Month: May 2022

Monday, May 9, 2022

More rain and clouds. The grass is growing like crazy and many lawns in the neighborhood are looking shaggy. Only the lawn service lawns are neat and trim. The professionals work in all weathers; residents who mow their own wait for better days.

Tuesday, May 10. 2022

And here’s a better day now, bright sun from early in the morning. They say we’ll have two days of sun before the rain returns. Very good, says M, one day for the back yard and one day for the front.

Wednesday, May 11, 2022

As promised, we got sunshine today also. There was lots of mowing going on up and down the street. But, more importantly, E made her first rhubarb pie of the season! It was delightful! 

Thursday, May 12, 2022

Back to rain. Hard and steady with gusts of wind. Pretty nasty, actually. Across the street, lawn service workers in heavy rain gear are making an inordinate amount of noise… 

Friday, May 13, 2022

We went to see the new Corvallis Museum. It’s not terrible.

Sunday, May 15, 2022

E went off to Portland today and met A at the Saturday Market in Vancouver, WA. She was expecting some kind of farmers’ market like we have here, but no, the Vancouver Saturday Market runs more to upscale crafts than to upscale veggies. The two of them had a great time looking around at all the pretty things and clever ideas. They had lunch at a place near the market and then went to A’s house for tea. E came home with a wall mountable planter to go next to our front door. It’s meant for succulents and is quite pretty. Plus, it came wrapped in several pages of a newspaper called The Epoch Times, which had a number of catchy headlines, as for example 1) How the Specter of Communism Rules Our World, 2) How China is Using Amazon to Destroy Democracy, and 3) The Infrastructure Bill is the Royal Road to Communism. There was also an ad for a new book about how we know the earth is flat. The book is titled–cunningly enough–The Flat Earth. 

M, meanwhile, went “shopping” up in the mountains and came home with some rocks and a few pieces of wood with which to decorate the back yard. The first rock supply yard that he came to was relatively small and featured mostly gray rocks. M likes gray, so he picked out three examples, with his main selection criterion being that the rocks had to be small enough for him to pick up and carry.

Later on he came to another place that specialized in rocks that weren’t gray. He picked out a couple of those too.

Once he had his rocks, M was free to enjoy the scenery. Here’s Canyon Creek in its springtime glory.

And finally, the photo below shows where M turned around and headed home. This is Willamette National Forest Road 2024, which goes up along Two Girls Creek over toward Road 2032. To M, this infrastructure does not appear to be part of the royal road to communism, but you never know.

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Breakfast at Bodhi’s today. We’ve been there five or six times now and have been frustrated that only once did we find chocolate chip scones. What’s wrong with these people? Their scones are very good, but lately we have been forced to try all sorts of weird varieties. Finally, today, we realized something important: all their scones taste pretty much the same. And they’re all pretty good. 

After breakfast M left for Day 1 of his Porsche tour of central Oregon. Day 1 was spent getting from Corvallis up to the The Dalles in the Columbia Gorge. M did a part of the trip on what is now called Historic Highway 30. Completed in 1922, 30 was the first auto route up the gorge. It was built to facilitate tourism and features a number of lookouts and viewpoints. Here’s the view from one such place, near the town of Mosier.

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

E was halfway through breakfast when she noticed something quite disturbing: there was no glass of juice next to her placemat! Worse yet, no one had even started making the coffee! Staffing shortages strike again. 

M breakfasted on bad yogurt and a stale donut, then left The Dalles and headed east to Arlington, finally reaching the area that he wanted to explore. As planned, he went south down OR Highway 19, then crossed over to OR 74 on a nameless east-west rural connector. Wonderful road.

In Hepner M bought a sandwich at a grocery store deli, then took OR 207 south to Kimberly. From there he went east to Long Creek. Beautiful scenery and trafficless roads. Lots of curves. Warm enough and dry enough to have the top down, at least for a while.

From Long Creek, M went south down US 395 through John Day to Burns. This was a road he’d driven several times before. Parts of the route can be very fast. 

So M made it to Burns in a timely manner and found his motel. He’d got a good deal on his room by going through a booking site called Traveluro. It was so cheap that he was worried about whether it was for real; but it all seemed to work. After checking in, M got a message from Traveluro thanking him for using them and wishing him all the best during his stay. He then got another text from Traveluro congratulating him on having chosen to visit ‘Burnsville’ (!) and reminding him to be sure and visit Culzean Castle as well as the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. Foolishly, M skipped both of these and visited a Mexican restaurant instead.

Thursday, May 19, 2022

M got up early and headed even farther south on 395. He wanted to see Lake Abert again.

Then it was time to turn for home so as to be back in time for H’s birthday dinner at Sybaris. He got back to Corvallis around 3:30. His three-day trip covered 912 miles. At $5.65 a gallon for premium, the fuel bill was $185.  

And how did the dinner at Sybaris go? It was wonderful. H had sole, M had vindaloo sausage, and E had pasta primavera. The sauces were all delicious and everything came with early spring vegetables: paper-thin snow peas, tiny asparagus sprigs, spicy greens, and more. Did we sensibly forego having an appetizer and then all eat too much for dessert? Yes we did.

Saturday, May 21, 2022

E went to a weed pulling party this morning, answering a call for volunteers from the Benton County Soil and Water Conservation District. The setting was Mary’s River Park in Philomath and the main targets were Himalayan blackberry and English ivy. E went after ivy. The most interesting thing she learned was that ivy does not flower on the ground. Only when it gets high in the tree does it produce flowers, and then seeds which are easily scattered by the wind. So severing vines from their roots is an effective way of deterring the proliferation of ivy. E enjoyed cutting and pulling vines, and when it was over, she was delighted to sample the donuts generously provided by our host.

Meanwhile M went to a baseball game with R. They went to see the OSU Beavers, who have been doing very well this year, despite a late season slump. The opposing team was from UCLA, a school where M was once a graduate student. OSU won, 9-3, and ended up finishing second in the Pac-12. 

M and R sat in the right field bleachers, their usual spot. Here’s what it looked like. Two of the buildings visible here bring back memories. In the late 70’s, M and E had offices in the older building in the center. In the 90’s and 00’s, M, E, and R were all based in the somewhat uglier blue building on the right.

Sunday, May 1, 2022

We went on a Sunday stroll in McDonald Forest in search of wild irises, but all we found was this cute little Douglas squirrel.

Monday, May 2, 2022

The time has arrived for our trip to Central Oregon. We spent the morning packing up and rolled out of town at 1:00, planning to spend the first night in Terrebonne, a little town just 135 miles east of Corvallis. We left home in a pouring rain, but the forecast was for a drier day tomorrow. And besides, we’d be on the other side of the mountains, which is a much drier sort of place than where we live. So off we went, confident that we were headed for better weather. After about an hour of driving, we noticed that we hadn’t found it quite yet.

It wasn’t bad, really. After another hour we were on the other side of the mountains and looking around for our sunglasses.

Terrebonne, Oregon is just on the edge of Smith Rock State Park. It’s small but bustling. Smith Rock is the birthplace of the sport of modern rock climbing and was long considered to be the world capital of that sport. There are hundreds of climbing routes at a wide range of ability levels. It’s also a great place for hiking and we’ve done that once or twice. But our destination this time was a place called Gray Butte, which is well east of the park in an area of no interest to climbers. The plan was to spend the night in Terrebonne and drive to Gray Butte in the morning.

So all we had to do tonight was check into our hotel and then find a place to have dinner. Neither task was all that easy. Our lodging, called the Smith Rock Resort, turned out to be nowhere near the park or the town. It was, rather, twelve miles west of Terrebonne. When we finally got there we found that the resort cabins were in a long line between the Crooked River Gorge on one side and a vast golf course on the other. We were in the last cabin in the line, which gave us some fine views. The gorge side looked like utter wilderness, while on the south side we could see gophers and rabbits capering among scattered golf balls on the driving range. We didn’t have much time to take in this somewhat bizarre scene, cuz we were hungry and the nearest good food was 17 miles away in the town of Redmond.

Eventually we found that Hola restaurant now has a branch in Redmond. Oh boy. Hola is a Peruvian-Mexican chain with a good vegetarian selection and mighty nice drinks. E had a signature pisco sour and M had a paloma made with Jarritos grapefruit soda with tajin on the rim of the glass. Thus fortified, we returned to our cabin and noticed a nearby sign pointing to something called the Crooked River Gorge Trail. Well, we had to at least take a look at that, so we bundled up and went off to explore. After just a hundred yards we came to the edge of gorge, which turned out to be quite a sight.

There was a signboard with a map showing a loop trail that descended to the river level, then ambled along the river for a while, and finally climbed back up the very spot we were on. The map did not say how long the trail was. Well. It was a little late in the day, but the days are pretty long in May and we had at least another two hours of good light. We couldn’t actually see the trail, but it seemed like it would have to be steep and maybe rougher than we’d prefer. But the whole place was beautiful. So the pisco sour and the paloma looked at each other and decided to go for it.

So, yes, the trail was a little steeper and rougher than we would’ve liked, but still passable and of course quite beautiful. Also, we found that the trail had a place where you could choose to go all the way down to the bottom, or you just go along the river at fifty or so feet above the level of the water. We saved strength and time by choosing the latter. (But now E says we have to come back again some day and go all the way to the bottom.)

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

We slept fairly well last night, despite the overly large pillows and the memory foam mattress whose memories were mostly bad. We made our breakfast in the room from things we’d brought along. It was a little after 9:00 when we got everything repacked and headed for Gray Butte.

The route took us back to Terrebonne and onto a road that went east around the southern edge of Smith Rock Park. By the time we turned again, this time onto a route called Lone Pine Road, we had left the climbing terrain behind. After seven more miles we turned left at an unmarked turn-off for a narrow track called Road 57. At that point, as we rattled across an old metal cattleguard, we put aside our printed guidebook and started navigating by using the Avenza App on M’s phone. (In our limited experience with back country navigation, Google Maps is better than Apple Maps, but neither is as good as Avenza.) 

After half an hour of pretty rough going we arrived at the trailhead, which is located at the site of an old homestead. We wanted to look around a little, but first it was time to hike. The trail looped around the north flank of the butte, climbing steadily but gently. There were wildflowers everywhere. The dry, bare earth and lichen covered rocks made a great setting. 

After about a mile and a quarter we began to get glimpses of snow-covered Cascades peaks in the distance. 

The big peak in the video is Mt. Hood, 70 miles to the north. We could also see the top of Mt. Adams, 120 miles northeast. To the south we could see Mt. Batchelor, Broken Top, and the Three Sisters. Here’s a photo of two of the Sisters, about 40 miles southwest..

It was 11:00 A.M. when we started down, making it just about lunchtime when we got back to the trailhead. There were no remnants of any structures at the homestead site, but there were a striking number of large dead trees that didn’t look like natives.

The poplars may be long dead, but the apple orchard still survives.

Julius and Sarah McCoin first homesteaded here with their four children in 1886. They planted the Lombardy poplars to provide shade for the house and a windbreak for the apple trees. We had lunch in what was once their front yard. The family raised sheep and horses, operated a freight business, and planted over 100 apple trees. Sarah McCoin died in 1888 and from then on the McCoin children had to manage alone for weeks at a time while Julius drove his 12-horse freight wagon on a route between Prineville and the Columbia River. One source reports that when Sarah died, the eldest child was nine; another source says thirteen. Both sources say that the two youngest were three and five. 

During the mid 1930’s conditions made it impossible to make a living in the area around Gray Butte. In 1936, the McCoins, along with hundreds of other homesteaders, were forced to abandon their properties. An appeal to Franklin Roosevelt led to a program under which the federal government paid the families for the land they were leaving, thus giving them assistance in starting anew somewhere else. Since then the land has been administered by the U.S. Forest Service. All of the structures on the affected lands were removed as part of a CCC project in 1938. 

In the 1980’s, Forest Service rangeland specialists Ecker and Ketrenos pruned the apple trees, which was critical to extending their lives. A few trees have died over the years, but many still bear fruit. 

Wednesday, May 4, 2022

We’ve just spent the night at the Balch Hotel in Dufur, Oregon. There’s not too much happening in Dufur–population: 639–but the Balch is a really amazing place. We’d like to go back some day. For now we must be off again, back to Corvallis.

Thursday, May 5, 2022

Rain.

Friday, May 6, 2022

Rain. In the evening E went to see Mamma Mia with H and T. This marked the resumption of live theatre performances at the Corvallis High School following two years of shut-down due to COVID.

Saturday, May 7, 2022

Rain all day. But in the evening, ice cream!

Sunday, May 8, 2022

Rain and clouds. But also, flowers for Mother’s Day!