Pandemic Diary — June 21 to 27, 2021

Monday, June 21   Deaths  2,756 (+2)   New cases 78

M went grocery shopping and dropped by the liquor store for a couple of agave wine cocktails, that we thought we might enjoy with dinner at the camp. We did a lot of packing and a certain amount of garden watering. E rigged up shade cloth to protect her pansies. It seemed that all was well.

Tuesday, June 22   Deaths  2,757 (+1)   New cases 267

Our camping expedition left Corvallis at about 7:30, headed east in the Nissan truck. We arrived at the Sisters Bakery by 10:00. We found a new policy in place–no donuts on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. Well. Fortunately they have lots of other good stuff. We got a couple of Marionberry scones. Very nice. The land around Sisters and Bend is good ranch land, but as you go east the terrain rapidly becomes drier and unsuited to agriculture of any kind. There are miles and miles of empty sage brush vistas as you drive on roads that run dead straight for ten miles at a time. We didn’t see a single solitary cow for over a hour. But then, near a place called Hampton, suddenly there it was: we saw a cow, a single solitary cow, in an otherwise empty landscape. Then, five minutes later, we started seeing lots of cows. We passed Riley and Hines and stopped for a break in Burns. We went to the little park next to the highway on the east end of town. Whoa. There were three or four police cars there. There wasn’t much action though. The incident that brought them seemed to have ended. We found a rickety table and ate our lunch. Then it was back onto the road.

Our first hint of trouble was when we arrived at the address of the vacation rental where we had planned to stay on our first night.  

Now we have to admit that this was not actually the one in the photo. In fact we hadn’t got a ‘vacation rental’ at all and we don’t know how this photo even got in here. We actually had a reservation in a Best Western in Ontario on the Oregon/Idaho border. It was fine. All still seemed well.

Wednesday, June 23   Deaths  2,759 (+2)   New cases 233

Our Best Western breakfast was not all that great but it sufficed. We got on our way about nine and decided to top up the gas tank. So…uh…should we buy Idaho gas (self-serve) or Oregon gas, where an attendant must pump it for you? Very confusingly, we ended up at a self-serve Chevron on the Oregon side! Huh? What? It seems that a change in Oregon law has allowed a few exceptions to the prohibition against self-serve. We had heard about this radical new idea, but we’d never seen an example. 

On our way to Lake Owyhee we passed some onion fields. The leaves were a rich dark green; each plant consisting of a tight bunch of vertical spears about a foot high. There were lots of onion fields, miles and miles of onion fields. So exciting. And then there were the sugar beet fields. There were lots of them too. And the biggest excitement? An actual sugar factory! For Eve it had an awesome grandeur. She said that it was too bad we didn’t have time to stop and take a factory tour. To M, this factory looked like it would be very unlikely to be offering factory tours. But who knows? The factory had no obvious company name, but there was a large sign with a picture of a bag of White Satin sugar. So we can guess that the factory is owned by the Amalgamated Sugar Company. Although its headquarters is currently in Boise, that company was originally founded in M’s hometown of Ogden, Utah in 1897. About 55% of the sugar produced in the U.S. is made from sugar beets; 45% from sugar cane.

 

So that was exciting, but what about camping? Well, we went down to the town of Nyssa, and thence to the small town of Adrian, then a few miles farther. Suddenly we had left farm country and were traveling into a range of low and barren mountains, following the course of the Owyhee river. We were a little anxious about finding a campsite because there were very few campgrounds in the area and none of the tent sites are reservable. When we arrived at the campground, we were pleased to see that in fact we had our pick of any site we wanted.

So that seemed pretty good. But then we got some bad news. As we were putting up our tent, we were informed that there was a strong likelihood of a severe storm developing in the early evening, with winds gusting to 85 mph. Well. Pitching our tent did not seem wise. Sleeping in the truck did not seem pleasant. (It’s a small truck.) We couldn’t know how severe the storm might be, or even if it would come at all. As you can see from the photos, the weather was pretty nice at the moment. But still. We decided to retreat to a motel and continue our visit as a series of day trips. Off we went. But then we got more bad news. There were no motel rooms available anywhere nearby. Zero. None of the search engines offered us any options. As soon as we entered any date from June 23 to 25, we got the simplest possible message. “No rooms available.” By searching farther afield, we did find an opening at a La Quinta in Boise; they had one room left at $379 plus 20% tax. That seemed like a lot, especially since Boise was nearly a hundred miles away in the wrong direction. Late June is a busy travel time in normal years, but this year is special. It seems pretty clear that large masses of people are feeling confident about getting out on the road again and staying in motels.

We decided to just abort and go home. It was a long drive, but interesting in its way. Here’s a view out the windshield as E had us tearing along at 73 miles per hour. We know it was 73 because…well, never mind.

E was still at the wheel when we reached Bend. It was clouding up a little as we reached the town; perhaps a few sprinkles were in the offing. We went on through town, planning to stop for a picnic dinner in Sisters, twenty miles farther on. Just we were leaving Bend, however, we ran into major drama–an intense hail storm. Hail the size of mothballs started banging on the hood and cab of the truck. What a racket. We did not have the presence of mind to take a video. What we did have was time. The storm went on and on. Visibility was very low and we pulled off to the side of the road for a bit, as did some other drivers. After a while, even though the racket continued unabated, the view ahead cleared just a little. We realized that we might as well push on through. The storm, after all, came from the west; the quickest way out was to drive straight through it. 

And how about our planned picnic in Sisters, a few miles down the road? It was fine–a peaceful 80 degrees and sunny. M drove from there across the mountains to home. 

Thursday, June 24   Deaths  2,760 (+1)   New cases 232

Here we are home again, where we are quite comfortable and where the winds are only gusting up to 8 mph. We did a little shopping and a lot of putting things away. We dined on smoked salmon, steamed chard, and a rice salad. Later we watched another long episode of Bitter Daisies, a Spanish series set in Galicia. It’s funny how some many shows these days seem to be descended from Twin Peaks. In this one, a young Guardia Civil officer tries to solve a series of murders. Galicia is in the northwest part of Spain and includes the city of Santiago de Compostela, which is the end point of the Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James), perhaps the best known pilgrimage route in Europe. The show is exposing us to Galician Spanish, which is quite strange in places. The series is well-done and we like the actors, but we’ve been put off by some gratuitous sexual content.

Friday, June 25   Deaths  2,761 (+1)   New cases 232

E got a flat of raspberries today and made two batches low sugar freezer jam. We missed out last year because of a serious and inexplicable shortage of low sugar recipe pectin. So this is a major event. Besides the purchased berries, the new jam includes a pint or so of our own raspberries, which are small but very tasty. E made a total of 15 jars. Here are some of them. The two tall ones in the back are jars that we brought back from Turkey twelve years ago. They have been used many a time since.

M did reading, writing and weeding. For dinner we went off to J and B’s for a Cypriot meze dinner featuring grilled haloumi and stuffed grape leaves. We contributed fava beans and baklava. 

Saturday, June 26   Deaths  2,763 (+2)   New cases 227

It’s Becca’s birthday today. We went out and got ourselves a piece of cake to mark the occasion. Eve talked for a long time with A and also spoke via Zoom to an old friend who was close by when Becca was born in Madrid, forty-six years ago. Several of E’s friends faithfully remember Becca’s birthday. It means a lot. 

Ninety-nine degrees today, 109 forecast for tomorrow.

We watched the ending of Bitter Daisies. It was very good. It had a couple of nice surprise twists  and also some very satisfying developments which confirmed a couple of things that we had suspected.  

Sunday, June 27   Deaths  2,763 (+0)   New cases 138

Toast and jam for breakfast. Delightful. We did some watering in the morning. E worries that about the heat and its effect on plants, bugs, birds and everything else. 

M, being a kind of masochist, went to a minor league baseball game down in Eugene. Originally he was to go in company with four other Corvallis guys. Tickets were bought and all arrangements made. Then came the forecast of 110 degree temperatures. Four of the group, not being masochists, decided to take a pass and go some other time. But M had already had to change plans once this week due to weather. He wasn’t ready to change plans again.

The crowd was sparse, but the game was pretty good. If the young players were suffering, they didn’t show it. M’s reserved seat–originally picked out by his savvy friend R–was as good as it could be, being in deep shade just behind home plate. Attendance was on the sparse side.

The home team has a dual identity. Usually they are the Eugene Emeralds, part of the San Francisco Giants organization, and are clad in green. Occasionally, though, they transform themselves into the Monarcas, who wear black. And so it was on this day. 

It was 102 when M arrived with a small but welcome breeze blowing out toward left. M saw four home runs hit in that direction. Between innings there was usually a bit of entertainment. One of those was an interview with Eugene outfielder Ismael Munguia, who is from Nicaragua. They asked him what got him into baseball–his father. Who was his favorite player–Jose Altuve. What was his best baseball memory–winning the Nicaraguan championship. Then they asked him what he liked best about being in Eugene, Oregon. “The heat,” he said. “I hate the cold. Baseball is really good in the heat.” It was about 108 at that point, so we must assume that he was happy. By the end of the seventh inning it was 110 and the home team was up 7-2. M decided that was enough and took a nice walk in the sun back to his truck. He found out later that 7-2 was also the final score.