Himalayan blackberries are blooming these days. They are everywhere in the forest and the vast majority of the flowers are white or pale pink. This one caught E’s eye because of its extraordinarily deep color.
Wednesday, June 26th
E needed new hiking boots, so we drove up to the big REI in Tualitin. Walking into such a store is dangerous. Once E got her boots, we couldn’t help but buy four or five other little items that we suddenly seemed to need.
Today is Becca’s birthday, so on the way back to Corvallis we stopped in Salem to buy her some cake. We bought just one piece (large enough to share of course) and took it home to have after dinner.
When we arrived home, we found this waiting on our doorstep.
Thursday, June 27th
M had what was supposed to be his final eye appointment following surgery. Unfortunately he has an issue that will require followup treatment. More eye drops–lots of eye drops.
Friday, June 28h
We had a walk this morning with M, L and A at Chip Ross park. L did the driving in their Subaru EV. We had meant to walk in the OSU forest on Vineyard Mountain; but as it happened, the whole forest was closed for herbicide spraying. Wanting no part of that, we went to Chip Ross Park instead and got to see that wonderful view looking out over the town. After that we made our way to Coffee Culture and had avocado bagels for lunch.
SPECIAL UPDATE ON TOMATOES IN THE SEWING KIT We have heard from three readers who say they also have sewing kit tomatoes. Adding these to H and E, we now have five tomato owners. Are they any more out there? If so, send a photo for our gallery…
Saturday, June 29th
Here’s a photo from C’s birthday party a few weeks ago.
For some crazy reason, we decided to have this same crew over for dinner today. E made trucha a la Navarra. First she got a bunch of trout and soaked them in red wine for several hours. Then the fish went into the oven and E worked on steamed potatoes and also cooked chard dressed with pomegranate molasses. During that critical final hour before the guests arrived, M was no help at all. He just got in the Jaguar and left! He made it back in time for dinner, though, having picked up C somewhere along the way. Apparently they had driven to Independence and back and had once or twice travelled at speeds in excess of the legal limit. What better way to honor C’s important birthday?
Here’s C when she’d just gotten back from her ride.
The trout was very good and so was the dessert contributed by J–a coconut meringue lime pie from the British Baking Show. We had dinner inside then had dessert out on the patio.
Sunday, June 30th
On a few occasions in the past we have mentioned having things like chocolate croissants, maple donuts, or syrup-soaked waffles for breakfast. It strikes us that we may have given the impression that those are our usual breakfast foods. Nothing could be further from the truth! Normally we have very frugal breakfasts, something like a handful of unsalted nuts or a quarter of an apple. Here’s an example, just fifteen tiny raisins and nothing more.
Due to optical distortion, the objects in this photo may appear to be chocolate chips. But of course they are not. Putting fifteen chocolate chips on a breakfast plate would be ridiculous.
In the morning we met M, L and A at Coffee Culture. The three of them (and especially the two humans) are electric car veterans, having owned a Leaf before recently getting a Subaru Solterra. L seems to be doing well. He was telling us that before too long the world’s electricity will be provided by small, self-contained nuclear plants. These plants will be about the size of a house and each one will provide enough power for a medium sized city. We may not see them ourselves, he says, but our children and grandchildren will.
Thursday, June 13th
Went out to dinner with P at the new(ish) Corazon wine bar. We’ve been there twice now and liked it very much both times.. Corazon is Spanish themed in a way, but they have their own particular cooking style. And they are very good at it. Lots of vegetarian items on the menu.
Friday, June 14th
E had a medical appointment and then rewarded herself by picking up some shoes that had just come in for her down at Footwise. Then she proceeded to Ants on a Log for a lunch of avocado toast.
We’ve been watching TV every night these days, but we’re finding it hard to find anything to settle down to after Extraordinary Attorney Wu. We tried another Korean series–Crash Landing on You–and it’s kind of interesting but it’s a slow mover. So we searched the India section of Netflix and ended up watching a movie called Laapataa Ladies. It was good and left a pleasant aftertaste. The plot was a little hard to get into at first but got better in the second half. It’s set in a rural area and provides a wonderful sense of place in addition to its gentle but insistent messaging about women’s place in society.
Saturday, June 15th
H came over so that she and E could do more sewing. Today they took on the task of altering a pair of tapered leg pants. Along the way, they celebrated the fact that they both have tomatoes in their sewing kits.
Does everyone have a tomato in their sewing kit? Inquiring editors want to know.
Meanwhile M took the truck up into the Cascades, where he drove around for a couple of hours trying to find a particular route which at first seemed to exist only in the imagination of the people who publish maps–online or printed. In the end he found evidence that indeed at one time there had been a route just where the maps said there was. But it looked like it had been closed for quite some time. That was disappointing, but it was good to have found an answer to the mystery. It was a pretty day up there in the Cascades between Upper Soda and Sheep Creek, with rain showers alternating with sunshine, seemingly every five minutes.
Here M stopped in a sunny spot…
…and here found an unnamed pond during a shower.
Sunday, June 16t
It was another cool, damp day here. This is the time of the year when we feel like summer has arrived everywhere in the country except Oregon. The weather is not bad, but you have to bundle up to go for a walk. Today we drove up to Tampico Road and walked in Dunn Forest. Along the way we came upon a snail in the middle of the path. M tried to take a video of it, but soon realized that a good snail video would require a major investment of time–both in the making and in the viewing. So here’s E’s photo of it instead.
A few minutes later we saw something strange at the old stream crossing.
Does anyone know why someone might have made this?
Later in the day it rained pretty hard for a while. Nice for the garden.
Monday, June 17th
It was raining again this morning and the temperature at 5:30 was 38 degrees! Things improved a little as the day went on and we got to a high of 65.
Tuesday, June 18th
We did some yard work today, spreading wood chips and digging up grass. E also had a repair project. A few days ago she got out her step stool so as to be high enough to take the cover off of our rather ridiculous patio umbrella, an annual ritual at around this time. This year, when she examined the cover, she found that it was coming apart at the top. Unable to resist a mending challenge, today she got down to repairing it. This took a long time and involved a certain amount of muttering about the quality of the mending tape that the person at Ace Hardware had assured her would be just the ticket.
We also had a Ziply installer working here for much of the day on a new internet connection. We’re saying goodbye to Comcast/Xfinity. Ziply is a new provider that uses fiber optic cables rather than copper wires. For the installer, the first challenge was to find the nearest Ziply node, which was down the block several houses away. Then he had to string new fiber optic wires from there to our backyard utility pole and thence to our house. As he was doing that, M decided to clean things up a little by removing the old land line junction box from the side of the house and removing some less than sightly old wires.
Once the new fiber line was connected to the house, the process went quickly. First M disconnected the Xfinity cable and removed its outlet hardware. Then the Ziply installer–a very competent guy named Stanley–put in a Ziply outlet where the old Xfinity outlet had been. M unhooked our old cable modem and found an ethernet cable long enough to connect the Ziply outlet directly to our router. Stanley then called in an activation request and told us to wait ten minutes. After that we just powered up and gave it a try. Perfect.
Wednesday, June 19th
Our friend J came over for dinner, so we got to catch up on what’s going on with her. She’s planning a summertime trip back to the east coast to visit relatives. While she’s there, she and three of her sisters are going to help a fourth sister travel down to Atlanta to visit her daughter. They’ll be traveling by car from Delaware to Atlanta, a twelve hour drive that they plan to make in one day. J is a brave woman.
Thursday, June 20th
In honor of the Solstice, our weather has turned hottish, with clear skies and highs in the mid eighties.
We got to go to a birthday party today as C celebrated reaching another year ending in zero. The party was held at The Vue and it was quite the occasion. A nice treat for us. C is angling for a ride in the Jaguar as a birthday gift. A plan is in the works.
Sunday, June 23rd
Another chapter in Mite Wars took place today. E went out in the cool of the morning to hang cardboard cards full of Green Lacewing eggs on the rose bushes. She took care to not to cluster them together, however, since the manufacturer issued a warning that larvae can be carnivorous and may eat each other instead of the offensive mites.
.Green lacewing adults are about half an inch long. They like pollen and nectar..
Green lacewing larvae aren’t as pretty, but they are more likely to eat mites. .
Tonight we watched a movie called Miracle Club on Netflix. It features two great actors: Maggie Smith and Kathy Bates. Five stars.
Monday, June 24th
Another busy Monday. E went shopping at the Co-op. As usual, got herself there on foot and then called her car service for a ride home. When her ride arrived, she wondered what had become of her usual driver, the one who wore glasses. Apparently the old driver developed cataracts and the company had to let him go. The new driver was squinting a little, but seemed to know the route.
Every year in early June OSU’s Peavy Arboretum celebrates National Get Outdoors Day by hosting a variety of family-centric activities in the research forest. The goal is to get people outside, with a focus on encouraging the participation of families who may not be familiar with the recreational opportunities available in these state-owned forest lands. As the web page puts it: Durante este evento, el bosque está lleno de actividades bilingües, familias, y grupos comunitarios, todos unidos con el objetivo de salir, disfrutar con la comunidad, y con suerte aprender algo nuevo.
E has been a bilingual volunteer in the event for a couple of years now. This year she was assigned to the cookie table. Now we know what you’re probably thinking: What an ideal choice on the part of the organizers in terms of matching a specific worker to a specific job! But actually, they weren’t that kind of cookies. E’s job was to help kids decorate wooden “cookie” medallions to wear during the events and to have as a souvenir.
E was delighted to meet parents and their offspring from a variety of Spanish speaking countries, as well as people from Turkey, Korea, Japan and Iran. They all seemed to really enjoy the activity.
Thursday, June 6th
Today we went on a tour put on by the Greenbelt Land Trust. The site was a 1600 acre parcel of wooded hillside called CBow Ridge. This was once a privately owned property which has recently been converted to a permanent conservation easement to be managed by GLT. The tract is about forty-five minutes south of Corvallis, just north of the Eugene Springfield area. As the map shows, it is located just a few miles east of I-5 near the town of Coburg. What the map does not show is that the property climbs the west face of the ridge, rising from the 400 ft elevation of the valley floor to 1500 feet at the top.
Here’s the approximate location of the property. The diagonal line through the top of it is a high tension power line. The white number 1 is a place about halfway up the ridge where we stopped for some tree and shrub identification. The 2 marks a spot higher up where we stopped to take in the view down to valley floor.
It is a very beautiful piece of land. In the past, the property owners had for a time tried to use the hillside to run cattle. But although there are a number of grassy meadows here and there, the soil is rocky and produced relatively low quality forage. There was also some logging in the area, but this was apparently limited to selective cutting of a few high value trees. Consequently there is no sign whatever of old clearcuts or plantation style replantings. Instead, the area retains much of its natural character, which includes large swathes of oak savannah and an unusually large variety of tree and shrub species. In recent years the owners made only recreational use of the property–trail rides and camp-outs.
The trees and shrubs were the focus of the tour, which was led by Ed Jensen, Oregon State University Professor Emeritus and author of Shrubs to Know in Pacific Northwest Forests, along with David Zahler, Greenbelt Board Member and former faculty member of OSU College of Forestry. We were able to practice using a shrub identification manual, which reminded M of his long-ago Field Botany class in college. We were excited to hear about several shrubs/trees that we already have in our somewhat out of control, falling-into-wilderness yard.
Friday, June 7th
Lots of garden work today. E weeded the coreopsis colony while M spread wood chips around.
Saturday, June 8th
M has embarked on another backyard project. He’s plans to dig up about 50 square feet of grass and merge Hummock Project #2 with Hummock Project #3. “Less lawn!” is his rallying cry.
E has been doing long range planning. Today she walked over to the Patissier and bought four pain au chocolate and two almond paste croissants. Thus we have been provided with three (!) Sunday breakfasts. We’ve saved out two pain au chocolate for tomorrow and frozen the rest.
That done, she hauled out an aluminum ladder and spent an hour or so thinning apples. We cut our best tree way back last fall, so now pretty much all of it is ladder accessible. Then she did more weeding and again made war on the mites with her deadly water cannon.
Sunday, June 9th
M went out to continue working on his project. He wanted to get at least some of the basic prep work done before his upcoming enforced idleness.
E managed her usual flurry of Sunday tasks. This included a walk in the OSU forest, where she found a really beautiful day. There were lots of people about but there were also an unusually high number of bird species warbling away and also some very noisy bullfrogs at the lake.
E also claims to have seen a turtle–a very rare sight around here. She has no photographic evidence but is sticking to her story.
Monday, June 10th
M had another surgery, the right eye this time. That will be the end of it as he’s only having two eyes done. Apparently there is no surgery yet available to improve cloudiness of vision in the Third Eye.
Yikes! A distinguished visitor has come to Oregon and is staying with us! What are we going to do? Well, today was tertulia day, so we invited her to come along for morning coffee with J and R. Then, at lunchtime, she accompanied E to a meeting of the Lemon Meringue Pie Society. The meeting was held at Gathering Together Farms, where the food is delicious, but the menu does not include lemon meringue pie. This might seem odd. Our guest, however, whom we will refer to as Mrs. H, had some previous knowledge of the unpredictable and occasionally raucous nature of LMPS, so she was probably not too surprised. After lunch E took Mrs H for her first visit ever to Burst’s chocolate shop.
Friday May 17th
Today we made a trip over to the Coast. For the first leg of the trip we took Highway 34. Our guest was very impressed by the number of sharp curves on our route, remarking that it might be the curviest road she had ever experienced. E was quick to assure her that although the route was slow and tortuous, it had the advantage of leading directly to one of the best bakeries in the area. And sure enough, we eventually reached Waldport and were able to stock up on bread and treats at Pacific Sourdough. In the parking lot we also found a food truck specializing in coffee. This gave Mrs H another new experience. It was the first time she had ever been charged $6.75(!) for a coffee drink. The coffee truck was created from a 1955 Olson Kurbside step van. The chassis and drivetrain were supplied by Chevrolet; the all-aluminum body was made by Grumman-Olson.
This coffee cart was created from a 1950’s era delivery van. We wonder what the original owner would have thought about cups of coffee selling for $6.75.
From Waldport we drove up the coast and stopped for a two and half mile beach walk on the south side of Yaquina Bay. Mrs H is an inveterate walker and at no point during this activity did she accuse E of trying to kill her. After the walk, we made the short drive over to Local Ocean for lunch. Once fed, we went across the street and walked around the fishing boat docks. There wasn’t too much human activity there at two in the afternoon, but we did run across a bunch of noisy animals.
Saturday May 18th
In the morning E and Mrs H walked over to Le Pattissier, so that our guest could see this important Corvallis institution. It would have been impolite to just drop in and look around, so they felt they really had to buy something, i.e., some pain au chocolate for tomorrow’s breakfast. For today’s lunch we provided a Spanish sort of meal with jamon serrano, manchego cheese, and anchoa-stuffed olives, all accompanied by slices of pepper parmesan bread that we had brought back from the coast. After lunch E and Mrs H went downtown to do some shopping. This included a return visit to Burst’s Chocolate.
In the evening we all watched Episode 1 of The Extraordinary Attorney Woo, a Korean series now showing on Netflix. We all loved it.
Sunday May 19th
Today we took a long walk around the OSU campus. We saw a quite tidy-looking pro-Palestinian “encampment” in one corner of the Memorial union quad. But what we mainly came to see were the very large Rhododendron trees in the oldest parts of the campus. It’s prime season for Rhodie blossoms.
For lunch we ordered a couple of sandwiches to be delivered by robot to the OSU Library main entrance.
Monday May 20th
Today we went up to see the Alsea Falls…
… and also made a quick stop at nearby Hubert McBee Memorial Park. McBee is the site of the oldest local version of the “world’s longest picnic table.” It dates from the 1960’s and is dilapidated now: some of the roof has fallen away, sections of bench are missing, and the many of the concrete supports for the table are leaning and about to fall. But the main table surface is still quite intact. It’s a single piece of fir a hundred feet long, three feet wide, and three inches thick, .
On the way home we stopped and ate our lunch at Bellfountain County Park, where there is a very similar table, this one newer and in excellent condition. It seats 120.
After lunch we went to Finley and stopped for a stroll along the Homer Campbell Boardwalk near Muddy Creek.
Tuesday May 21st
After a week of very nice Spring weather, it was suddenly cloudy and cool this morning. This was to be Mrs H’s last day in Oregon and our plan was to leave Corvallis before noon and head north to the Portland area, stopping for a picnic lunch along the way. Once there, we’d take Mrs. H for a short excursion up the Columbia Gorge to see the sights. Then we’d go back to Portland and have dinner before dropping her off at the Portland airport to catch her flight home. And that’s what we did, sort of.
We left on schedule, bur after just forty-five minutes on the road, it started raining. And the farther north we got, the harder it rained. We ended up picnicking in the car, stopping in a public park in the town of Hubbard, OR. Hubbard is home to the annual Hops Festival, but is otherwise decidedly unremarkable. (It has a nice park though.)
Once we got to the Gorge, the rain was really coming down so we decided to cut the excursion short and just visit Multnomah falls. Viewing a waterfall in the pouring rain is not ideal, you might say, but the falls didn’t suffer for it and it was still a beautiful scene.
We did not linger but instead headed back toward Portland somewhat earlier than we had planned. That was fortunate as it turned out that traffic was so heavy that it took an hour or so to go twenty miles. But we still made an on-time arrival at the Heathman Lodge where we were meeting the Andees for dinner. After that it was a short hop over to the airport and time to say our goodbyes. It was quite a wonderful visit.
Thursday May 23rd
E had her exercise class in the morning and Laughter Yoga late in the late afternoon. Between times, she drove M to and from his cataract surgery.
Friday May 24th
M had his post-op appointment. The new lens is in the left eye, so we had them pop the left lens out of his primary glasses. M is wondering if he’ll look weird going around with one lens missing from his glasses, but E told him not to worry–he doesn’t look any weirder than he did before.
E had time to go for a forest walk and then make a trip to the nursery. She bought a gaura to replace one that did not survive the winter. She also got two new Japanese anemones–because our old ones are pathetic.
Saturday May 25th
E planted her gaura and weeded the bed that it went into. And then she was tired. But she revived in time for our anniversary dinner at Sybaris.
Sunday May 26th
The celebration continued with almond croissants for breakfast. So buttery! Then E had to plant her new anemones. M has been told not to do any heavy work and, above all, not to bend over to tie his shoes. He is annoyed. But he managed to direct E to perform some simple garden tasks that he is forbidden to do..
Our solar panels have produced 379 kilowatt hours of power so far. As far as we can tell, that’s roughly 33% more than our usage over the same period. But we’ll have to see what our next bill says…
A new electricity generation facility opened in Corvallis today and we got to attend the opening ceremony. There wasn’t too much of crowd. In fact, except for the installer, we were the only ones there. It was pretty exciting though. It’s a small system with just nine 410 watt panels, giving it a nominal rating of 3,800 watts.
Our panels are the newer type that do not have the silver gridlines. These were made in the U.S. by Silfab
Besides the panels themselves, there are three other parts to the system.
On the back of the house, a reprogrammed electric meter.
Nearby, a code-mandated outdoor kill switch
And inside the garage, an inverter with communication and control functions, i.e., the brains of the outfit. This is an SMA unit, made in Germany.
Wednesday, May 8th
It was a day for medical appointments. In the morning M had a pre-op meeting with the eye surgeon and in the afternoon the Ioniq 5 got a checkup and software upgrade at the Hyundai dealer in Salem. (Why, one might ask, did we take the Ioniq to Salem for its upgrade instead of going to the Hyundai dealer in Albany, which is much nearer? We don’t know. Probably, you know, senility.)
While we were in Salem, just by chance we dropped in to the Konditorei to see if they might possibly have any good cake there. They did. E got a piece of her favorite Barney’s Blackout and M got a piece of German chocolate cheesecake. Their pieces were big, big enough to last us a couple of days.
Thursday, May 9th
Another beautiful spring day, sunny with temps in the seventies. M put on sunscreen and worked in the yard all day. E was in and out, what with her exercise class, a coffee date with a friend, and then Laughter Yoga. While they’re busy doing all that, here’s a leftover photo from M’s Nevada/Oregon road trip, taken when he visited the gravesite of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the son of Sacajawea and Toussaint Charbonneau. The grave is in one of the emptiest parts of Oregon. Charbonneau contracted pneumonia there while on his way from California to Montana.
If you can’t read the text here or want to know more about Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, click here.
And on a simpler note, here’s a sparkling little watercourse in a dry looking place called Glen Dun Canyon, located in the hills southwest of Winnemucca, NV.
Friday, May 10th
E started the day by getting her toes painted, then came home and mixed up a dinner to put into the slow cooker. After that she was off to a luncheon meeting of her THEPAJ group, which she had to leave a bit early in order to get to her SMART reader work at Lincoln School later in the afternoon. Whew.
M has been watching to see how our new solar system is working. Our system’s “nominal” output is 3,800 watts. But a solar panel’s nominal rating is based on its maximum possible performance in a controlled test environment. Well that’s no help; all it means is that our panels will never produce anything close to 3,800 watts. So how can we see how much they actually do produce? There are several ways; but since the inverter is connected to our home internet, the easiest way is to use a computer or phone. Here’s part of what we see:
This screenshot is from 9:45 A.M. on a sunny day and shows that the system was producing 2,023 watts when last sampled. In the lower right, it also shows how much electricity the system has produced since it was first turned on. After three days of life, mostly sunny ones, it is at 59.30 kilowatt hours.
Here’s another sample, this one from the same sunny day but taken at 1:30 P.M., when the sun was shining more directly onto the panels. This is probably close to the maximum production rate that we will ever see. The cumulative total is up to 69 kilowatt hours.
Saturday, May 11th
E has been invited up to Vancouver to celebrate Mother’s Day with Andrea and Andy. She went up today on the afternoon train and Andrea picked her up at Portland station. E’s train–contrary to all expectation–was not late. It was thirty minutes early! No one has ever even heard of that. It’s a little eerie. E was happy though. She read a Masie Dobbs novel in the waiting room. Andrea, meanwhile, had a good excuse to leave her volunteer work early, given that her mother was by herself at a station located in what is one of the worst parts of Portland.
Soon E was safely transported to the Andees’ place across the river. She reports that the food and accommodation there were quite fine. She got a wonderful dinner complete with homemade cookies.
Sunday, May 12th
The day’s main activity was to participate in the 11th Annual Reigning Roses Walk, a benefit for Rose Haven, a day shelter and community center for women. The event began with a pre-party at 10:00, which featured food, mimosas, a raffle, and live entertainment. At 11:00 the walk began. The route went through a section of NW Portland’s Alphabet District and included stops at a number of businesses which were supporting the event.
After the walk, there was a brief respite back home and then it was time for a late lunch. And wouldn’t you know it, right on cue, that’s when M showed up, having sailed the Ioniq 5 up from Corvallis. That made four for lunch at Grassa on the Vancouver riverfront. What a nice place that is. Then, after a stroll along the waterfront, it was time to say goodbye. The sad parting was assuaged by the fact that A gave us a box of cookies for the road.
Monday, May 13th
Another busy day. While M did chores inside and out, E went for a forest walk with her friend S. E and S met back in the old(ish) days when a teenage S babysat for young mother E’s children. Today they went to Peavy and walked up to the lake where they sat down and had some coffee. Later E had Zoom yoga.
In the evening we watched the last episode of Season 9 of Seaside Hotel. It’s a lovely series with great characters and well-made plot lines. Very dramatic but never really too awful. It streams from PBS.
At 9:30 in the evening M checked on the solar panel system, which was totally dead in the water. Useless. We should probably get some lunar panels.
Tuesday, May 14th
We worked in the garden in the early morning, with E fighting the mite wars and M weeding the struggling strawberries. E then went off to exercise class and did a bunch of errands, ending her day with a trip to the Co-op to buy rhubarb and other supplies. M, meanwhile, finished building a little dike in the garage.
We’ve been getting summery weather here lately, sunny and almost hot for days and days. The first roses are out. E is thrilled to have some in the house again.
Up at 4:15 A.M. and out of the house by 4:45. It was still dark of course and we don’t really like to drive at night; but with hardly any traffic, it wasn’t so bad. We were at the Eugene airport by 5:30. American Airlines took us first to Phoenix and thence to Palm Springs. There we picked up a rental car and made the one hour drive to the town of Joshua Tree, which is located near the west entrance to Joshua Tree National Park.
On the way we stopped at a supermarket and got a couple of tamales for lunch. E was pleased to find a vegetarian tamale; M went for chicken. Both were quite good. Later on, we had plenty of time to get into our Vrbo house and visit another grocery store for supplies. The house was in a development just west of the town. The orange circle in the satellite photo below marks the location of our temporary home.
The main part of the town of Joshua Tree was only a mile or so to the east, but because of the lay of the land the city was invisible. All we could see out our back window was boring old desert and some weird trees.
We had dinner at home. E baked a couple of Gorton’s frozen salmon squares and M sautéed a skillet full of potatoes, peppers and squash. After dinner we took a walk around the neighborhood and admired the western skyline after the sun went down. A treat for us rain forest dwellers.
Sunday, April 28th
Today we visited two places in the western part of the park: Hidden Valley and Barker Dam. The weather was pretty nice with temperatures in the seventies. On the other hand, The sun beats down all day, the air is very dry, and there is always a breeze, so you need a lot of water. Also, we were at about 4,000 feet, not an altitude we’re used to. We ended up walking only about three miles in all. But what lovely miles they were!
Here are a couple of Joshua trees framing the top of San Gorgonio peak many miles to the west. The altitude of the Mojave Desert ranges from 3000 to 5000 feet. San Gorgonio rises to 11,500 and is the highest peak in Southern California.
Both the Joshua trees and Mojave yucca were striking plants, but so was this Nolina bigelovii with its giant flower stalk. This one was still just budding…
…but on this Nolina, some of the flowers had bloomed, enough to get the bees very interested. Wikipedia says that there are up to a hundred and fifty tiny flowers on each rosette. So on the whole stalk there must be thousands.
There are also a lot of rocks in this part of the park…and by that we mean one helluva lot of rocks.
For Sunday dinner, we went back to a supermarket deli thinking to get more of those good tamales. But then E saw that they also had chile rellenos, a vegetarian dish and one of her favorite Mexican things. Alas, when we sat down to supper, the relleno turned out to be a little different from the ones in Oregon. This one was very spicy, too hot for her to handle. Fortunately, we had some other stuff around. If memories serve, she fashioned herself a sandwich out of some peanut butter we found in the fridge.
Monday, April 29th
It was time to pack up and say goodbye to the Vrbo place. For the next two days we’d be staying at a Fairfield Inn down the road in the town of Twentynine Palms. But first we had to visit Indian Cove, a relatively small area in the northernmost part of the park. Indian Cove is separated from the rest of the park by some miles of rugged terrain, so it has its own entrance. It turned out to be quite lovely with lots of flowers and a nice self-guided nature trail.
This video starts by looking down toward the town of Twentynine Palms and ends by looking up at something closer.
When you first look at Joshua Tree, you know right away you’re in a desert. The whole thing is just really dry, with a hot sun bearing down from an utterly cloudless sky. But in fact there are variations in that dryness that have a powerful effect on plant life. In the photo below you can see that a crease in the rocky hillside collects a bit of extra moisture that is then exploited by certain plant species, species that could not survive in the open areas just a few meters away.
There is a lot of foliage here…
…but here’s the bigger picture.
More subtle variations also have a part in determining which plants grow where. There are a surprising number of different plants and lots of them were in bloom.
As for animal life, during our trip we saw one rabbit, several tiny ground squirrels, two giant gray squirrels, lots of birds, and many, many lizards.
After our walk at Indian Cove we went to the park visitor center in Twentynine Palms. Besides maps and t-shirts and puzzles, there was a great deal of information about the native groups that lived in the area prior to the Euro-American invasion. There was also the following, which E found on a subsequent visit to this same center:
At 3:00 we checked into the Twentynine Palms Marriot Fairfield Inn, which is very nice. (Those Vrbo/AirBnB things are all well and good, but for comfort it’s hard to beat a good hotel!) For dinner we went to a restaurant called Thai Cafe. It was unprepossessing, as they used to say, but it was really good.
Tuesday, April 30th
Today we started out by driving into Twentynine Palms and turning south on a road called Utah Trail, which leads to the northeast entrance of the park. Once inside, we turned left on a road that leads to the south. Our first stop was for a hike to Arch Rock.
They call this Arch Rock, but…you know…we’ve been to Utah and other places where they have real arches. This looks more like an insect or maybe an elephant.
Next we drove south into the part of the park where the Mojave Desert transitions into the Colorado Desert. There were no Joshua trees in the landscape, but we did reach an area where we found ourselves surrounded by Cholla cactus. They call it Cholla Garden.
A Cholla in the bloom of youthAnd one whose course has mostly run
And then we made our last expedition, a place where there was little walking involved. We drove to a high place called Keys View.
Looking northwest toward San Gorgonio
Wednesday, May 1st
Time to go back to Oregon. Our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave till 1:05, so we had a fairly relaxed morning even though the Palm Springs Airport is airport is an hour and a half away from Twentynine Palms. We got to the airport early, so by the time we turned in the rental car, checked our bags and went through security it was only 11:35 or so. We had a coffee and shared a croissant, then went out to the gate area and sat down to wait. After a bit, we got a text from American Airlines: our 1:05 flight to Phoenix would be delayed until 1:20. So, a fifteen minute delay, hardly worth mentioning, Then we got another text. The flight was now delayed till 1:40. Hmm. Twenty more minutes. Still, that would not be a problem for our connecting flight from Phoenix to Eugene, which didn’t leave till 4:45. Then another text: the flight to Phoenix was now delayed until 9:27 p.m.. 9:27? That can’t be right, said E. I know what you mean, said M, but I think maybe it is.
So we headed back out down the Sonny Bono Concourse, past security and back to the American ticket counter. The line there was short; there were only three people in front of us. But there was only one agent, so it took a while. When we got to the head of the line–when it was almost our turn–we happened to look behind us. Yo! There was a huge mass of people behind us, none of them looking particularly happy.
Eventually a very nice agent was able to reroute us onto Alaska. We would fly from Palm Springs to Seattle and then from Seattle to Eugene. The Seattle plane didn’t leave Palm Springs until 5:55, so we would be arriving very late in Eugene. But we would be arriving.
And so, four hours later, off we flew toward Seattle. We saw some lovely Sierra Nevada Mountains scenery out the window. About halfway through the flight there was an announcement asking if there was a doctor on board. It appeared that one of the passengers “wasn’t feeling well.” A little while later–quite possibly at the very moment that our plane was flying over the town of Eugene on its way north to Seattle–we were informed that the plane would be making a medical emergency landing in Portland. Well. We’d never experienced that before. But now we have. Once we landed, we found two ambulances and a fire engine waiting for us–all with lights aflashing. So, did we ever make to Seattle? Were we in time to make our connection to Eugene? Yes and yes. We were a little tired though.
It had all seemed so simple that morning.
Thursday, May 2nd
We arrived in Eugene around 12:30 A.M. After half an hour spent talking to people about where our two suitcases might be, we went out into the pouring rain, got into the truck and headed home.
On Thursday morning the rain stopped for a few hours, so M went out to cut the lawn, which seemed to have grown an inch a day while we were gone.
Our bags arrived in Corvallis just before dinnertime.
Friday and Saturday, May 3-4
Rain rain rain. On Saturday E did some sorting and decluttering inside. We made some hard decisions about what we could stand to get rid of. E then took a bunch of things to the Humane Society Thrift Shop. Very satisfying.
Sunday and Monday, Mar 5-6
Weatherwise, it was still kind of damp. On Monday E defrosted the garage freezer while M stayed mostly in bed with a cold.
M loaded his truck with camping things and started off on his trip to explore northwestern Nevada. The first day’s drive was a familiar one, southeast across the Cascades and down to the town of Lakeview, near the California border. There he stopped for the night at a motel. Lakeview hasn’t improved much over the years, but it’s a handy stopping place. This time through, M avoided the Aguila Real Mexican restaurant and dined on the second half of big sandwich he had purchased about 150 miles back. He paired this with a very small bottle of Korbel champagne.
Back in Corvallis, E dealt with the sickly rosemary plant in the front yard. Last fall she’d stuck it into her best large pot. It did well at first but the winter was hard on it. It is still alive but is not thriving and E has lost patience. She wrestled it out–without resorting to breaking the pot–and moved it to a new place in the back yard.
Later in the day, she had a Zoom yoga class and then visited the fabric store in preparation for a reupholstery job. Did she then cook herself a gourmet dinner? No. She had some leftovers and they were fine.
Saturday, April 20th
E went out to buy some candytuft (Iberus) to go into her newly vacant pot. She went to Shonnard’s because she heard that they were having some kind of open house. But she was in for a disappointment. First off, they no candytuft in stock and the sales person actually laughed at her for asking! Even worse, the refreshments–at least at first glance–consisted of just one small dish of paper-wrapped chewy taffy! Not her favorite, not even tolerable. Fortunately E kept on searching and eventually found a dish of Hershey’s Kisses, which she thought were a marked improvement. Still, is that all you can do for open house treats? Ridiculous. Ah, but on the other hand, they had some pretty little blue pots at 50% off. So the trip was not totally wasted.
M departed Lakeview and found his way to an area in the extreme northeast corner of California called Surprise Valley. The valley is about 50 miles long and ranges from four to ten miles wide. It runs north and south between the Warner Range in California and the Hays Canyon Range in Nevada. On the map below the white lines are state borders: California is to the left, Nevada to the right, and Oregon above.
Surprise Valley
When M passed through, the water level in the lakes was higher than in this satellite photo. Do you see that white oval shaped alkali flat southeast of Cedarville? And the wide land bridge that separates Upper Alkali Lake from Middle Alkali Lake? M didn’t see either one of those; he just saw a long unbroken stretch of water. If he came back in another time of year, however, he’d probably see much less water. By August, maybe, a person would able to drive east from Cedarville straight across the dry lake bed and find the road to Vya, Nevada.
Here’s a view looking east; the hills and mountains in the background are in Nevada. Most of the arable land and all of the little towns in Surprise Valley are on the California side of the lake.
In its heyday, a hundred and some odd years ago, the valley was home to a thousand or more people. A number of buildings remain from that era, including these substantial looking school buildings.
Lake City School
Fort Bidwell School. It was built in 1918 when the area population was still growing. One side of the building served elementary students; the other side was the high school.
A lively history of Surprise Valley schools written in 1996 mentions that the Fort Bidwell School was built of dressed native stone and was supposed to last “forever.” Both the Lake City and Fort Bidwell schools are now closed, but the buildings are still standing tall and sturdy at the age of roughly 105. The very first high school to be built in the valley was Cedarville Union High, which opened in 1904. Presumably it was not built to last ‘forever’ as it burned to the ground in 1935.
Most of today’s Surprise Valley homes and ranches seem prosperous enough, but there are still a number of abandoned houses, this being one of the best preserved. Should we say that this house was tragically doomed by the unreliability of its humans? Or should we say that its owners finally set it free to find its own way?
After touring Surprise Valley, M crossed into Nevada and continued south to the town of Gerlach at the lower end of the Black Rock Desert. This area is home to Burning Man, a week-long party attended by upwards of 75,000 people each year. The Black Rock Desert is a fifty mile long alkali flat, which is barren and featureless until the Burning Man invasion. It takes a month to clean up after Burning Man, but during that month every trace of the party is removed. M can testify that in April of 2024 it looked as barren and featureless as ever.
Here’s a tiny swath of the Black Rock Desert at its narrowest point near the town of Gerlach.
From Gerlach M headed east into a seriously empty part of the Nevada, as in no towns, no rest areas, no campgrounds, no nothin’. But he did see some wild horses and one speedy antelope that seemed to be challenging him to a race.
There were no paved roads, but many of the gravel roads were in fantastic condition, having just received their once-a-year, post-winter grading. After only a few hours heading east M found the scattered remains of a place called Sulphur that had once been a railroad town. A sign pointed toward something called Rosebud Spring ten miles away. That sounded like a good place to camp, so off he went.
When he arrived at Rosebud Spring, M found out that he wasn’t the only one interested.
Not wanting to intrude, he made his camp a quarter of a mile down the road. During the roughly fourteen hours that M spent here, the road saw no other traffic.
Viewed from his campsite, the moon rose early in the east…
…and the sun set late in the west.
Sunday, April 21st
Today E worked on chores and on her sewing projects–a cushion and a bathroom curtain. Then, as a reward, she went to another nursery in search of candytuft. As it happened, she had a quite different experience. Besides having lots of candytuft available, Garland nursery had their own party going and treats galore.
M breakfasted on a two-day-old chocolate ginger scone from Bodhi’s Bakery, a fine establishment located about 450 miles away from his current location. Then he packed up and continued south and east in the general direction of Imlay, Nevada. After an hour or so he came to a place where he could see that the road was leading him toward a body of water.
His map identified it as Rye Patch reservoir. Just for a change, this lake contains fresh water and has an outlet. It owes its existence to a dam on the Humboldt River. The Humboldt arises in the mountains of northeastern Nevada and flows southwest for some three hundred miles. This being the Great Basin, there is nowhere for it to flow out and it never finds its way to an ocean. Instead, it disappears into a large wetland area called The Humboldt Sink and is never seen again. At this time of year the Humboldt runs pretty high. Here’s what it looked like when M finally reached it.
As it passed through Nevada in the 1840’s, the original California Trail followed alongside the Humboldt for a few hundred miles. The old route is still passable in many places, passable that is, for four-wheel-drive vehicles piloted by determined and perhaps mildly masochistic drivers. M drove the Trail for ten miles at a place where the old route was still in occasional use by ranch traffic. It took about an hour to go the ten miles. Oddly enough, there was no other traffic of any kind. It seems that the overwhelming majority of drivers who travel through the area prefer to use I-80, which parallels the route about fifteen miles to the south. Why this should be so is such a mystery. M suspects that it has something to do with people wanting to get somewhere. (In one of his books Edward Abbey gave his idea of what constitutes a good road. Does anyone remember it? Was the book Desert Solitaire?)
Monday, April 22nd
E’s assignment for today included installing her new candytuft into its pot and remembering to take out the garbage. (This last is a chore that E is normally reluctant to do because M seems to enjoy it so much.) She then went out to dinner with H at the Spaghetti Factory.
Having spent the night at a motel in Winnemucca, M set off north toward the wilds of southeastern Oregon. He had planned to camp somewhere up there, but was now wavering. Night time temperatures were predicted to be below freezing, which didn’t seem all that pleasant. He ended up exploring some nice country in the Cow Creek area and then moving on to another motel in the town of Ontario, Oregon.
Tuesday, April 23rd
M’s hotel in Ontario turned out to be a Red Lion on the Idaho side of the border. M had a light supper and then went to the Dairy Queen down the road for a more substantial dessert. In the morning he got up at 7:15, had a quick breakfast and was on the road by 7:45. He made pretty good time, churning along Highway 20 past the Oregon onion fields. In fact he went so fast that by the time an hour had passed, it was still only 7:45.
Thanks to this early start M got back to Corvallis at 3:30 or so and found E slaving away in the back garden, filling up those pretty new pots that she got from Shonnard’s. For dinner they had Amy’s frozen dinners and hybrid margaritas. Very fine.
Wednesday, April 24th
M spent all day cleaning up the camping stuff, including hosing down a bunch of gear that had gotten massively dusty. And then of course there was the truck itself, which needed cleaning both inside and out. And the garage had to be cleaned up because the solar installers were coming…
E did some critical grocery shopping and made other preparations for tomorrow’s meeting of the Lemon Meringue Pie Society, which she is hosting. For one thing, she mixed up a batch of piecrust. She’ll roll it out tomorrow and use it to make a pie, a pie which is not destined to be lemon meringue. (!)
Thursday, April 25th
After a long spell of mostly dry weather, the rains have made a return, a welcome one as far as the yard is concerned, but perhaps not so pleasing to the guy mounting the solar panels on the garage roof. The installation is supposed to be finished today or tomorrow; the rain is supposed to stay on several days longer.
M went out for an eye appointment in the morning and when he returned was treated to an empty house smelling of just baked cherry pie. E had gone to BBB class, trusting that Goldilocks would not come by. The solar installers were finished by 3:30. A few more steps remain before the panels can go online.
The meeting of the Lemon Meringue Pie Society began at 5:00. It went well and everyone seemed to like E’s cherry pie. But this variation from the lemon meringue tradition inspired one member–the rational one–to propose changing the name of the group to something more general. This suggestion was dismissed immediately with a resounding chorus of negatives. Make no mistake, this is a rowdy crew.
Friday, April 26th
We spent the day prepping for our trip to Joshua Tree. Our plane leaves tomorrow at 7:00 am, so we’ll have to be out of here before 5:00 am. Who planned this trip?
E noticed today that a flicker has made a couple of largish holes in our back fence power pole. She wondered if the damage would compromise the pole’s structural integrity, so she called Pacific Power. Within half an hour a fellow turned up to assess the damage.
After taking a look, the technician’s first response was that the easiest solution would be a BB gun. E was not impressed. His next move was to say that the pole was not immediately at risk but that he would report it, adding that “They will probably put it on the B list.”
Wednesday, March 27th
We’ve had lots of rain lately, especially today. But E had an appointment to walk with her friend Asher, so off we went to the OSU forest and hiked up to Cronemiller Lake. Here’s what that looked like:
And here are some big leaf maple flowers now fully out.
Thursday, March 28th
Better weather today, cloudy in the morning but clearing by noon. While M stayed home and did garden work, E went back to the forest and found this pretty little Calypso lily.
E remembers that these didn’t use to come out until early June.
Friday, March 29th
The clear skies continue. Beautiful moon last night.
Around midday we listened to the game between Oregon State and Notre Dame in the NCAA round of sixteen. In a hard fought struggle, the OSU women defeated the Irish 70-65 and will advance to the Elite Eight. In their next game they will have the dubious honor of playing South Carolina, who are undefeated and heavily favored by almost everyone to win it all this year. So that should be fun.
For dinner we went to the Bombs Away Cafe, which has been part of the Corvallis restaurant scene since 1991. The original owner identified it as a “funky taqueria” featuring Southwestern cuisine. Once, in the mid nineties, M went for lunch and ordered the chef’s infamous “chicken wings chupacabra.” He said it was incredibly delicious and also the spiciest dish he ever had in his life, calling it a “life-changing experience.” He never forgot it and never ordered it again.
In the late 1990’s we went there a number of times for lunch or dinner, but then it changed hands, gradually morphing into a place that focused a little more on live music and drinks and a little less on food. It had been maybe twenty years since we’d been there. How did we like it? Well, for one thing, it seemed smaller. How did that happen? We found a few of the old recipes still on the menu. We tried the wet burritos and they were very good. These days Bombs Away claims to have the largest selection of tequilas in Corvallis, which may be true; but E’s pickle margarita was pretty bad–way too sweet, even for E. It’s interesting how sameness and difference collide when you go back like this.
Saturday, March 30th
Shutterfly sent us a reminder that 5 years ago today was the ANDEES’s wedding day. They must be mistaken. Surely it was only 2 or 3 years ago.
Here’s an attendant prepping the groom during his last moments as a bachelor.
Sunday, March 31st
Playing in Albany, NY, the OSU women’s basketball team fell to #1 seed South Carolina, ending their NCAA Tournament run. The Beavers played well and trailed by only four points in the middle of the fourth quarter. But from then on SC made their shots and OSU didn’t. The final was 70-58.
On the happier side of things, we went over to Albany, OR and had a wonderful Easter dinner with B and B.
Tuesday, April 2nd
We’ve had several days of good weather and made use of it to get things done in the yard. E has expanded her front yard iris patch by digging up and moving some plants from out back. She’s also been weeding and making sure that the invasive blue flower things don’t choke out her Russian sage. M helped a little in the front, but put most of his effort into the rebuilding of Hummock #0, which had slowly been going to ruin over the last few years.
We didn’t have to do much work on Hummock #1; things just popped up by themselves like they’re supposed to. Flowering currant, dwarf iris and tulips are the early bloomers.
We just watched The Holdovers, which is nominated for a best picture Oscar. It’s probably too low key for that, but still very good. It stars Paul Giametti, Dominic Sessa, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph and is set in a remote New England prep school over the Christmas holidays. Wonderful acting and scenery, and an interesting plot.
Wednesday, March 6th
We did a short hike on Vineyard Mountain. The trailhead is just a couple of hundred feet higher in elevation than the city; but whereas in the town last week’s snow melted almost immediately, up there it was lying around everywhere. It was like a different season.
In the afternoon, M finished doing this year’s taxes.
We’ve almost got the house cleaned up after the various parties, but we do have a challenge remaining. There is chocolate everywhere. Where are we supposed to put it all?
Thursday, March 7th
M tested negative and off we went to Tertulia. We’re still trying to get the house back to normal. That includes not only party pick-up, but also disassembling the COVID ward and returning to communal living.
E went to her in-person exercise class and was glad to be back.
Sunday, March 10th
Da’Vine Joy Randolph has won best supporting actress Oscar for her role in The Holdovers.
Wednesday, March 13th to Wednesday, March 20
After a week of rain as well as some snow earlier in the month, we just got a whole week of sunny days with temps in the 60’s. Wow. Lots of garden work got done: bed maintenance, irrigation rebuilding, and a start on a major revamp of what we call Hummock Zero. More on that later.
Thursday, March 21st
Cloudy today with rain on the way. But today’s big news is that E managed to have three meals out! First it was morning tertulia at Coffee Culture, then lunch with a friend at Ants on a Log, and finally a meeting of the Lemon Meringue Pie Society at Shari’s restaurant. Somewhere in there, we also found time for a walk in the forest to see what we could find in the way of flora and fauna.
Lots of trillium starting to bloom…
…and fawn lilies just about to unfold..
A newt was out…
…and it’s flowering season for the big leaf maples.
Here’s a closeup.
Sunday, March 24th
It’s the start of spring break for OSU and normally the town would have been quieting down. But the Oregon State women’s basketball team has done well this year and has just finished hosting two NCAA tournament games. OSU won both their games, beating Eastern Washington in the first round on Thursday and then eliminating Nebraska in the round of thirty-two on Sunday, earning themselves a place in the Sweet Sixteen. Later this week they will travel to Albany, NY and take on Notre Dame.
We got a mysterious gift bouquet today! M heard the doorbell ring and when he got there he saw no one but did notice a lovely little bouquet on the mat. E found a vase for it.
In other news, Meandering on the Way–via our vast network of contacts–has obtained a copy of a document that we hope will shine some light on the mysterious goings on at LMPS. A redacted version follows.
A meeting of the Lemon Meringue Pie Society was held on March 21 at Shari’s restaurant in Corvallis. Members present were XXXXX, XXXXX, XXXXX, and XXXXX. Members absent and sorely missed were XXXXX and XXXXX. While they were sorely missed, their portions of pie did not go to waste, as members present took on the burden of consuming the extra rations.
The next meeting of LMPS will take place at the residence of XXXXX, who will endeavor to produce a cherry pie for a belated celebration of the 292nd birthday of George Washington. The party will be held at 5:00 pm on Thursday, April 25th.
At the March 21st meeting, a resolution was passed to declare the 3rd Thursday of every month as LMPS meeting day. Time and place may vary.
We had beautiful weather for our flight to Salt Lake City. As the plane started its descent, we had a great view of Ogden–M’s old home town–where it lies stretched out along the base of the Wasatch Mountain Range. On a bright day in winter, that long line of snow-covered peaks is quite a sight. The SLC airport is a big one these days. We got 3,000 steps just by walking from our arrival gate to baggage claim. But we were out of the airport quite quickly and the traffic in Salt Lake–even at 5:00 PM on a Friday–was running very fast and very smooth. We had enough time to check in to our room and relax for a few minutes before heading out to the rehearsal dinner.
Saturday, February 24th
The wedding was at the Millcreek Inn, which is located in just a few miles up Millcreek Canyon. There are no ski resorts or other developments there, just a narrow old road that leads up into the mountains. A much younger M often went hiking in that canyon while he was in college. It is still lovely.
There were lots of wedding things going on….
…and a lovely flower girl.
E with her cousins D and L, L being the mother of the bride.
Sunday, February 25th
On Sunday we met D and L at a place called Taggart’s Grill. Taggart’s is located in Weber Canyon just a few miles from the town of Morgan, Utah. Before lunch we walked for an hour or two along the river.
Here’s a view of the Weber River flowing down westward toward the Great Salt Lake.
Here are the cousins walking east toward the mountains from which the river rises.
After a longish stroll along the river, we were ready for lunch and Taggart’s is definitely a good place for that. We started off with some “creamy chicken mushroom artichoke, spicy black bean soup.” That’s a pretty long name for a soup, but it’s a pretty awesome soup. Wow. Then a couple of us had jalapeño burgers. Wow again. As you see, it has cream cheese and sliced jalapeños at the top. But there is also some goopity stuff at the bottom–house made apricot-jalapeño jelly.
Taggart’s has only been around since 1938, but Weber Canyon has been a national transportation route since the late 1860’s when it was chosen to be part of the route of the first transcontinental railway. As part of that project, the Union Pacific Railroad built 1,085 miles of track, starting at Council Bluffs, Iowa and ending at Promontory Point, Utah. There, they met up with the Central Pacific Railroad, who had built 690 miles of track from their starting point in Sacramento, California. For the Union Pacific, crossing the Wasatch Mountains and descending Weber Canyon was their most challenging stretch of track. The grade was steep, the canyon was narrow, and a number of tunnels had to be built. And in fact, on May 10, 1869, when Leland Stanford drove the golden spike at Promontory Point and the great cross-country route was officially opened, the tunnel at Taggart was only partially completed. Yes, the line was technically open, but only if you dared take your train onto a temporary curved wooden trestle perched next to the river. Ironically enough, several high Union Pacific officials on their way to attend the opening ceremony in Promontory were stranded in Taggart when this temporary trestle partially collapsed beneath their train, causing them a two day delay. E comments that it’s really too bad they were 150 years too soon to sample the current Taggart’s menu.
This photo of the Taggart area was taken in 1870. The tunnel was finished by then, but the route of the temporary trestle can still be seen. Sixty-eight years after, in 1938, the first incarnation of what has become the Taggart’s Inn appeared near the bend of the river in the upper right corner. For a larger version of this photo, click HERE.
In this photo, taken about 150 years later, there’s not much sign of a temporary trestle. And a freeway has been added to the scene. But the modern railroad tunnel is just a widened version of the original. The small red circle in the upper right marks the location of Taggart’s Grill.
This bit of Union Pacific track is part of one of the steepest railroad grades in the United States. From Ogden at 4,298 feet, the line runs 65 miles up to the town of Wahsatch, at 6,799 feet, a climb that averages 38.47 feet per mile. Pulling long freight trains up such a grade requires a lot of power and for many years the Union Pacific had to use a helper system, whereby extra locomotives were temporarily added to the trains just to get them up the hill. Then, in 1941, wanting a single locomotive powerful enough not to need a helper on this route, the Union Pacific commissioned the largest steam locomotives ever made. Built by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO), these engines were originally meant to be named the Wasatch series. But after an unknown ALCO worker in Schenectady scrawled “Big Boy” in chalk on the front the first one, that was the name that stuck. Historical note: E’s father and her uncle were both working at that ALCO factory in 1941.
In 2024 the tracks shown here continue to be part of the Union Pacific main line connecting the West Coast to the Midwest. And that line is busy. During our walk, three long freights went by, climbing the grade with their diesel engines roaring. Since modern diesel electric locomotives produce only about one third the power of a Big Boy, modern trains typically have three to four engines.
Monday, February 26th
We had an uneventful flight back to Eugene. But by late afternoon M was sneezing.
Tuesday, February 27th
M tested positive in the morning and so we set up a COVID ward so he could isolate. The main concern was whether E would get it. Besides the issue of her own well-being, there was a family dinner planned for Friday and a major birthday party planned for Saturday, with many guests coming from far away. Today she tested negative.
Wednesday, February 28th
M still ill but slightly less dead. E still negative.
Thursday, February 29th
A lot like Wednesday. We started feeling a little optimistic that E might be fine for the party.
Friday, March 1st
M improving little by little. E still negative. Yay!
The dinner went on as planned–though some extra precautions were taken. The party was held in the garage, far away from M’s COVID ward in the house. Andy brought the food truck down and put together dinner and dessert for twenty. Amazing!
The siblings and…
…their offspring.
Saturday, March 2nd
E again tested negative, so that was a relief. M was feeling…not good exactly…but much better. He had to skip the big birthday party, though, as he was still positive and coughing a lot.
And what a party it was! The cake topper was made from a photo of E.
So E got to stand on top of a birthday cake, at least for a while.
But she later fell (or jumped) into a layer of frosting from which her daughter had to extract her.
E gets a hug from the party organizer
Sunday, March 3rd
Today E had a final brunch at Odd Bird’s with family members who were still in town. It was a wonderful weekend.
