There are many benefits to slow travel. We see more. We relax more. We have more time to absorb our new experiences and integrate them into our understanding of the world. For example, almost everyone in Corvallis knows how to get to Yachats: You take either U.S. 20 to Newport or U.S. 34 to Waldport, then turn left and drive down the coast until you see the Adobe on your right and you realize you’re almost there. It doesn’t take very long. But now imagine traveling from Corvallis to Yachats by first walking from Corvallis to New York City, then traveling by ship around the Horn of Africa, past India, through Oceania and across the Pacific to the Port of San Francisco. You could then finish by hitchhiking up U.S. Highway 101 to Yachats. Now that would be an adventure. For most of us, however, it’s just not practical. Here’s a better way.
Take Hwy 34 to Alsea and turn left down the Alsea Deadwood Highway. When you see a small sign for Little Lobster Valley Road, ignore it. Instead, stay on the paved road and bear right only when you see the obvious sign for Lobster Valley. Stay on Lobster Valley Road for a few miles. It’s a quiet valley, so don’t drive fast. Stop at the Lone Fir Cemetery if you like. When presented with the option of turning left onto Preacher Creek Road, resist it. Stay on Lobster Valley Road for some more miles until it ends at Five Rivers Road. Turn left, over the bridge, and follow Five Rivers Road for about eight miles. Keep an eye out for a right turn onto the narrow Beck Creek bridge. If you come to a red covered bridge in the town of Fisher, that means that you have missed the Buck Creek turn and will have to go back. Keep a better eye out this time. (We know this strategy will work because we have used it ourselves.) Once you find and cross the Buck Creek bridge, immediately bear right onto East Buck Creek Road. Follow the road past all the houses and up into the forest. Up there, the road is also called Forest Road 3705. In its upper reaches, it’s a little rough, so go slow and watch for potholes. There are some nice views along the way, especially for the people on the passenger side. (Whoopee!) The road ends at a T-junction with Forest Road 58. Turn left onto 58 and then, after just half a mile or so, turn right onto a quite nice looking gravel road that leads downward. Stay determinedly on this road. After a few miles it will turn from gravel to pavement. Ten miles after that it will spit you out onto Hwy 101 in downtown Yachats. Takes about three hours. Return via Mumbai.
We joined J, B and H at the old Lewisburg Grange Hall for a special midday dinner. The hall, once the site of M&E’s wedding, currently belongs to the St. Anne’s Greek Orthodox Church, the organizers of our annual Greek Fest. The food is invariably delicious.
PasticcioSpanakopitaBraised LambDolmas
After the main meal, we all got dessert to take away and adjourned to our back patio, where M served Greek coffee that he made in a Turkish cezve. (Hope St Anne is not reading this.)
Friday, October 19th
A couple of out of state readers have shared some beautiful photos of fall foliage. Here’s a contribution from Oregon…
…poison oak on a fir trunk.
Sunday, October 20th
Time for another visit to Dufur, Oregon and a two-night stay at the Balch Hotel. We packed up the electric car and left Corvallis around 10:00 in the morning. The weather was cloudy with rain in the forecast. But we were headed east, and it would likely be clearer over that way. As we got into the mountains, we stopped for a driver change at Cascade Park, as we often do. It was deserted, and still lovely at this time of year. While we were there, did we discover that we had forgotten to bring our luggage? No.
The last rose of summer?
We went over the Cascade mountains to Redmond and then turned north, stopping in Madras to charge up and do some shopping for snacks. By late afternoon we were in Dufur, just 20 miles south the Columbia River, safely checked into the Balch Hotel.
This is a big wheat and cattle growing region and the land around Dufur tends to look like this…
…except when it looks like this.
Here’s the back of the Balch. The door at the top of the steps leads into the dining room. The hotel was built in 1907 by Charles Balch, a local pharmacist and rancher. The bricks are of local origin; in fact, they were produced in a brick factory that Balch created in one of his pastures.
The Balch Hotel is on the edge of town; here’s a view from our window.
From the front of the hotel, you get this view of an equipment collection just across the road.
In its original form the hotel had 28 rooms and four shared bathrooms. Some of the rooms have since been converted to have their own baths, but many others remain pretty much as they were. They look like this.
The four original shared bathrooms have all been preserved and are also lovely. Each one is really two separate rooms–one for the tub and one for the toilet and sink.
Our dinner at the Balch was excellent–salmon cakes for E, grilled salmon for M, and chocolate cake to share.
Monday, October 21st
Our plan for the day was to zip up to the Gorge and take I-84 a few miles east to the mouth of the Deschutes River, where we would go hiking. But on the way, we stopped at the Dufur Community Cemetery. The cemetery was established in the late nineteenth century and for many years was known as the Dufur Rebeckah Lodge Cemetery. The Rebeckahs deeded it to the county in 1975.
That’s Mount Hood in the background, mostly covered in clouds.
A precious one from us has gone; a voice we loved is stilled; a place is vacant in our hearts; which never can be filled.
Did anyone mention infant and child mortality in those times?
We got to the Deschutes State Recreation Area around 11:00. The Deschutes River is 252 miles long, originating far to the south near the border with California and flowing north all the way to the Columbia, which forms the border with Washington. In the photo you can see the Deschutes as it flows under the highway and railroad bridges and into the big river.
Yes, that’s a Columbia River cruise ship. (Click the photo to see their end-of-season discounts.)
We hiked about four miles, first walking upstream on a trail that runs along the river’s edge, then changing to a different trail higher up on the hill.
Here’s a photo from E looking back down to from where we started.
And here’s one of E herself still charging forward.
Tuesday, October 22nd
Time to start the trip home. We checked out of the Balch at around 10:00 and headed back up to I-84. We were getting low on charge, but the internet told us that there was a fast charger in Hood River, just 30 miles away in the direction of Portland. Luckily, that proved to be true, and after twenty minutes of charging at Electrify America, we continued on our way. Around 12:30 we were through Portland and entering the suburb of Tigard, where we stopped at the REI at Bridgeport Village. This allowed us to achieve one of the other objectives of the trip, which was to get E some new waterproof hiking/walking shoes. Lunch was had in the REI parking lot, where we dined on leftovers from the previous night’s dinner at a brewpub in The Dalles. (The Balch restaurant wasn’t open on Monday.) A parking lot might sound like a terrible place to have lunch; but if you’ve been to that particular one, you know it’s actually pretty nice.
Wednesday, October 23rd
E is reading Goodnight Sweet Prince, a book about actor John Barrymore that was published in 1944, shortly after his death. Barrymore’s long acting career began in live theatre in the early 1900’s and then partially transitioned into silent movies beginning in 1912. Barrymore later made an easy transition into talking pictures in the early 1930’s. Barrymore’s greatest acting triumphs were in the early phases–the period before his life-long alcoholism started to catch up with him. Of his many stage performances, his portrayals of Richard III and of Hamlet were the best known. Orson Welles said many years later that Barrymore’s 1922 performance in New York was the best Hamlet he had ever seen. In 1925 Barrymore took his version of Hamlet to London, where it received positive reviews and was seen by a very young actor named John Geilgud. On his program, Geilgud jotted down his impressions, noting that Barrymore “had a wonderful edge and a demonic sense of humor” and also that his performance had “tenderness, remoteness, and neurosis all placed with great delicacy and used with immense effectiveness and admirable judgment”.
A sketch of John Barrymore by John Singer Sargent in 1923, when Barrymore was 41. By the time he made Grand Hotel, he was 52.
Barrymore made many silent films, most of which were judged by critics to be low quality movies partially redeemed by the brilliance of their star. The best known of these might be 1924’s Beau Brummell. During the filming, it is said that Barrymore, then forty, had an affair with co-star Mary Astor, who was then seventeen.
These days the easiest way to see Barrymore’s work is to watch the talking pictures from the 1930’s. Tonight we watched Grand Hotel, a pre-code, pre-color film starring John Barrymore, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Lionel Barrymore, and Wallace Beery. It’s a wonderful movie with great acting from all of the principal players, and of course includes one of the most famous lines of dialogue in all of cinema history. (If you don’t know what that line might be, here’s a hint. It’s not Barrymore’s line and it’s not Crawford’s either; it’s Garbo’s.)
Thursday, October 24th
E attended a meeting of the Lemon Meringue Pie Society. Although the members all enjoyed getting together, the occasion was marred by an inferior lemon meringue pie! Sourced from a previously reliable bakery, this pie, says E, was an all round flop with watery filling, soggy crust and partially uncooked meringue. Yikes. Not a single plate was licked.
