene was amazing.  What a great project.  :-)  They hope to have it up and running in another 5 years.

On the way back to our friend's home, we drove through the town of Corvallis, and some beautiful farmland.  After a short rest, we had a nice dinner out at a restaurant in Eugene, housed in a grouping of old train cars.  The day was lots of fun.  Here are some pictures.

Tomorrow we are on the road again, heading toward Sisters, Oregon, but we will long remember our visit with our friends in Eugene.  It could not have been nicer stay.  We look forward to their winter return to our community in Tucson.

Enjoying Eugene

Eugene Oregon shows itself to be a wonderful town.  Our friends, Darlene and Jim K., (and their little dog Kozi)  have made our visit here more like a dream than just a visit.  Their amazing hospitality is special.

Today, we rose to a gourmet breakfast, and then a good 3 hr session of pickleball. (indoor variety)  The pickleball was great fun, and Jim and Darlene along with their local pickleball  friends were real challenges.  The play was good and tiring, at least for me.  

With the sun shining brightly, we then visited the Sweet Cheeks winery, a 65 acre Estate Vineyard sitting on 140 acres of prime sloping hillside in the heart of the Willamette Valley.  There we enjoyed the local wine, and a nice spread of picnic goodies.  We are back at our friends home now, enjoying their shady yard, and good company.  I am not sure we could have conceived of a nicer day.

Here are a few shots from the Sweet Cheeks winery.

Original Stash

On May 3, 2000, a five gallon bucket was hidden 25 miles or so from Portland, Oregon by Dave Ulmer.  It contained a Delorme Topo USA, 2 CD Roms, a cassette recorder, a "George of the Jungle" VHS tape, a Ross Perot book, 4 $1 bills, a  slingshot handle, and a can of beans.  The gps coordinates were then listed on the internet and modern-day geocaching was born.

As Kathy and I traveled south toward Eugene, OR to visit our friends there, we jogged over to the south east of Portland to try to find the site of the original geocache hide.  It was a pretty easy find, located down a nondescript country road.  It is, however, considered the Mecca of Geocaching, (at least by some).  I thought there would be cars lined up trying to find and log this one, but we were alone, and not a car drove by while we messed around there for 15 minutes or so.

While logging our find on the Geocache website, I saw that as of today, there have been 6,920 others who have logged finding this cache prior to us.  Just because of the history, it was a fun cache.  

The cache description on the net says that if you find the plaque, you should place your handheld gps devices on the plaque for a while, to allow special powers to be acquired that include longer battery life, and more accurate readings.  When I read it, I thought, nice joke.  When we found the plaque, and signed the log at the nearby hidden cache, we did indeed place our gps units on the plaque.  You never know.  :-)

"Ocian in view, O! the joy..."

The Pacific

On November 15, 1805, the Corps of Discovery, led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark, finally reached the Pacific Ocean. This, after a tremendous amount of aid and comfort afforded them by the existing residents along the way.  "Ocian in view, O! the joy..." were the words Clark put in his journal on November 7.  He was actually at a Columbia River Estuary.  It was over a week more of travel before they reached the coast.  The group went on to build a tiny fort just off the Columbia River and up a little feeder river, (now called the Lewis and Clark River).  The fort was called Fort Clatsop, named after the local resident group of people already living there.  Again, with the help of the locals, they made it through the winter. In the Spring of 1806, after no trading ships arrived that might have given them passage back East, they headed out again to travel by land back to Missouri.

Today, all over the Astoria area,  on both sides of the Columbia River, there are National and State Historical parks, National Historical Register items, and multiple other references to Lewis and Clark and their group.  We are even staying at the Lewis and Clark RV Resort, as an example.

Today was a busy day.  We took in a lot of sights.  We hit the replica of Fort Clatsop, visited the Astoria Column, walked the Astoria town riverfront, and  drove out  to Cape Disappointment and the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center.  There we too got a good clear afternoon view of the Pacific.  Then we headed back to our camper to feed Angie, and later went for more oysters.  We couldn't resist.

It was a nice day.  All the information about L&C became overpowering for me.  The Corps of Discovery, clearly were travelers through cities and towns much like Kathy and I are doing on this trip.  I am aware that for Europeans at that time, this was much like a trip to the moon.  It was uncharted.  Even President Jefferson expected the group to possibly find dinosaurs and mastodons.  But it is clear, by what I read today, that the area was not uncharted really.  It was fully inhabited, and reasonably civilized, even by European standards, as if that matters.  But that is not what they taught me when I went to school.  Anyway....

At a couple of the L&C interpretive centers, I tried to have some fun by quietly mentioning to interpreters that I am in fact, a very distant cousin of Meriwether Lewis (something my brother uncovered in his genealogy research). They uniformly seemed politely unimpressed.  :-)

Astoria

Astoria is named for John Jacob Astor, a business man from New York, who specialized in the fur trade and moved to have "occupied" the area around  the mouth of the Columbia, just several years after the L&C arrival.  He was successful, and he became very wealthy doing so, as well as through other ventures.  Who would have thought there would have been such demand for animal fur?  I don't think that business plan would work in these times.  His family continued to prosper, and still does to this day.  John's grandson was the famous Astor that went down with the Titanic (supposedly the richest man on the boat).  That Astor who was lost at sea was the father of the Astor that funded (with the help of the Great Northern Railroad) the building of the Astoria Column in 1926.  Nice place to sail a little balsa wood glider off of.

We liked Astoria, Warrenton, and the neighboring Washington State town of Ilwaco.  Here are some  photos we took today.

Replica of Fort Clatsop on the actual site

Statue representing Sacagawea

The Astoria Column that we climbed to the top of...   164 steps.  Whew...

Young ladies at the top of the column waiting to send their gliders off for a ride

Along Astoria's waterfront

Lunch stop - at Fort George Brewery and Public House

Chalkboard Art at the Brewery

Flowers in an Astoria garden

View from Cape Disappointment

View from Cape Disappointment

Reaching Astoria

It was a long ride today along US Hwy 101, from just outside Port Angeles, WA, heading south all the way down to Astoria, OR on the mouth of the Columbia River.  Along the way, we traveled beside the Pacific ocean, and stopped at several beaches.  We had expected to spend some time walking along the rocks and the surf, but the weather was not cooperating.  It was foggy, then cloudy, and a bit cold all day.  After arriving in Astoria, we did enjoy a wonderful seafood dinner at a local establishment recommended by our RV park manager.  This was the day's highlight for me...   Fried Oysters. Yum.    :-)

After dinner, we found and logged our first geocache in Oregon.  Along with our finds in Victoria, this gives us 5 new states, and one new country for our geocaching statistics so far this year.