M spent the morning on a tour of local businesses including Home Depot, Kaddy carwash, the Cork and Bottle Shoppe, Market of Choice, and Trader Joe’s. Was he satisfied with all this purchasing? No. When he got home he went online and ordered himself a Chef’n FreshForce Lime Juicer. Chef’n? Really? What kind of word is that? Maybe a cute way of verbifying the noun “chef?” As in “What’s Tyler doing these days; is he still chef’n?”
Tuesday, July 20 Deaths 2,832 (+6) New cases 595
E harvested a lot of rhubarb today, enough for two pies. Half of it has gone into the freezer, but not the other half. She has plans.
Wednesday, July 21 Deaths 2,833 (+1) New cases 421
Made a trip to Eugene today. Went to REI and then had a Thai lunch at the 5th Street Market. It had been a long time since we’d seen that old place. It’s doing well.
A pie has materialized in our kitchen. Oh boy. We plan to have either a light supper followed by pie or else a light supper consisting of pie.
Thursday, July 22 Deaths 2,834 (+1) New cases 539
COVID new case numbers are rising in Oregon, as is the percentage of positive COVID tests. We suppose this is natural, given that almost all restrictions have been lifted and people are reverting to pre-pandemic habits. The death rate has not increased lately, but neither has it continued its previous declining trend.
In the news today there is a report that U.S. life expectancy has dropped significantly in the last year and a half. COVID has played a major role, but so has the opioid epidemic. Another factor is the increase in the number of murders, with many involving young people. (Deaths of young people have a relatively large effect on life expectancy calculations.)
It’s M’s birthday today and he started it off with a chocolate hazelnut scone at the coffee shop with J and R. Heard a memorable story from R about his family moving house in the wintertime back when he was a child in Australia. Afterwards, E went immediately into high gear, first doing her Zoom exercise class, then shopping for birthday balloons, then making a salad for later, then meeting with the seamstress, and finally getting back home in time for laughter yoga.
M continued his celebration by going outside and trimming away a ton or so of out-of-control squash runners and then watering some things that seemed to need it. He noticed that the blackberries are coming along nicely.
Then came the installation the shade cloth roll-up blind on our westward facing window. That took some time. Getting a translucent blind was E’s idea, and she likes it pretty well so far.
In the evening we went to dinner at B and B’s place in North Albany. One of the B’s made margaritas, which were just the thing on such a warm day. Dinner was also wonderful, out on their new deck with its big blue shade.
Friday, July 23 Deaths 2,836 (+2) New cases 613
Watched an episode of Ted Lasso. Can’t say it really grabbed us. E got some rest though, which gave her the strength to stay up and read more of The Spy Wore Red.
Saturday, July 24
Had some friends over for dinner in the back yard. We were lucky in that it wasn’t too hot and that the evening breeze was gentle–sometimes it’s a gale back there. The difficulty was in finding consistent shade. There was a lot of good food. E, for example, provided enchiladas, which she says were made following recipes used by La Rockita, one of our favorite local restaurants. It was nice to see some people we hadn’t seen in quite a while. After our guests had gone and we had cleaned up a little, we sat outside and watched the full moon rising in the east.
Sunday, July 25
Sibling Zoom meeting with J and J. Despite some technical difficulties, it was a good long talk. We’re looking forward to being at the lake again. It won’t be long.
M left in the middle to go to a baseball game in Eugene. It was the Eugene Emeralds vs. the Hillsboro Hops. The Emeralds are an SF farm club; the Hops are part of the Arizona Diamondbacks system. The visitors jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the top of second. Yikes. The Ems stayed with their starter, which paid off when he held the Hops scoreless for the next three innings. The Em’s got two runs in the fifth on back-to-back homers by their number 8 and number 9 hitters. You don’t see that too often. After eight innings the score was Hops 5 and Ems 4. The Hops number 2, 3, and 4 batters were scheduled for the top of the ninth. The Ems brought in their best reliever, who quickly retired the side with two strikeouts and a pop-up. That seemed to give the Ems’ batters some momentum. In the bottom of the ninth the Hops’ reliever gave up a walk and a double with one out. Then, with runners on second and third, the next batter also doubled and that’s all she wrote. Ems win, 6-5. Pretty good game.
Mostly routine stuff today. E had a yoga class and did some shopping at the Co-op. M did watering chores. We also did some preparation for our camping trip trip to Humbug Mountain. This involved making chocolate chip cookies.
Tuesday, July 13 Deaths 2,800 (+3) New cases 340
A bit cooler today. E had her exercise class and tried again to get her teeth cleaned. The electricity was on this time, so all went well. M did his grocery shopping in the morning and in the afternoon started packing the camping things.
Wednesday, July 14 Deaths 2,803 (+3) New cases 251
The camping expedition left Corvallis around 10:30 and headed down the I-5. Turned off the freeway at Curtin and took the road to Drain. We stopped at a store there because E felt that the expedition had not packed enough chocolate. M took photos.
Beautiful downtown Drain. No Drainians visible
From Drain, Highway 38 follows the route of the Umqua River toward the coast. We stopped by the river at Scottsburg Park and ate our lunch of sandwiches, celery, carrots and little cans of Dole pineapple juice imported from the Philippines. In the old days, when the world was right and good, we used to take little cans of Texsun grapefruit juice imported from Texas. Now that things have deteriorated, the only way we can get those is via the internet and that is just too weird.
By 4:00 we had found our spot in the Humbug Mountain State Park campground, which is located just off Highway 101 at the base of…Humbug Mountain. We put up our tent, blew up our mattress and settled in as best we could. When we arrived the site on our right was occupied by a quiet couple and the site on the other side was empty. A small stream flowed just behind us. It was nice but became a bit less nice when a family of four arrived in a Honda Odyssey to occupy that vacant space. They set up their camp quickly and efficiently. As often happens, however, there was a certain amount of tension in the family. This gave Dad a chance to practice some of the techniques he had been learning in his anger management classes. Mom rarely spoke and when she did it was in short, clipped phrases, clear but rapid. Her tone implied that she was just fine thank you; she had restrained herself from hacking anyone to death so far and was pretty sure she could get through at least one more day. We bought some wood and spent much of the evening watching the fire burn.
It was a really annoying to have to get up in the night–for one thing, it was cold when you got out of the covers–but seeing the stars made it nice once you got out there. It had been years and years since we’d had a proper look at the Milky Way.
Thursday, July 15 Deaths 2,810 (+7) New cases 322
In the morning, while the neighbor kids got pancakes (yum!), we ate granola bars and fruit salad. Then it was time to go up the mountain, at least as far up the mountain as we wanted to go. From our campsite, a ten minute walk took us to a foot bridge over the stream and a tunnel under the highway that opened out onto the trailhead.
The trail starts in a wonderful grove of old myrtle trees and from there climbs up into a mixed old-growth forest of Douglas fir, myrtle, maple, cedar, and hemlock. The firs are the most impressive, the largest being six feet in diameter, but there are some gigantic old maples as well. It’s a steep trail with 1700 feet of elevation gain if you go all the way. That seemed too much for us in our current state, so we stopped at a viewpoint about halfway to the top.
A hiker admiring an old growth fir on the steep north slope of Humbug Mountain.
Black stemmed ferns, something we don’t see back home.
And here’s a rare glimpse of the Southern Oregon tree climbing dog. Amazing how they do that.
When we got a little higher up the mountain, there was this view out to sea.
And from still higher up, here’s the view to the north. You can see the town of Port Orford on the south side of Port Orford Head with Cape Blanco in the far background.
In the evening we walked out to a quarter mile long beach, which is only accessible by a trail from the campground. The beach is partially visible in the lower right of the photo above. To get to the beach, you follow a creekside trail that passes under a highway bridge that is home to many a swallow.
Swallow nests under Highway 101
Friday, July 16 Deaths 2,817 (+7) New cases 369
We had intentions of a short walk in the morning. There is an abandoned stretch of old Highway 101 that looks quite wonderful, all dark and overgrown. But as it happened we didn’t have the energy. It was enough to pack everything away and get on the road. We had a clam chowder lunch in Reedsport at the Lighthouse Cafe and then headed east back to Drain.
Drain was pretty much unchanged.
Eventually, we found the freeway, filled up with gas, and changed drivers. Just after that, as we were tooling along northward, we came up a major accident scene involving the southbound lanes. We couldn’t see what happened, but there were at least ten(!) emergency vehicles at the scene. Southbound traffic was backed up for many, many miles. No problem in our northbound lanes, so we made it home just before 5:00.
Saturday, July 17
E went out for croissants! Which are of course better than pancakes or granola bars. After breakfast we finished putting our camping stuff away and tried to get mentally prepared for our afternoon activity–a vineyard tour and dinner out with J and R.
The vineyard tour was very fine. We each got a three wine ‘flight’ for tasting. The pourer put the flights into some clever carriers so that we could take our total of twelve glasses out onto the terrace to sit down and sip at our leisure. We were then required, as a condition of taking the tour, to buy a bottle of wine, at which point we got to have the ‘tour’ part of the experience. We loaded into a Polaris ATV and the vineyard manager drove us through the various blocks of grapes. He explained that each of the five blocks produced grapes for one of the five wines they offered. He then dropped us off at the top of the vineyard, where we found another seating area on a shaded wooden pavilion. The pavilion was the highest point in the vicinity, so the views were very nice.
Our driver had brought along our just-purchased wine, four wine glasses, a thermos of cold water and four water glasses. We had brought our own light lunch of crackers, cheese, and fruit. After getting us settled, our host left us and went back down to the winery, so we had the pavilion to ourselves for a couple of hours. Then we went back down to the winery and bought a couple more bottles to take away. On the way home we had dinner at a logging themed restaurant called the LongTimber where M ate way too much pot roast and mashed potatoes. Will he not learn? Lovely day.
Sunday, July 18
We had a quiet day with a bit of gardening in the morning and then shopping and other chores. The Oregon Health Authority has stopped issuing COVID statistics on weekends. They are–we think–including the weekend numbers in their Monday reports. We will follow suit.
The weather forecast was a day of cooler temperatures, 60’s and s70’s. That sounded like good Boxster weather, warm enough to put the top down but not so hot that the sun would broil you in your seat. The plan was to go see some roads in the Coast Range up in the northeast corner of the state. I made a lunch and was off by 10:00, heading north on U.S. 99. The first leg took us–the Boxster and me–up through the farms and vineyards of the western Willamette Valley. Just past McMinnville, U.S. 99 turns east, so we turned onto Oregon Highway 47 to continue north. It was a pleasant drive through lovely countryside, not much excitement but few annoyances. Finally, near the town of Banks, we came to Oregon Highway 8 and turned left to go into the mountains toward the coast. This was one of the roads we’d come to see.
Oregon 8 turned out to be a pretty major route. It’s a two-lane highway, but it is a mature highway, wide and well graded. There seemed to be a lot of traffic in both directions. Despite the curves, people were going pretty fast. There are a number of passing lanes on the uphill stretches, so no one had to crawl along behind a truck. The highway crosses through what is called the Tillamook State Forest. I was getting hungry, so I started looking for a place to stop, preferably some kind of park with a picnic table a little distance from the highway. I saw a sign for a campground and pulled off onto what turned out to be a very narrow gravel road that traversed down a steep slope. Yikes. Too narrow, too long and too rough. It took me about ten minutes before I managed to turn around and get back to the highway. When I got there, a heavy truck was approaching; so I had to wait for it to pass before I could pull out. Great. But very soon a passing lane appeared, which let me get around it. And then I found something odd. There were no cars visible ahead of me. Nice. I started going a little faster–not real fast because that stretch was near the crest of the coast range and was really curvy. Plenty of cars were coming from the opposite direction, but I had my side all to myself. I went up over the top and started down the other side. Still no one in front of me. So I scooted right along, letting the Boxster have a bit of fun. Where had everyone gone? I don’t know. I had fallen into an inexplicable lacuna. I was alone for quite a few miles. Finally, I came upon a line of cars and rejoined the normal world of traffic.
About then I noticed a sign that said Smith Homestead Day Use Area. This was another fortuitous event. It was a lovely place with few visitors. I ate my lunch at a wonderful secluded picnic site next to the Wilson River. As it happens, there are quite a few campgrounds, picnic areas and hiking trails in the western half of the forest. It looked like a place E and I should come back to for some camping and hiking.
The Tillamook State Forest came into being as the result of a series of terrible forest fires in the years 1935 to 1945. The 1935 fire was the worst, burning 340,000 acres of old growth timber, trees that were up to 400 years old. The fire was started during a logging operation when friction created by a steel cable rubbing against a dry dead tree caused it to burst into flame. Fanned by high winds from the east, the fire burned for eleven days. Ash from the fire drifted as far as 500 miles out to sea. The fires stopped only when the weather changed and a thick damp fog drifted in from the west.
A second fire in 1939 burned another 190,000 acres. In July of 1945 two fires combined to burn another 180,000 acres. These fires came to be the most well-known because the forests they destroyed were on either side of Highway 8, which was then the most popular route from Portland to the coast. One of the fires began on the Wilson River, caused by a discarded cigarette. The cause of the other is unknown, though some believed it resulted from a Japanese incendiary balloon.
The fires left vast areas of desolation and were a great loss to the land owners, who were mostly large timber companies. Timber companies in those days were hooked on old growth and had little interest in replanting burned over land, so they simply abandoned it. The land eventually came to belong to three Oregon counties via foreclosure for unpaid taxes. Eventually, the state legislature approved a plan to merge the county lands into a state forest and appropriated funds to begin restoration activities. Restoration involved the planting of 72,000,000 new trees over the next twenty years. Of these, about 1,000,000 were planted by students and other volunteers. Today the forest consists of 364,000 acres of fifty and sixty year-old trees. There are also a few original old growth trees that somehow survived the fires, including two or three at my luncheon spot by the Wilson River.
After lunch we continued west on Highway 8 to where it ends in the town of Tillamook. There we turned south and started the long road home.
A map of the Tillamook State Forest showing Highway 8, the route that runs through it.
The town of Tillamook, besides being famous for its cheese factory, is also home to the Tillamook Naval Air Museum. The building is a blimp hangar dating from 1943.
Twelve miles south of Tillamook lies the town of Beaver, Oregon at the mouth of the Nestucca River. The plan for the afternoon was to drive up Nestucca River Road for twenty miles or so and then turn south for twenty more miles on an unnamed mountain road that would eventually lead me to Willamina, Oregon. At that point I could get back onto a real highway and have an easy drive home. My travel guide said that the route through the mountains from Beaver to Willamina was about two thirds “two-lane paved” and one third “one-lane paved.” The one-lane part, naturally, was the middle third where the mountains were highest.
After some minor difficulty we found Nestucca River Road and headed east. The road was narrow, but it had two lanes. You could tell it had two lanes because occasionally you could see the faded remains of a yellow stripe down the middle. The first ten miles were fairly level with bucolic views of pretty little farms along the river. Then the road started climbing into the forest. It got curvier and a little narrower and there was no longer any trace of a center stripe. That was all right with us because there was hardly any traffic and the stripe had always seemed to be more like wishful thinking than anything else.
We weren’t going all that fast; well maybe a little bit here and there, but mostly not. We were just tooling along enjoying ourselves. The top was down and the temperature was perfect. How long could such an idyllic interlude continue? Not too long. A pickup truck appeared behind me, moving fairly fast. It was a smallish truck, and I couldn’t tell the make. Almost all trucks have front end brand emblems or badges. It appeared that on this truck the emblem had been removed. The truck was an odd color, a kind of beige with small slashes of a darker brown that appeared to have been applied in a regular pattern. But perhaps I only dreamt the pattern; I just got quick glimpses in the rearview mirror as we moved from sun to shade and shade to sun.
There was no way to ever pass on such a road and no place to pull over either, so we were fated to be together there for a while, that other driver and I. Eventually I decided to speed up; life would be more pleasant for both of us, I thought, if there were some space between. But that did no good. The little truck was able to pull strongly enough to keep pace. The truck seemed more at home on this sort of road and I wondered how many times the driver had been on it before. I wondered what the other driver might be thinking. Was it something like “Hey, I bet I can keep up with a Porsche on this road.” Oh dear. I decided to get serious, very serious.
We were on the “one-lane paved” section, which featured a very narrow road with lots of steep inclines and dozens of sharp curves, half of them blind curves around big pieces of mountain. Fortunately the road tended to widen just a bit at the worst of the blind curves; perhaps the makers knew what they were about. I stayed mostly in third gear, dipping into second at the sudden right angle turns and up into fourth very occasionally. (The Boxster has a six-speed manual transmission.) That kept the revs up to between 3,000 and 5,000 rpm, where the Boxster is very strong and very loud. Even though we were going mostly uphill I was braking a lot, blasting out of curves and charging up the tiniest straights before standing on the brakes for the next turn. The pickup fairly quickly disappeared behind me. The Boxster absolutely loved this kind of driving. It seemed to be laughing and yelling like a banshee. “Why,” it asked me, ” don’t we just do this all the time?” “I know it’s fun,” I answered, “but this particular thing is stupid. Just because you are so awesomely capable that I can keep keep from running off this road at these speeds doesn’t mean that we won’t run into something unexpected around one of these curves. That would be very bad.” “Fine,” said the car, as I gradually slowed down to a more reasonable pace. Alas, after a short while, shorter than I had hoped, the truck again appeared behind me. I could hear the Boxster snickering. We had to do it all over again, for real this time. I like pickups. I own a pickup. But pickups behind me bring out the worst.
So we went back into insanity mode and stayed there, cresting the mountains and heading down the other side. Gradually the road got a little wider and a little straighter, which meant we could go even faster. We met two other vehicles coming the other way, but they were no problem. We didn’t slow down until farms and houses began to appear. I was pretty much exhausted by then, all out of adrenaline. The Boxster wasn’t tired at all, but was sympathetic anyway. We never saw the little pickup again. Was it ever really there or was it just an apparition conjured up by an evil spirit of the place?
For the last few miles into Willamina the road was legitimately two lanes and there was a lot more traffic. The posted speed was 25. I noticed that the locals were going 50. It was a little disorienting. I settled on 40. By coming into the town via its back door, as it were, I passed by the largest lumber mill complex I have ever seen. Its owner, Hampton Lumber, claims that it was for a time the largest mill in the United States. I don’t think I want to see the current largest.
Here’s a satellite view of the Willamina mill. The rectangle on the left is the log storage yard. The road that comes down from the northwest and curves around the main building is the one I came in on.
From Willamina I got back onto familiar roads for a sedate drive home. Such a different world.
M shopped Winco for Winco-type stuff, including sliced almonds for the granola that E plans to make in her slow cooker. The recipe includes maple syrup, so it’s likely to be pretty good. E is also planning gazpacho.
Tuesday, July 6 Deaths 2,782 (+1) New cases 463
M made BLTs for dinner. E’s sandwich featured Morningstar Vegetarian bacon strips, which aren’t bad tasting, but which have a very long ingredients list–not our favorite thing to see. While dinner was being prepared and eaten, granola was slow cooking.
Wednesday, July 7 Deaths 2,788 (+6) New cases 273
M tried the granola. It was great, especially with handful of our own raspberries. For E it was not a cereal day, so she has to wait until tomorrow.
After lunch M went shopping at the Co-op(!) and got himself some pickling vegetables. He then turned around and pickled them.
E made the gazpacho for dinner. We had a bit of rice with it and some canned fish. Good summer supper. We have strong opinions about gazpacho, both of us believing that the only real gazpacho is the kind popular in Spain during the seventies and eighties when we lived there, which is exactly what E makes. We don’t know much about other gazpachos and we don’t seem to care. We have, over the years, tried gazpacho in several restaurants here in America. It has been uniformly terrible. We find this very sad and at the same time deeply satisfying. As for the wretched stuff that restaurants in Corvallis call sangria, don’t get us started.
Thursday, July 8 Deaths 2,790 (+2) New cases 212
Adventure day. E went on her annual HEPAJ outing to P’s cottage at the coast. She rode in J’s new Honda CR-V hybrid. Nice. Lunch was at the Drift Inn. One of the group related how she had recently had a somewhat traumatic experience with a pedicurist who had just had cataract surgery and could only see out of one eye…
Meanwhile M took the Porsche out for a few hours. We won’t describe that here since he’s made a separate post about it.
Friday, July 9 Deaths 2,792 (+2) New cases 265
It was the first day of the Crazy Days shopping weekend in Corvallis and E was eager to get downtown. But first she had to do some gardening and then several errands. Such self-discipline! Finally she had a few moments to slip down to the Clothes Tree and the Golden Crane and try to remedy her desperate lack of decent clothing.
Later on we took the Boxster over to Albany to have a dine-in supper at Ba’s, our first time doing that since the beginning of last year. M had Vietnamese sticky rice for the first time ever. He says he hopes it’s not the last.
Saturday, July 10 Deaths 2,??? (+?) New cases ???
Having had to rush through Crazy Days yesterday, E went back downtown to see what else she could find out on the sidewalks. While she was gone, M got out his 1/16th scale T-90 Russian tank. He reattached its broken radio mast and recharged the main batteries. After relearning how to fire the cannon, he made some cardboard targets and started shooting them up in the living room. Yellow BB’s were flying all over.
Just after he was done and had put everything away, E came home with her bags of loot: a pretty cloth wine bag, a couple of greeting cards and some gift tags (70% off!). She had also taken a necklace to be fixed at the bead shop and of course had stopped to socialize here and there. Along the way she’d spotted a lamp marked down from $189 to $90. She liked it, but wasn’t sure. After she got home she shared the idea with M and they ended up going back to get it. Its unique feature is that it’s a flip lamp with two positions: one upright for room lighting and another facing down. The down facing position is ideal for E to see her embroidery work while watching TV.
Sunday, July 11 Deaths 2,??? (+?) New cases ???
We got up and ate Bodhi sugar buns for breakfast. They’re good alone; they’re good with jam. But, being covered with sugar, they are messy to eat. They gave us the strength to do some yard tasks in the cool of the morning. At 10:00 we took off to explore more up country logging roads. The plan was to drive by normal routes up to Grande Ronde and then turn south into the maze of logging roads, though which we hoped to navigate to Falls City, thirty miles away. In this we failed. Sigh. First, we had a hard time even finding our way into the forest. The best option that our Avenza map suggested did not, in fact, exist, having been consumed by an enormous casino parking lot. The next best option was likewise missing. Was this map made by someone in a parallel universe? Or was it just based on old information. Probably the latter. Despite these setbacks we kept trying. We found a way in and climbed high above the South Yamhill River valley. The forest was lovely, the temperature was ten degrees cooler than it had been below, and the scenery was wonderful. It was a nice feeling to be in a place that seemed so large and mostly empty of obvious signs of the earth’s rapacious dominant species. (This was partly an illusion, of course, as we were driving through a human-created tree farm, but it was a fine feeling nevertheless.)
All too soon, however, a locked gate barred the way on the route we had chosen. There were other roads in the area, but the map showed them all as dead ends. We parked in the shade as best we could, took a short walk past the gate, and then returned to the truck for a Nugo bar lunch. Then it was back the way we came, down down down into the valley.
We got up pretty high, but encountered a gate just a mile past this view point.
The gate has a homemade look. It’s simple but serious: one hefty I-bar upright, one heavy steel pipe barrier bar, one steel rod bar support.
Here’s where the support rod meets the bar…
…and here’s the hasp and chain lock.
Our consolation was that on our way back to Corvallis E found us a nice coffee place in the town of Dallas, Oregon. Karma Coffee is its name and they use beans from Allan’s coffee roasters. Later on we made a dinner of cabbage-potato subzi with rice and raita.
Also, E has just finished reading The Wind in the Willows. Her favorite takeaway from the book is a quote from Badger, “Stir your stumps, Toad! We just got your house back for you and you haven’t even offered us so much as a sandwich.”
A very warm night, but better weather arrived during the day. Afternoon temperatures were in the 80’s leading to low 70’s in the evening. As usual E was busy today. After breakfast she did her Co-op shopping. One of her next projects was to pack up a couple of vinyl albums to be sent away for digitization. One was a record of Dame Judith Anderson reading poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The other was an album of folk music by La Tuna de la Universidad de Puerto Rico.
M had an eye doctor appointment at 8:00 a.m., which he managed to remember at 7:40 a.m. Fortunately the clinic is very near. When he returned, he used his pupil dilation as an excuse to take a morning nap. Later on, he did his half of the grocery shopping. After lunch he took another nap for which he offered no excuse whatever.
Tuesday, June 29 Deaths 2,770 (+7) New cases 230
E had a Zoom exercise class today, her first after a two-week layoff. The instructor took it easy on them–at least a little. While E did stair steps and such, M made tuna sandwiches and packed a traditional lunch of celery, olives, potato chips, chocolates and Oban Little Bay. At about 10:30 we carried the lunch out to the truck along with a big package to mail and a collection of bags and boxes for Good Will. Once the errands were done, we drove out to the Beazell forest for a hike up Plunkett Creek. We had our lunch down by the stream where it was lovely and cool. The hillsides and uplands of Beazell Memorial Forest are covered in third or fourth growth Douglas fir, but down in the hollow where the creek flows the trees are are all maples and mountain cherries, as tall and sturdy and old as they naturally can be.
Plunkett Creek is not exactly raging at this time of year; but if you look carefully, you can find chocolate.
Wednesday, June 30 Deaths 2,774 (+4) New cases 196
Oregon Governor Kate Brown has announced the ending of most COVID restrictions as of today. Oregon COVID deaths in June were 40% lower than in May. The average daily rate was 3.40 in June vs. 5.71 in May. The number of new cases and the percentage of positive test results have also been low.
Mostly cloudy in Corvallis today. We spent the morning outside, catching up on garden work that we had not been able to do in the heat. We also counted several plants that were seriously damaged by the heat wave, perhaps fatally. M’s thimbleberries and salal are looking especially bad. E’s favorites have suffered less serious damage. Could that be because she rigged up a shade-cloth cover for them?
After lunch, M went to the store to get a new hose wand and a refill bottle of windex. He took the Porsche and didn’t return for two and half hours. He says he was exploring covered bridges around Scio and Crabtree. E celebrated by going downtown to her favorite store in search of a pair of shorts. Did she find some nice ones? She did. Did she find a few other nice things? Uh-huh. At check-out, did the shop owner, who is no dummy, give E a bonus discount which encouraged her to buy one more thing than she had planned? E thinks she probably did, but is not complaining.
Thursday, July 1 Deaths 2,778 (+4) New cases 198
E tried to keep up with her usual hectic schedule. First she dealt with a request to change an medical appointment time. It wasn’t an appointment she needed, so she cancelled instead. She then had her exercise class, and went to Bi-Mart for supplies. After lunch she got ready for a dental appointment and had M drive her over there so she could get some exercise walking home. She got the walking exercise sooner than she expected because just as they were getting started with her cleaning, there was a power failure and they sent her away.
For dinner we went to Sky High Brewing and ate at the rooftop bar. Quite a nice view there. Also an interesting system of ordering. A staff member shows you to a table, but then you’re on your own. There’s a sign on the table with a QR code and a table number. You scan the code with your phone and go to the web menu and decide what you want. Then you get up and go over to the bar, give them your table number, and place your order. You can either pay right then or keep a tab open. We just paid. After a bit, your order is delivered to the table. Easy. Eve had her favorite caesar salad and M ate himself sick with an overly elaborate burger. Hopefully, he has learned never to do that again, at least not for a while.
In the national news we hear that Donald Rumsfeld has died. The media question of the day has become whether he or Robert McNamara was the worst secretary of defense that we’ve ever had. A preachy sort of question. We are who we are in this world. And anyway– as is explained in Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone/Twelve Beauties of Jinling–the Land of Illusion and the Paradise of Truth are one and the same.
Friday, July 2 Deaths 2,781 (+3) New cases 209
An important event took place this morning as Eve had her nails done in in honor of the 4th of July. While she was gone M did prep work for touching up the paint on the garden shed. Then it was time for E’s Zoom yoga, followed by moving furniture around to get ready for a tea time visit from E’s friend P. M opened a bottle of Segura Viudas–P is a champagne lover–and also helped grill up some haloumi, which P had never had. We served it with pita and cherry tomatoes, which eventually left us not very eager to have dinner. In the course of conversation, P mentioned that she knew someone else who got sick from a Sky High burger. Hmm.
In COVID news, Oregon has today reached the 70% target level of vaccinated adults and now stands 18th in the nation in percentage of adult population vaccinated.
Saturday, July 3 Deaths 2,xxx (+x) New cases xxx
We were up early today. E went off to get some croissants and M went out to do more shed painting, all this before breakfast. That came at around 8:30, and found us happily chewing on fresh pastry and sipping café con leche. Then we took a walk up the top of Garryanna. There were two houses for sale along our route. One is 2,400 sqft for $595,000. The other is 4,100 sqft with a six car garage for $875,000. M wants to make an offer on the latter. It seems like everything sells for 10% over the asking price these days, so he needs to come up with around $950,000. We’re not sure if this is a reasonable price, especially since the only thing M really wants is the six car garage. Problem is, he’d have to sells his cars to come up with the down payment.
After the entertaining part of the day, we faced the matter of refrigerator cleaning, which we had been dreading . Once we got started, we did it all–took everything out, pulled the fridge out of its niche, took it apart, scrubbed all its shelves and bins, and vacuumed and swept behind and underneath. Then we had to put everything back and re-adjust the front height so the door would close by itself. It took us hours, but it was–we suppose–a good thing to do. It hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned since we bought it way back before the pandemic.
Sunday, July 4 Deaths 2,xxx (+x) New cases xxx
The Oregon Health Authority is taking a holiday and we have no current COVID data. So let’s us take a holiday also, and just share some photos of the 4th of July party we went to at K and J’s in Salem.
The setting, just before the guests arrived to mess it up.
Two of said guests.
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More party goers. Photos courtesy of C, who was visiting from the 1950’s.
