Month: September 2026

Saturday, September 5th

Today we went to the Snag Boat Bend Unit of Finley Refuge. The area had been closed for a few months because of work to reopen an old side channel of the Willamette River. The work involved cutting a wide notch in an earthen dike that was built many years ago by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The aim is to restore fish habitat in the area near Lake Creek. Along the way we took in the sights.

Thursday, September 10th

Lots of news reports from Yemen today. The Houthis have defeated government forces and captured the port city of Mocha. This allows them to have greater control of the Strait of Mandeb at the southern end of the Red Sea. This is significant because all ships that use the Suez Canal must also pass through the Bab al-Mandeb. In theory, then, Houthi control of Mocha gives them the ability to effectively shut down the Canal.

M passed through Mocha a several times while he was living in Sana’a, Yemen in the late 1980’s. The country was peaceful in those years and Mocha seemed like a sleepy sort of place. M took this photo in 1988 on a beach at the north end of town:

Mocha has grown and become more important in recent years. Here’s another seaside photo, this one from just yesterday:

Saturday, September 12th

We went to see a play today, a production of Come From Away done by the Albany Civic Theater. (Albany, OR, that is.) It was tremendous! Who knew there was such talent in Albany? Well…I guess our friend J knew. Big thanks to her for suggesting this. We had dinner with J, B, and M before the play. The new Sybaris restaurant is pretty great also.

Sunday, September 13th

We went off to do some camping again today. The nice part was that we were going to Yukwah campground in the Cascades, which is only about an hour away. The bad part was that it was raining as we left. We considered this at some length. The forecast, however, was for the rain to stop, more or less by the time we would get there. So off we went. And sure enough, when we arrived, the rain was petering out. Things were pretty damp though, and we heard a constant pattering as water dripped off the needles of the fir trees high above and splatted down onto the leaves of the understory.

Yukwah is a very old campground, close to the highway but located within a small segment of natural old growth forest beside the South Santiam River. Such places have magic and as we busied ourselves with pitching the tent and making dinner we could feel peace descending upon us.

The patter of falling drops continued all night. We heard it whenever we awoke. It must have been mostly from Oregon drizzle–the kind of rain that isn’t really rain but which gets things all wet anyway. There was one period of real rain, sometime around 3:00 AM. That was worrisome.

Monday, September 14th

When we got up in the morning, the weather was starting to improve. Patches of blue sky appeared while we were making breakfast. Around 10:00 we set off for our planned hike up Iron Mountain. We took the short version of the hike, just a little more than two miles, but steep all the way.

The first fire watch station at the top of Iron Mountain was established in 1929. For the first few years the fire lookout person lived in a tent for the summer. In 1933 a cabin type watchtower was built by the CCC. To build it, they used blasting powder to create a flat area at the very top of the peak, at an elevation of 5,455 feet. Nowadays, there is a spacious observation deck in its place. It’s probably best not to wander out into the area around the deck. In 1997, a lookout staffer died from a fall there. The views are very fine.

We got back to camp around 3:00 and had time to relax a little. E went off to find a way down to the river so she could put her feet in. When M went to join her, he didn’t know exactly where she had gone. At Yukwah there is a path along the river, but it runs along the top of a mostly vertical riverbank about ten feet above the level of the water. Pretty soon M found a place where people had made a way down–a steep scramble of roots and rocks and bushes–just the kind of place E would try. He couldn’t see down to the river from where he was, but he went down anyway. He knew she’d be there.

Here’s what the South Santiam looks like in this low water season. Can you see what looks like a petrified fish?

We had guests for dinner both nights–chipmunks and Steller’s jays. The chipmunks were too quick to take pictures of; the jays were easier.

Tuesday, September 15th

We spent a relaxed morning packing up and heading home. When we got home we had an unrelaxed afternoon unpacking and drying things out.

Wednesday, September 16th

From the day we moved in, we’ve never liked the color of our house. And now, finally, the old paint is worn out. Painters are coming tomorrow and things are going to change. M spent the morning trimming some plants and tying others back so that the painters will have room to move.

Thursday, August 27th

E flew to Florida today to visit her cousin R, whose health is poor. Her plane left from Eugene at 5:20 am, so we had to get up in the wee hours in order to get her to the airport. After a long day of travel she arrived in Fort Lauderdale, rented a car and made her way to a hotel in Coconut Creek. R and E grew up near each other in the area around Ballston Spa, NY. She and her brother J are R’s closest living relatives.

Friday, August 28th

E made her first visit to cousin R today. R has ongoing mobility issues but continues to live in his long-time home, supported by a team of caregivers. Eve reports that R is physically weak but alert and that the two of them had a good talk. She will visit again tomorrow.

M drove east today and settled into a cabin at Prineville Reservoir State Park. There have been three large wildfires burning in Central Oregon and while it seems like they are being contained, some air quality warnings were still in effect. As M neared Prineville, he noticed a bit of smoky haze in the air. It shows up in this picture he took in the evening.

Saturday, August 29th

When M got up this morning, the weather was overcast and cool. The air was fresh and clear with no trace of smoke. Nice! M saw no need to check the air quality; cell service was iffy anyway. After breakfast he set off to find his planned hiking trail. The trailhead was about 30 miles away via normal roads. But while he was still back in Corvallis M had opened up his OnX app and found a back route that was only 20 miles. He had saved it on his phone. So smart. Except, as it turned out, the route that OnX had suggested included a long stretch that was not actually open for public access. So, new tech cost M 30 minutes of his life and $5 worth of gas; at least he didn’t have to be rescued off of the slopes of Mt. Shasta like these guys. And he did finally reach the Chimney Rock Trailhead and was able to set off upward.

After getting back to his cabin in Prineville Reservoir State Park–30 miles, no shortcuts–M walked down to a fishing dock before dinner. The water level was low, but the views were tranquil and the campground was quiet. A pair of raptors bobbed and circled above. M’s phone, which did not have a good connection in the cabin, started working fine down there in the open by the lake. He talked to E, who had had another good visit with R. She is a little worried about his living situation, as he does not always cooperate with his caregivers. It’s raining there and E is noticing that Florida is wonderfully lush and green, or, to put it more accurately, she is noticing that this part of Florida would be lovely if it were not developed to within an inch of its life and if it were not quite so utterly dominated by the automobile. She managed to find a tiny arboretum where she took the photo below.

Sunday, August 30th

Despite being tortured by leg cramps in the night, M got up reasonably early today and got on the road back to Corvallis by eight-ish. From the campground he drove 15 miles back into town, then turned left onto 1st Street, which is also Highway 126. It was important to make this turn correctly because 126 would take him first to Redmond and then to Sisters, where there is a bakery of great renown.

As Hwy 126 leaves the downtown area of Prineville, it climbs steeply up onto the high ground that overlooks the city. Here’s a picture looking west from a viewpoint that shows the highway as it nears the top. The downtown and residential parts of Prineville are behind the photographer and far below. Up on this level there are a lot of very big white buildings. You can see one of them in the photo. You can’t see all of it because there’s another building in front of it on the far right. Trust us though, it’s a big building. The total interior size is over 440,000 square feet. The name of the building is Meta Prineville Data Center Building No. 5. Presumably, both floors are jammed with endless racks of servers. The total number of individual servers is likely to exceed one million, just in this one building.

So…uh…if that’s Building No. 5, how many total data center buildings does Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads) have in Prineville? The current total is ten. Building No. 1 was completed in 2011. Continuous expansion followed. Buildings 9 and 10 were completed about five(?) years ago. All together the ten buildings provide 4.5 million square feet of space. (That may seem like a lot, but we look at it this way: it’s only 2,647 times larger than our house.) What does Meta do with all those computers? According to the web page of the AI Data Center Index: “The facility runs Meta’s AI recommendation infrastructure for Facebook and Instagram’s feed ranking, content moderation models, and ad targeting algorithms.” But is the AI Data Center Index a trustworthy source? Well, it appears that the AI Data Center Index is actually produced by an AI. So it should know what it’s talking about. Unless it doesn’t.

Lately there has been growing resistance to the building of new data centers around the U.S. In 2011, however, Crook County authorities were very happy to have Facebook come to their town. Like many other places back then, the people of Prineville were willing to exempt data centers from property taxes in return for the creation of new jobs. Whether that was a smart bargain can be debated, and it is unlikely that today’s Crook County authorities would be quite so generous. There is no denying, however, that jobs were created and that the town appears more prosperous now that it did back then. Interestingly, in the case of Prineville, the property tax exemption was set to expire after fifteen years. This means that Meta’s Prineville Data Center Building No. 1, built in 2011, will lose its tax exemption this year. Hmm. We wonder how that’s going to work out.

Apple also has a data center in Prineville. Its center only has three buildings, but they’re really big and provide a total of 3.2 million square feet of space. This makes it Apple’s largest data center in the U.S. What does Apple do there? Here’s what the AIDC has to say about that: “The facility hosts Apple’s iCloud services (Photos, Notes, iMessage backups), App Store infrastructure, and increasingly the Private Cloud Compute infrastructure that powers Apple Intelligence.”

Here’s what all this looks like from above. This map shows the town of Prineville on the right and the data center area on the left. The ten Meta buildings are the ones in the triangular area between Hwy 126 and Hwy 370. Apple’s three buildings are the ones directly below the green marker for the Ochoco Wayside.

Back in Florida, meanwhile, E made another visit to R and baked him a raspberry cobbler. Whether he will be able to eat much of it is not clear, but he loved just smelling it. E will be flying back to Oregon tomorrow.

Monday, August 31st

E arrived home safely to the Eugene airport, where she was happy to find M waiting for her.

Wednesday, September 2nd

E has brought the rain back with her from Florida. But she forgot to bring the warm Florida temperatures. It’s cold here. That didn’t stop E from joining her walking group this morning for their usual stroll at Bald Hill. What she found today was that the newts were out.