Month: September 2024

Thursday, Sept. 19th

Salt Lake City is just an hour and half flight from Eugene, so this was an easy travel day. We packed a lunch at home and ate it in the airport while waiting to board. Towards the end of the flight we again got a wonderful view of the Wasatch Mountains as the plane made its descent into Salt Lake. Once we landed, however, E received a text with terrible news concerning her favorite canine friend and walking partner. Asher had been found to have an inoperable tumor on his heart and had just been put down. Asher was one of the finest gentlemen we have known–of any species. He will be missed.

Somewhat somberly, we found our rental car and made our way 35 miles north toward Ogden. Our motel was located just at the mouth of Weber Canyon, a spot that M well remembered as being one of the windiest places in the area. A lot has changed since M left Utah. All the roads are different and much of the landscape has been transformed. But the wind hasn’t changed. When we got out of the car, it almost knocked us over.

Friday, Sept. 20th

We met up with L today, who graciously came down from Heber and met us at Taggart, just half an hour away from our hotel. We had a walk along the river followed by lunch at the town’s eponymous restaurant.

In the evening we went to a small gathering of some of M’s middle school and high school friends. It was a lovely evening at B’s wonderful house on the hill. M had a chance to share memories and catch up on a little of what had happened in Ogden for the many years that he was away from it, either in Oregon or overseas. And of course there were remembrances of friends who are no longer with us. The menu consisted of salad, pizza and ice cream, which we found quite suitable to the occasion. Here’s a photo.

Saturday, Sept. 21st

We hit the road again this morning, starting the 300-mile trip up to Grand Teton National Park. We took the western route, north on I-15 into Idaho, then jogging west into Wyoming, north to Jackson Hole and into the Park at Moran. As we neared Moran, we got our first sight of the mountains. They are awesome. We didn’t stop to admire them, though. Instead we headed straight for our cabin at Colter Bay. We were tired.

Sunday, Sept. 22nd

One of the neat things about the Tetons is that a largish river–the Snake–flows past them. But we hadn’t seen it yesterday. After breakfast, we drove south to a place called Schwabacher Landing.

In the afternoon we took a boat tour of Jackson Lake. Conveniently, the boats depart from our temporary home location at Colter Bay. Also convenient, you could say, was that today happened to be the final day of cruises for the 2024 season.

Monday, Sept. 23rd

Today we drove down to Jenny Lake and took a shuttle boat over to the Cascade Canyon trailhead. Jenny Lake is the single most popular destination in the park, so we were definitely not alone. But the trail was still very nice.

After passing the falls the trail climbs steeply up the north flank of the canyon, gaining more than a thousand feet of elevation in just three quarters of a mile. Much of this part of the trail features wide stone steps that were set in place by CCC workers in the 1930’s. Near the top, though, there are a few more rugged spots. The immediate reward is an overlook called Inspiration Point, which provides a dramatic view of the lake and the sage lands beyond. For some of the crowd, this was enough. But the overlook is not actually the best of what this trail offers. For that you must continue, strolling along a very lovely and gently climbing trail that takes you up Cascade Canyon and in among the peaks. The trail goes on for many miles, leading up to a high pass and then down the other side. Needless to say, we didn’t go that far. But we did continue for another mile or so beyond the lookout, enough to get a taste.

We finally stopped for lunch–none too soon–at the spot shown in the video above. After lunch we turned around, leaving the higher reaches of the route to younger and faster hikers. The way down was only a couple of miles, which was good since we were feeling weary and getting a little tired of trying to breathe properly at 7,200 feet.

Back at the dock we queued up for the shuttle boat, which took us back to the east side of the lake. Then came another hike back to where we’d parked the car. Once back in our cabin, we rested and cleaned up a bit before finishing the day’s events with a fancy meal. For that we went to the Mural Room of the Grand Teton Lodge. M’s Angus steak was good; E’s Idaho trout was superb. Uncharacteristically, E found that the view out the window actually rivaled the delicious meal.

Tuesday, Sept. 24th

Time to start our long journey home. We left the park around ten and headed south, taking a somewhat different route than on the way up. We stopped in Afton, Idaho and got a take-out lunch from Taco Time, then drove for another 45 minutes before stopping to eat it at a public park in Montpelier, Idaho. After lunch we went into Utah, passing around the west side of Bear Lake, then jogged east back into Wyoming and finally south down to I-80. This was handy because I-80–dontcha know–runs down to Evanston (where Utahns go to buy fireworks that are illegal in Utah), then to Park City, and then to Salt Lake City, where it passes right by the Salt Lake Airport on its way to Reno.

As we were having dinner in the SLC airport, we got a text from A with a photo of her and the other A having dinner in the Portland airport. After comparing notes, we found that she was headed to a conference in San Diego and would be changing planes in SLC. Her flight was also on Delta, landing 5 gates away from ours, so we hustled over there to greet her. We had a lovely little visit for 15 minutes, after which we each boarded our respective 10:55 p.m. departures. Synchronicity!

After gaining an hour due to the time change we arrived in Eugene around midnight.

Wednesday, Sept. 25th

Arrived home at around 1:15 a.m. We checked to see if the puzzle fairies had finished our jigsaw for us while we were gone. They hadn’t.

Thursday, Sept. 26th

E was busy again: taking her car to the shop, going to exercise class in the park, and then doing Laughter Yoga via Zoom in the afternoon. M went to Shonnard’s, where they had just gotten in a shipment of native shrubs.

Friday, Sept. 27th

E had an eye appointment and then went to lunch at Gathering Together with her THEPAJ group.

Saturday, Sept. 28th

We had M and L (Asher’s housemates) over for a late breakfast: home-cooked blueberry muffins and espresso. We shared some favorite memories of Asher and enjoyed a tour of the back yard on this sunny morning.

It’s Fall Festival time in Corvallis. M went down early to get some native bulbs from the Benton Soil and Water Conservation District Fall Plant Sale. E went down later to see her friend L playing in a Marimba band.

The puzzle’s not done yet, but it’s getting there.

Thursday, September 12th

In the morning M loaded camping stuff into the truck, transforming it from a sensible vehicle into a low-rent off-road adventurer. That done, he said goodbye to E and drove off toward Nevada. At 11:00 E went for a garden tour at her friend B’s house, which was a very nice thing to do. After the tour, they sat on the covered patio and had tea and goodies. Right up E’s alley.

For dinner, in accordance with her vow not to cook anything while M was away, she got take-out from Tacovore. The meal consisted of a tempeh chorizo taco and one of their world-renowned margaritas, the latter of which she knew would last her for several days if she behaved herself. Then she got to work on the jigsaw puzzle that we had started a few days before when Cuz was here.

Friday, September 13th

After a night at the wrong motel in Lakeview–he’d gotten the Executive Inn¹ confused with the Interstate 8²–M left early the next morning and drove down into California to make his return to Surprise Valley. One of the little towns there is called Lake City. When M had been there last April, the 71 residents of Lake City could look out at a big, beautiful blue lake. In September the view was a little different.

(¹Few executives ever visit Lakeview and they’re unlikely to stay here when they do. ²The nearest interstate is 110 miles away.)

M’s next stop in Surprise Valley was Cedarville, a bustling urban center with more than 700 residents and the valley’s only gas station. M gassed up and headed east into Nevada.

M soon turned southeast at the junction and headed down in the direction of High Rock Canyon, his chief destination for this trip. Ten minutes later, a pickup truck came up from the other direction. It looked like some kind of modern camping rig–piloted by another lone desert traveller. It was the last car or person that M would see for the next 24 hours. In the two photos below you can get a notion of the scenery.

Fiinally, M reached the serious part of the expedition, the drive down High Rock Canyon. Hmm. As it turned out, this drive was not one of M’s greatest ideas. He had suspected that it would be a rough road, but OnX had rated it as just moderate, which sounded okay. More ominous was the Bureau of Land Management warning sign on the way in:

Somehow this message did not quite get through to M. This was mostly his own fault of course, but he complains that the warning is a little short on details. It doesn’t mention, for example, that there with be portions of the route that are so narrow that branches will scratch the paint on both sides of the car at the same time. Nor does it mention the place where the road ends at a small drop-off and then blithely continues three or four feet lower down. Driving over a cliff–even a short cliff–and just hoping for the best? How is that even a road? Still, the sign did use the word “extremely” and that should have been a clue.

It was a laborious and harrowing passage. Both M and his truck survived, but the latter suffered a nasty gash on the bottom of the passenger side door. That happened while M was descending a steep, narrow, boulder-strewn slope that bore only the faintest of connections to the word “road.” While traveling at the rate of roughly one and a half miles per hour, the truck suddenly slipped sideways a few inches. M heard a short scrape and felt a solid thunk. Oh well. Fate.

Once out of the canyon, M started looking for a place to make camp. This was a different kind of challenge. He was prepared for the lack of campgrounds. But there was the matter making sure to camp on BLM land rather than ranch land. And of course M was very particular about a place. It had to be off the ‘main road’ on which he was travelling and it had to be in the hills rather than out on the flats.

Back in Corvallis, E already knew where she was camping for the night, but she needed to figure out what to eat. She settled on more take-out: jobchae from Koriander.

M already knew what he was going to eat; he just had to find a suitable spot. Eventually he found an abandoned but still passable road leading up into a fold in the hills. Then he found a nice flat space to park. Once there, he had time to explore and walked a little farther up the draw. The road soon petered out as a road but continued as a trail.

It was a lovely night to be out. First, a fat moon lit up the landscape. Then, after the moon had set, the stars were awesome. M was camped inside an area that is said to be the darkest place in the continental U.S., with little or no night lighting for at least 70 miles in any direction.

Saturday, September 14th

Today, M made his way–not without difficulty–from deep in North Central Nevada to Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge way up there in Oregon. It was a lot of driving with only a few stops: one as he entered a Paiute reservation and stopped to take a photo of a sign, one to ask directions from a rancher after his OnX app had gone wonky, and one to buy seven gallons of very expensive gas at Denio junction. He spent the night at a place called Camp Hart. The original Camp Hart was created in 1936, the same year that the refuge was established. The first buildings were four temporary barracks to house the many CCC workers who would build the roads and other refuge infrastructure. The barracks are long gone and most of those young workers are probably gone too. But much of what they built still remains in various parts of the refuge. Camp Hart itself is today just a bare bones campground in a lovely spot at the base of Hart Mountain.

E also travelled north today, but only up to Salem for a party at K and J’s house. It was a great party–as usual at K and J’s–with marvelous Octoberfest costumes and decorations. E was excited to join a small team of party-goers in a grape harvesting activity. The hosts provided baskets, scissors, and a lush vine full of grapes. Rumor has it that they will soon attempt to make dolmas using the leftover grape leaves.

Sunday, September 15th

From Camp Hart, M returned to Corvallis via Plush, Lakeview, Sprague River, Chiloquin, and Oakridge.

E hosted a potluck gathering on the patio. It was the second annual in-person gathering of her Zoom yoga class. The food was delicious, the camaraderie delightful, and both were enhanced by the perfect sunny weather.

Monday, September 16th

M spent the day putting things away and cleaning up the truck. The good news is that a good rub with scratch remover took care of most of the scratches in the clear coat finish. Fie on the bad news.

Tuesday, September 17th

In the morning we did grocery shopping and then M did a little gardening while E continued her preparations for hosting her book club meeting. Among other things, this involved baking two different berry cobblers, one with gluten and one without. This month’s book was The Measure by Nikki Erlich. The members had fun talking about whether or not they would want to know exactly how long they were going to live.

Wednesday, September 18th

Packing and last minute chores before leaving tomorrow for Grand Teton National Park. On the way we’ll stop in Utah.

Thursday, August 29th

The story of the origin of the COVID virus has become clearer in the last few years, based largely on information that has become available via Freedom of Information Act requests. M has been looking at two YouTube videos. One is an Aug. 2023 interview with Jeffrey Sachs, chairman of the Lancet COVID 19 Commission. The other is a Nov. 2022 interview with Emily Kopp, an investigative reporter for U.S. Right to Know, an organization that initiated some of the Freedom in Information Act requests. One suspects that it was Kopp herself who sifted through thousands of pages of documents in order to find evidence of what was really going on. She’s an interesting young woman. Overall, the sequence of events that Sachs and Kopp reveal makes for a fascinating story. For M–the old lit. major–it is very reminiscent of Greek tragedy.

And here’s another science news update, this one related to the two astronauts on the space station.

Friday, August 30th

We had a few people over for dinner, which consisted of paella from E, salad from B, and a flourless cake from Ma, all of which were awfully good. We had dinner inside, then dessert outside when the weather had improved. Ma and J have just returned from a year in Brasilia, where Ma was an English Language Fellow. While she kept busy teaching university classes and doing other ELF-type projects, J improved his Portuguese, did yoga, and went adventuring into the fascinating world of Brazilian visa requirements.

Saturday, August 31th

We went over to the coast again today because S invited us over to stay at a house he was renting at the beach just north of Yachats. The little house was in the “fish district” on Perch Street. We were able to walk from there to the Gerdemann Botanic Preserve and Public Footpath, where a trail through the preserve links to a trail into the Suislaw National Forest. S is a tireless walker and we also walked back to the ocean. There we followed a path along the edge of the bluffs that lie between the fish district and downtown. S told us how this route was once part of the very early coach and wagon road that provided the only access to the town of Yachats. The road led down from Waldport. The first seven miles of the road were on the beach and then, when the beach ended at the place where Salmon Street is now, it climbed up to go along the bluff. In the 1970s there was a long struggle to make the old bluff road into a walking trail. The effort was mostly successful and was only settled after the case went to the Oregon Supreme Court.

Tuesday, September 3rd

We took a drive up to Salem today and took the Ioniq 5 to the Hyundai dealership for a system update. While that was going on, we got a Lyft courtesy of the dealership and went for lunch to the Thai Beer restaurant. Thai Beer is a place that we really liked when we visited a few years ago. Was it still as good? Well…we gobbled it right up, so maybe it was. Both of us agreed, though, that everything was just a little sweet and more than a little salty.

In the evening, we watched two episodes of Dark Winds on Netflix. The series is based on the novels of Tony Hillerman that feature Navajo Tribal Police Lt. Joe Leaphorn. Leaphorn is played byZahn MacClarnon, whom you will recognize if you ever watched Longmire. Dark Winds has received lots of good reviews and we can understand why. The stories, characters, and scenery are all very absorbing.

M is also giving some attention to the Korean series Crash Landing on You. It is only occasionally absorbing–every hour and ten minute episods seems interminable. E watched one and a third episodes and then gave up, as most rational people would.

Wednesday, September 4th

We did a little garden clean-up this morning. This was prompted by the fact that one of E’s friends from her book club was coming for a tour at noon. The back yard is dry and rather dull this time of year, but it’s still interesting to us and it was nice to have someone who wanted to look at it.

Thursday, September 5th

M had an eye appointment this morning and learned that his macular swelling has receded completely. He will be tapering off his anti-inflammatory eye drops for the next few weeks, which with hopefully prevent it from coming back. While he was doing that, E went up to the Portland Airport to pick up C and Z, who have come up from California for a visit.

Friday, September 6th

We dragged C over toward the coast today, but we didn’t quite make it to the ocean. Instead we went into the mountains near Lincoln City and hiked down to the Drift Creek bridge. Naturally, once we were there, we had a picnic. In the brief video below we’ve just finished the main part of lunch and are about to have a bit of chocolate for dessert.

We had a minor emergency on the drive home when it was determined that one of our party had been too long without ice cream. We solved this with a stop at the Monmouth Burgerville.

Saturday, September 7th

E took C to the Corvallis Saturday Market. As a Farm Advisor for UC Davis, C was involved with many a farmers’ market down in Placer County, CA. So she was interested to see what was going on up here.

For lunch we went out to Gathering Together Farms, which is the only place left–as far as we know–where a person can get a decent Sunburger.

Sunday, September 8th

In the morning we went for a walk at Finley Preserve. We noticed that one section of the Woodpecker Loop has a striking number of unusual looking trees.

In the afternoon A came down from Vancouver to meet Z. She said hello to C also.

Monday, September 9th

While hiking on Mary’s Peak, we found that C has an eye for unusually formed trees, this one for example:

Tuesday, September 10th

A quieter day. E and C poked around downtown. M starting preparing for his trip the wilds of northern Nevada. Z dozed on the couch.

Wednesday, September 11th

After days and days of nice weather, we’re starting to get some rain. C and Z, both Californians, immediately headed back south.