I was looking to do another forest road exploration, but I wanted something easy, a route that was short, easy to navigate, and not likely to feature any locked gates. This little trip filled the bill; just fifteen and a half miles off pavement, with just two or three critical junctions, all of which had clear signage. To get there I went east on US 20 through Lebanon and Sweet Home, past Cascadia and Mountain House, all the way to the turnoff for the House Rock Campground. This put me onto Latiwi Creek Road, also known as Forest Road 2044. Almost immediately I came to the access road for the campground. Ignoring that, I stayed on 2044 and followed it down into the forest.
Soon the road crossed a couple of narrow bridges and started climbing up out of the South Santiam River canyon, winding its way southeastward. The gravel was mostly smooth but had some pot holes and washboarding. The road climbed steadily and occasionally steeply. There were a number of places with views that would have been lovely if a person could have seen them through the smoke.
The smoke is probably from the Bull Complex fire, which was burning just thirty or forty miles to the north.
In a conifer forest you’re not going to see much in the way of fall colors. But there are a few spots of orange and purple, mostly in disturbed areas.
The mound of greenery in this old quarry is the result of spring that comes to the surface just in the center of the bowl. It takes lots of gravel to make forest roads and the easiest way to get it is to haul a crusher high up into the mountains and produce it there.
Even at this time of year a tiny stream runs from the spring toward the road, trying to find its way down the mountainside . At this time of year, the water will evaporate or sink into the earth again long before it reaches the river. Still, it’s quite an adventurous life these millions of water molecules are leading. Too bad we can’t put radio trackers on them and see where they show up next.
Forest Road 2044, ends at a T-junction with Forest Road 1509. I turned left and continued eastward and upward. The signage is good here. You can’t read it in this photo, but that little brown sign in the lower right points to 2044, the road I came up. It was pretty smoky at the junction and the smell of burning wood was in the air.
It may seem narrow and rough, but Road 1509 is actually a major forest route that runs east and west high up close to the ridge tops between the McKenzie River drainage to the south and the South Santiam to the north.
It’s easy to follow 1509. There are some little offshoot roads all along it, but it’s always easy to see that they are not the main road. There are three major intersections, where some fairly good looking gravel roads lead south or southeast. The junctions had good signage (see below) and all I had to do was stick to 1509.
Road 1516 is one of several routes down in to the McKenzie drainage. This one is shot up a little, but we can deduce that Highway 126 is 17 miles that way..
One of the nicer parts of 1509 is where it passes through an area of really old trees. It’s not a large tract, just a few acres alongside the road that apparently have never been logged. I decided to stop and have my lunch there. I turned onto a smaller road called Road 30 and found a wide spot to park, then walked down a ways into an old growth swale to where I could find a log to sit on.
I enjoyed the sheer height of the old trees, but I also liked seeing trees of many ages. Most of the trees in Oregon forests were born in commercial nurseries and planted as seedlings after a clear cut, thus forming large tracts of trees of identical age and size. Here in this little spot, you see trees that just happened to sprout where a seed cone fell in a year when conditions happened to be right. There are trees of all ages– two foot high tots to fifteen foot teenagers to towering elders. And the dead merely lie where they have fallen.
Eventually Road 1509 ends at another T-junction. To the right you can take Road 1598 to continue east, but I was ready to head home, so I turned left onto Forest Road 15, a paved route that leads back to U.S. 20.
A busy Monday, what with E having both a yoga class and an exercise class in the morning, a dental checkup in the middle of the day, and her friend PF coming for a visit at tea time. Tea consisted of ginger lemon drop cocktails, maple sugar candies, and blackberry cobbler. M thought that it was only polite for him to participate. Beyond that, he was occupied with yard maintenance issues and such.
Our cleaner, who has not been vaccinated, has texted to say that she won’t be able to come tomorrow because she had been exposed to COVID and is quarantining for two weeks. We were glad to see her taking things seriously at least in this way.
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
Eve worked for a couple of hours in the garden this morning. M was also outside, installing new roll-up sunshades on the south side of the house.
In the early afternoon E went to a meeting of her HEPAJ group at J’s house. She was smartly turned out a lightweight wool jacket and her new denim skirt. Alas, no photos were taken. In the late afternoon, both M and E were busy filling in for the absent cleaner. No photos of that either.
The Oregon COVID spike continues to worsen. COVID hospitalizations are at an all time high and many hospitals are reporting zero available ICU beds. Over the last ten days, the average daily death toll has been 13.5, which is the highest level since January. The daily toll could be even higher over the next ten days.
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
We’ve learned that an old friend and colleague of ours has died. We both met Edith more than forty years ago when we first started working at OSU. Although she has not been able to attend in recent times, she was one of the original members of E’s HEEPA group (which has since morphed into HEPAJ). She was smart and unsentimental, but always kind. We’ve been missing her since she moved to a care facility in Portland. We miss her still.
Thursday, August 26, 2021
This morning we had just a few drops or rain. It’s been a while, seems like a long while.
We’re feeling very unhappy today as we wrestle with a COVID-related dilemma. In the spring of 2020 the son of our good friend F was planning to be married. Because of the pandemic, they had to defer their plans and wait for a better time. This year, in early July, when the virus seemed to be very much in abeyance, they decided to proceed with the wedding and scheduled it for August 28. They live in Boise, just a day’s drive away, and we immediately told them we’d be there. Now, alas, the virus situation is much worse than it was in July and is not expected to get better anytime soon. There are a lot of factors to consider here, but we’re thinking that maybe we shouldn’t go. It’s hard.
Friday, August 27, 2021
We discussed our dilemma early this morning, in what M called the ‘cold light of dawn.’ After breakfast we spent an hour composing our regrets. We sent one message to F and another to the bride and groom. Now we’re depressed.
We need to plan something else for the next few days, can’t just stay home and mope.
Saturday, August 28, 2021
We took the Porsche down to Eugene today. Eugene is home to the Euphoria Chocolate Company, a really good Ethiopian food truck, and the M. Jacobs furniture store, all three of which we visited with good results.
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Drove the Mazda up to Hood River in the Columbia Gorge. Three hours from Corvallis, Hood River is home to Full Sail Brewing, makers of M’s favorite beer. You don’t have to go to Hood River to get Full Sail beer, but you do have to go there if you want to visit the Full Sail brewery pub and get some of their Caesar salad, which is one of E’s favorite things. Fortunately they offer curbside pickup, which wasn’t as much fun as being in the pub, but was a safer alternative.
We stayed overnight in a motel where our car could spend time with others of its ilk.
Monday, August 30, 2021
Time to get up? Nah. Not yet.
Eventually we did get up and after breakfast we crossed the Bridge of the Gods and wandered around Washington for a while. Then we recrossed the river and went for a hike at Wahkeena Falls on the Oregon side. We hiked steeply upward until we got tired and ate the last of our chocolate.
Here’s a view looking across to the Washington side.
View to the northeast.
Wahkeena Falls is relatively subdued at this time of year…
…but not as quiet as this little waterfall just a hundred feet away.
We found traces of an older trail, now out of use. It was closed, we guess, so as not to attract perdition seekers.
Alas, M and E have separated. M returned to Corvallis a couple of days ago, while E remained in the east. She’s just got back from a visit to see MB in Maine. This week she’s staying with Mrs H and making some day visits to see her brother and sister-in-law. She is scheduled to fly back to Oregon on Thursday. M has been home since Friday. He has watered the yard a couple of times but otherwise has done nothing of any significance whatever, at least as far as we can tell. He is, however, planning a Porsche outing for Tuesday.
Tuesday, August 17
M took the Boxster on a modest southern loop today, going down the center of the Willamette valley on the back roads through the farms, out where it’s really flat. A mile south of Coburg, he found what he was looking for, a little road that ducked under the freeway and headed east along a route just a scant few miles north of Springfield, the working class neighbor of Eugene. It took him out of the valley and north into the foothills toward Marcola. The area is sparsely settled and the road has lots of ups and downs and curves and such. All good things come to an end, of course, and soon M and the B had to turn west and head home via Brownsville and Halsey.
After some months of improvement, the COVID 19 situation in Oregon has worsened. So far in August the death rate is more than double that of July. Hospitalizations and new case numbers are up sharply. An indoor mask requirement has been reinstated across the board. In total, Oregon has now recorded 2,964 COVID-related deaths, which comes out to 69 deaths per 100,000 of population. Here is how that level of impact compares to a few other places. Numbers are from the Johns Hopkins COVID monitoring site.
United Kingdom (196)
United States (189)
Spain (179)
Germany (110)
Canada (71)
Oregon (69)
Denmark (44)
Thailand (11)
Australia (4)
New Zealand (0.5)
Wednesday, August 18
Another drive today, this time in the Frontier. M went into the forests north of Willamina, the same general area where he had fled from the demon pickup truck. This time he wanted to take it easy, enjoy the scenery, and follow the road that leads east to Carlton. Wednesday is a work day, so there was some logging traffic. As he was climbing into the mountains M came across four loaded log trucks coming down–three of them at spots where the road was wide enough for the two vehicles to pass relatively easily, and one at a spot where the road was narrower and both trucks had to slow down and take an inch or two of the very narrow shoulder in order to squeeze by. On the narrowest stretches of road there were no shoulders at all, just a deep ditch on each side, but he didn’t meet anybody in those places, which was fine. Later on, going down the other side, M passed two empty log trucks and four big gravel trucks heading up. The road was wider by then, so these encounters were uneventful. Along the way M also saw two motorcyclists, one bicycle rider, and one small white SUV with a big black cargo container on the roof. The white car was going recklessly fast. That seemed a little strange; perhaps it was a demon problem of one kind or another. One of the motorcycles was also going very fast, but that made more sense.
Once out of the forest, M meandered around on his way home. He avoided the main highways and drove through farm country, some of it boringly flat and some of it lovely rolling hills. Between Bellevue and Perrydale, he passed the Brigattine Monestery, where their sign still advertises their candy for sale. And then, since he’d just spent a week in the environs of the famous New York State town of Ballston Spa, he decided to swing through Ballston Oregon. Here’s a photo of the main intersection.
Not real exciting, is it? But wait…
… just behind the ugly metal building in the previous photo, there is a nice little park and a sturdy old school house.
It’s called the Ballston School now, but it was built in 1855 and the town did not come into existence until 1880. Before that time, it was called Lawn Arbor School.
The outhouse behind the school is more modern inside that you might imagine and seems to be still in use.
There are just five side streets in Ballston. May Yocum Road is the only one on the north side of the railroad tracks.
Lincoln Street is on the south side of town and has the distinction of being the only side street to have pavement.
And finally, here’s a view from the edge of town looking east. M is guessing that the old truck is a Mack and that it was born around the same time he was.
Thursday, August 19, 2021
Tertulia this morning with J and R. We were only three. Eve is returning today but will arrive very late. J and R’s house addition project is nearing completion. Despite a few hiccups here and there, it has stayed on schedule. The major event recently was the application of the oil finish to the new hardwood floors. The penetrating oil takes a day or two to cure and the fumes are dangerous, so J and R had take a trip down south along the coast to Port Orford and Gold Beach.
In the evening M went to Portland to pick up E at the airport. Her flight arrived at 11:40, but the airport was crowded and it took another 45 minutes to extricate her from the terminal. Traffic was light though, and they were back in Corvallis by 2:00 a.m.
Friday, August 20, 2021
After having gone to bed at 3:00, E was up by 7:30 and went off to get pain au chocolate from Le Patissier to have for breakfast. What a gal. Later in the morning M went off to get a haircut and E spent a few hours in the garden. It was a nice day for it, with temps in the low seventies. Though cooler, it’s still very dry here, such a contrast to the rain and humidity of upstate NY.
Saturday, August 21, 2021
Grocery shopping today, E to the Co-op, M to MofC. M came home with a roast chicken. E came home with a giant peanut butter cookie and a couple of potatoes. Those two, along with three smaller potatoes from our garden, got mashed for dinner. Yum. After dinner a crisis ensued with it became known that there was no ice cream in the house. Yikes. E went out to forage while M cleaned up. E returned with a tub of vanilla–a very small one–which we ate while watching The Cook of Castamar.
Sunday, August 22, 2021
The weather was cool and cloudy. It looked almost like it might rain, but not quite. Good day for a hike. We went into the OSU forest at around 10:30. The forest newsletter has announced that masks are again required on the trails, but there was little sign that anyone had read it. The forest is dry everywhere and we noticed especially that the poison oak looked parched. Some of it was still green, but lots of it was turning to either dull brown or its usual brilliant red. No shortage of poison oak out there. M’s phone counted 5,900 steps and 25 floors in 2.1 miles. E’s watch gave her over 6,000 steps, which was fine, but only 19 floors, which she found very annoying. She was also dismayed by how dry the forest seemed in these days of global warming. We neither saw nor heard any birds and E suggested that they were probably all daid. Even though M admired her pronunciation, he thought that her assessment was too pessimistic. He thinks there could have been lots of birds in the forest. Might not they have been napping at this time of day like sensible beings?
After M took a nap, he went out and picked blackberries. Are we talking about the famous Oregon marionberry? You know–Rubus L. subgenus Rubus–the hybrid berries created by the USDA and Oregon State University, the ones that are large, thornless and delicious? The blackberry that anyone with half a brain would grow? Uh…no. M, having only four tenths of a brain, instead grows cut leaf evergreen blackberries and also tolerates a few canes of Himalayan blackberries. Both the former, Rubus laciniatus, and the latter, Rubus armeniacus, are obnoxious weeds–highly aggressive and very thorny. But the berries are good.
Presumably, Oregon has been a good place to grow berries for thousands of years, but the native blackberry species, Rubus ursinus, is a trailing plant with very small fruits and no commercial potential. So, at some point, possibly as early as 1830, someone brought some cut leaf evergreen blackberries from Europe. They were thorny and aggressive but also had large and tasty fruit. Over the next fifty years more and more of them were grown. They of course quickly escaped from the fields and began popping up everywhere. Fifty years later, enter Luther Burbank, who was dissatisfied with Rubus laciniatus and believed that American growers could do better. He thought he had found something better in the form of Rubus armeniacus. He called his plants ‘Himalayan Giants,” although they are actually from Armenia. Starting in 1905, Burbank hyped them up big time and the USDA also got on board and recommended them. The plants were so obnoxious, however, that they never really caught on. .
They grow very fast and propagate like crazy, not only via seeds but also via ground runners as well as by stem tip propagation. (That’s where a cane curves downward and bends over to the point where its tip touches the ground and roots grow out of it.) They form really nasty thickets. In 1906, one nurseryman put it this way: “They would turn a mad bull or a scared cat. I sold a few plants, but I have apologized to all who bought them and gave them something else.” Despite this commercial failure, armeniacus are now extremely widespread in the wild where they seem to be very gradually crowding out their laciniatus cousins. The wild is where M got both of his varieties. He has a vicious mass of lacininatus and tolerates a few canes of armeniacus. He devotes a considerable percentage of his gardening life to hacking away at them to keep them in check. And seems to like it.
By the way, the cultivation of Rubus armeniacus is strictly prohibited in the state of Wisconsin. You heard it here first. Probably.
Monday, July 26 Deaths 2,838 (+2) New cases 993 (#‘s include Sat/Sun)
M’s turn for the dentist. Bleh.
Tuesday, July 27 Deaths 2,643 (+5) New cases 1,032
We went to Eugene to meet our friend S for lunch. Another “first” since the Pandemic. We enjoyed her company as usual. We went for a walk in her neighborhood and had a look at the University of Oregon’s newly rebuilt Hayward Field, which hosted the recent USA Olympic Track and Field trials. Phil Knight and other donors have created a number of high end sports and recreation facilities at the U of O, including new stadiums for both men’s baseball and women’s softball as well as the Hayward Field improvements and a new student fitness center. They are all quite nice-looking as such things go, all vaguely futuristic with rather elegant artistic embellishments. Money, money, money. We had lunch at a fine little bistro just a few blocks from S’s house.
Wednesday, July 28 Deaths 2,849 (+6) New cases 804
We finally saw Hamilton, courtesy of H, who has Disney+. M dropped out after the first two hours, but E was more positive. Not only did she watch till the end, she hardly slept at all.
Thursday, July 29 Deaths 2,855 (+6) New cases 1,026
The continued hot weather makes us a bit lethargic. But for these lilies, now is the time!
Friday, July 30 Deaths 2,858 (+3) New cases 1,076
A short rain shower just after sunrise this morning. E woke M up to see it. We went out into the yard just after the rain had stopped and enjoyed the cool, fresh smell.
Saturday, July 31
Here’s another month gone, so it’s time to make another COVID curve chart. As you see, the Oregon death rate fell a little in July, reaching its lowest level since June of 2020.
The bad news is that the first half of the month was better than the second half. And in the past five days both new cases and positive test numbers have risen dramatically. Given that increases in the death rate generally lag a week or two behind increases in new case numbers, we could see some worse news in August.
Meanwhile our lives rumble along. E made a trip to the humane society thrift store. She took an old, old lamp and a new old backpacking pack. The staffer who received them was enthusiastic about them both. The lamp, she said, was “really cute” and the backpack would be “a real moneymaker.”
We’ve started watching a Spanish Netflix series called The Cook of Castamar, which is set in Madrid in 1720. The heroine is an agoraphobic young woman who, somewhat improbably, lands a position as head cook in a ducal palace. Political intrigue and sexual hijinks swirl around her, but she retains her good sense and her innocence, at least so far. She’s falling for the Duke, of course, and he is falling for her, with both of them being quite aware that there’s no way this can work.
Sunday, August 1
The weather continues hot with a high of around 95. E went for a walk in the OSU forest in the morning and then did a bunch of sorting and pre-packing for our trip to Lake George. M went off in the truck for another adventure in the mountains. His plan was to make another attempt at the route where he was frustrated by snow just a month ago. This time all was well, at least at the beginning. He went up Canyon Creek Road and continued onward and upward, stopping here and there to note items of interest.
Is this watercourse dry on the 1st of August? Not quite.
A monument near the 2026 bridge over Canyon Creek, far away from anywhere.
M followed Road 2022 up to where it ends in a T-junction with road 1509. He turned right (west) and continued upward. This was more or less familiar, but not for long. When the road began to descend, he realized he had unknowingly passed the place that had once been blocked by snow. It was a long and windy way down, but eventually he reached pavement near Blue River Reservoir and stopped for lunch on the banks of the Blue River. The water level in the Blue was pretty low but it was still pretty in the sunshine. There was a bit of a breeze blowing upstream.
From there M could have followed the pavement down to Highway 36, taken 36 to Springfield, and then taken I-5 home–a peaceful but boring two-hour trip. If he had done that, we could end this blog entry right here and move on with our lives. But of course he did not do that. Because…there was…a shortcut. If he left the pavement and headed back up into the mountains to the west on Road 1510, he would eventually go up and over and down into the Calapooia drainage. He could take the Callapooia River Road back to civilization and get home that way. It would be faster and a lot more fun. Okay!
Road 1510 turned out to be pretty nice. For a while, it ran along the top of a ridge with vertiginous drop-offs on either side.
On one side of Road 1510, this…
…and on the other side, this, with both sides plunging steeply down..
The road is generally narrow and nervous making, but there is one wide spot where a person can pull over and take some pictures.
A view from Road 1510 as it begins its descent into Calapooia canyon.
So Road 1510 was scenic and a bit arduous, but it led M onto the upper reaches of Calapooia River Road, which promised a few miles of straight, smooth gravel that would change to pavement somewhere near the town of Holley. He knew that, because he’d been on Calapooia River Road before. Oh boy!
Happily M drove along, relieved to be out of the woods (so to speak) and eager to be going home. As it happened, that was too good to be true. All too soon he came upon a sturdy steel gate barring his way. A notice informed him that the next portion of the Calipooia River road had been closed by the U.S. Forest Service. Closed? Closed!? Why? Complete USFS incompetence, of course. Didn’t they know how important it was for M to use this road? But never mind that, what to do now? It was bad. Was M going to have to backtrack for miles and miles on Road 1510, going up what he had just come down and then down what he had just come up? He’d end up going home via Springfield after all. Here he was, just an hour from home, but looking at two and a half hours to get there. Argh! In the end he found an alternative escape route. It involved going in the wrong direction for way too many miles, but it got him home in just two hours. He was in the driveway by five, his day’s work done.
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.
.
More party goers. Photos courtesy of C, who was visiting from the 1950’s.
M went grocery shopping and dropped by the liquor store for a couple of agave wine cocktails, that we thought we might enjoy with dinner at the camp. We did a lot of packing and a certain amount of garden watering. E rigged up shade cloth to protect her pansies. It seemed that all was well.
Tuesday, June 22 Deaths 2,757 (+1) New cases 267
Our camping expedition left Corvallis at about 7:30, headed east in the Nissan truck. We arrived at the Sisters Bakery by 10:00. We found a new policy in place–no donuts on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. Well. Fortunately they have lots of other good stuff. We got a couple of Marionberry scones. Very nice. The land around Sisters and Bend is good ranch land, but as you go east the terrain rapidly becomes drier and unsuited to agriculture of any kind. There are miles and miles of empty sage brush vistas as you drive on roads that run dead straight for ten miles at a time. We didn’t see a single solitary cow for over a hour. But then, near a place called Hampton, suddenly there it was: we saw a cow, a single solitary cow, in an otherwise empty landscape. Then, five minutes later, we started seeing lots of cows. We passed Riley and Hines and stopped for a break in Burns. We went to the little park next to the highway on the east end of town. Whoa. There were three or four police cars there. There wasn’t much action though. The incident that brought them seemed to have ended. We found a rickety table and ate our lunch. Then it was back onto the road.
Our first hint of trouble was when we arrived at the address of the vacation rental where we had planned to stay on our first night.
Now we have to admit that this was not actually the one in the photo. In fact we hadn’t got a ‘vacation rental’ at all and we don’t know how this photo even got in here. We actually had a reservation in a Best Western in Ontario on the Oregon/Idaho border. It was fine. All still seemed well.
Wednesday, June 23 Deaths 2,759 (+2) New cases 233
Our Best Western breakfast was not all that great but it sufficed. We got on our way about nine and decided to top up the gas tank. So…uh…should we buy Idaho gas (self-serve) or Oregon gas, where an attendant must pump it for you? Very confusingly, we ended up at a self-serve Chevron on the Oregon side! Huh? What? It seems that a change in Oregon law has allowed a few exceptions to the prohibition against self-serve. We had heard about this radical new idea, but we’d never seen an example.
On our way to Lake Owyhee we passed some onion fields. The leaves were a rich dark green; each plant consisting of a tight bunch of vertical spears about a foot high. There were lots of onion fields, miles and miles of onion fields. So exciting. And then there were the sugar beet fields. There were lots of them too. And the biggest excitement? An actual sugar factory! For Eve it had an awesome grandeur. She said that it was too bad we didn’t have time to stop and take a factory tour. To M, this factory looked like it would be very unlikely to be offering factory tours. But who knows? The factory had no obvious company name, but there was a large sign with a picture of a bag of White Satin sugar. So we can guess that the factory is owned by the Amalgamated Sugar Company. Although its headquarters is currently in Boise, that company was originally founded in M’s hometown of Ogden, Utah in 1897. About 55% of the sugar produced in the U.S. is made from sugar beets; 45% from sugar cane.
Their motto: Naturally Sweet from Western Farms Their alternate motto: Not as Good as Cane Sugar but a Little Cheaper.
So that was exciting, but what about camping? Well, we went down to the town of Nyssa, and thence to the small town of Adrian, then a few miles farther. Suddenly we had left farm country and were traveling into a range of low and barren mountains, following the course of the Owyhee river. We were a little anxious about finding a campsite because there were very few campgrounds in the area and none of the tent sites are reservable. When we arrived at the campground, we were pleased to see that in fact we had our pick of any site we wanted.
Here’s what the campground looked like…
…and this was the view.
So that seemed pretty good. But then we got some bad news. As we were putting up our tent, we were informed that there was a strong likelihood of a severe storm developing in the early evening, with winds gusting to 85 mph. Well. Pitching our tent did not seem wise. Sleeping in the truck did not seem pleasant. (It’s a small truck.) We couldn’t know how severe the storm might be, or even if it would come at all. As you can see from the photos, the weather was pretty nice at the moment. But still. We decided to retreat to a motel and continue our visit as a series of day trips. Off we went. But then we got more bad news. There were no motel rooms available anywhere nearby. Zero. None of the search engines offered us any options. As soon as we entered any date from June 23 to 25, we got the simplest possible message. “No rooms available.” By searching farther afield, we did find an opening at a La Quinta in Boise; they had one room left at $379 plus 20% tax. That seemed like a lot, especially since Boise was nearly a hundred miles away in the wrong direction. Late June is a busy travel time in normal years, but this year is special. It seems pretty clear that large masses of people are feeling confident about getting out on the road again and staying in motels.
We decided to just abort and go home. It was a long drive, but interesting in its way. Here’s a view out the windshield as E had us tearing along at 73 miles per hour. We know it was 73 because…well, never mind.
Rolling through the high desert on a non-winding road. Are those the Three Sisters out there waiting for us?
E was still at the wheel when we reached Bend. It was clouding up a little as we reached the town; perhaps a few sprinkles were in the offing. We went on through town, planning to stop for a picnic dinner in Sisters, twenty miles farther on. Just we were leaving Bend, however, we ran into major drama–an intense hail storm. Hail the size of mothballs started banging on the hood and cab of the truck. What a racket. We did not have the presence of mind to take a video. What we did have was time. The storm went on and on. Visibility was very low and we pulled off to the side of the road for a bit, as did some other drivers. After a while, even though the racket continued unabated, the view ahead cleared just a little. We realized that we might as well push on through. The storm, after all, came from the west; the quickest way out was to drive straight through it.
And how about our planned picnic in Sisters, a few miles down the road? It was fine–a peaceful 80 degrees and sunny. M drove from there across the mountains to home.
Thursday, June 24 Deaths 2,760 (+1) New cases 232
Here we are home again, where we are quite comfortable and where the winds are only gusting up to 8 mph. We did a little shopping and a lot of putting things away. We dined on smoked salmon, steamed chard, and a rice salad. Later we watched another long episode of Bitter Daisies, a Spanish series set in Galicia. It’s funny how some many shows these days seem to be descended from Twin Peaks. In this one, a young Guardia Civil officer tries to solve a series of murders. Galicia is in the northwest part of Spain and includes the city of Santiago de Compostela, which is the end point of the Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James), perhaps the best known pilgrimage route in Europe. The show is exposing us to Galician Spanish, which is quite strange in places. The series is well-done and we like the actors, but we’ve been put off by some gratuitous sexual content.
Friday, June 25 Deaths 2,761 (+1) New cases 232
E got a flat of raspberries today and made two batches low sugar freezer jam. We missed out last year because of a serious and inexplicable shortage of low sugar recipe pectin. So this is a major event. Besides the purchased berries, the new jam includes a pint or so of our own raspberries, which are small but very tasty. E made a total of 15 jars. Here are some of them. The two tall ones in the back are jars that we brought back from Turkey twelve years ago. They have been used many a time since.
M did reading, writing and weeding. For dinner we went off to J and B’s for a Cypriot meze dinner featuring grilled haloumi and stuffed grape leaves. We contributed fava beans and baklava.
Saturday, June 26 Deaths 2,763 (+2) New cases 227
It’s Becca’s birthday today. We went out and got ourselves a piece of cake to mark the occasion. Eve talked for a long time with A and also spoke via Zoom to an old friend who was close by when Becca was born in Madrid, forty-six years ago. Several of E’s friends faithfully remember Becca’s birthday. It means a lot.
Ninety-nine degrees today, 109 forecast for tomorrow.
We watched the ending of Bitter Daisies. It was very good. It had a couple of nice surprise twists and also some very satisfying developments which confirmed a couple of things that we had suspected.
Sunday, June 27 Deaths 2,763 (+0) New cases 138
Toast and jam for breakfast. Delightful. We did some watering in the morning. E worries that about the heat and its effect on plants, bugs, birds and everything else.
M, being a kind of masochist, went to a minor league baseball game down in Eugene. Originally he was to go in company with four other Corvallis guys. Tickets were bought and all arrangements made. Then came the forecast of 110 degree temperatures. Four of the group, not being masochists, decided to take a pass and go some other time. But M had already had to change plans once this week due to weather. He wasn’t ready to change plans again.
The crowd was sparse, but the game was pretty good. If the young players were suffering, they didn’t show it. M’s reserved seat–originally picked out by his savvy friend R–was as good as it could be, being in deep shade just behind home plate. Attendance was on the sparse side.
The home team has a dual identity. Usually they are the Eugene Emeralds, part of the San Francisco Giants organization, and are clad in green. Occasionally, though, they transform themselves into the Monarcas, who wear black. And so it was on this day.
It was 102 when M arrived with a small but welcome breeze blowing out toward left. M saw four home runs hit in that direction. Between innings there was usually a bit of entertainment. One of those was an interview with Eugene outfielder Ismael Munguia, who is from Nicaragua. They asked him what got him into baseball–his father. Who was his favorite player–Jose Altuve. What was his best baseball memory–winning the Nicaraguan championship. Then they asked him what he liked best about being in Eugene, Oregon. “The heat,” he said. “I hate the cold. Baseball is really good in the heat.” It was about 108 at that point, so we must assume that he was happy. By the end of the seventh inning it was 110 and the home team was up 7-2. M decided that was enough and took a nice walk in the sun back to his truck. He found out later that 7-2 was also the final score.
