We’re thinking of going to stay overnight on the coast. We’d go over in the afternoon, stay the night, and then hike on the following day before heading home. For some reason, it seemed best to do it on Monday and Tuesday. Monday was supposed to be very rainy, but Tuesday was supposed to be only moderately rainy. That should work.
Monday, April 10
As predicted, it’s really rainy today. And…the forecast has changed. It now calls for lots of rain tomorrow also. Oh well, we’re committed now.
We stayed at the Adobe resort in Yachats. We ate dinner in their dining room, which sits on a low cliff just a few yards from where the waves are crashing against the nearest rocks. Lots of big windows give a panoramic view of the ocean, up and down the coast. Will those few yards of rock and earth eventually wear away and the Adobe dining room fall into the sea? Maybe. But maybe not for a while. The food was very good, but expensive. We paid more for dinner than for our room.
Tuesday, April 11
Woke up at 7:00 and it was pouring down rain. By the time we got breakfast the sun was out. Huh? It stayed mostly sunny all day. So much for forecasts.
Our hike was in the Sutton Recreation Area, about 40 minutes south of Yachats, almost to Florence. To get there we drove south down Highway 101. For most of the way the highway runs very near the rugged coast and the views are spectacular. But then, about ten miles north of the town of Florence the highway drifts southeast away from the shore and runs inland. On the satellite image below, Highways 101 is the prominent blue line that goes up and down through the right half of the picture. Our hike began at the end of Sutton Beach Road, the smaller road that runs up closer to the beach.
The land between the beach and the highway consists of ancient sand dunes that have been mostly–but not entirely–colonized by what is now a forest ecosystem.
The size of some of the trees shows that plants have been growing out of these dunes for a long time.
The hiking trail was a four and a half mile loop. The first part of the trail passed through dense vegetation along the banks of Sutton Creek. Then, at about the two and a half mile mark, the trail crossed into the mostly empty Sutton Creek Campground. We found ourselves a table and had a leisurely lunch. On the return leg the trail moved up to higher ground and crossed a large sandy area where the plant kingdom has not got much of a foothold. At least not yet. We were lucky with the weather and the whole length of the route was soft underfoot. A lovely hike.
Wednesday, April 12
E had a HEPAJ meeting today. They had lunch at a restaurant that everyone calls the Australian meat pie place. That name annoys E and before she went she called them to see if they had anything in the way of pies that weren’t meat filled. As it turned out, they did, and E enjoyed a nice vegetable korma pie.
Meanwhile, M took his truck in to the Nissan dealer to deal with a recall. At issue was a possibly malfunctioning parking pawl. A parking pawl is what prevents an automatic transmission vehicle from moving when you put it in Park. If the pawl does not engage properly, the car can just roll, roll, roll away, gently down the street. In the photo below the pawl is engaged. The driveshaft cannot rotate and thus the car’s wheels are not able to turn. As soon as a car is shifted out of Park, the pawl is pulled back and the shaft is free to turn. The part in the lower right corner is called the hand. Although not many people know this, there is actually a person inside your automatic transmission who uses a finger to move the pawl in and out. The work is stressful and it is not surprising that occasionally an intervention is required.
Thursay, April 13
Tertulia today with J and R, who have just returned from a tour around the Rhône region of France. They had a few days in Lyon, just a week or two after we did. They too had some troubles with disruptions due to protests over the issue of raising the retirement age in France from 62 to 64. Harumph.
E had two classes today–Laughter Yoga and Better Bones. M had no classes at all.
Friday, April 14
E needs a new wallet and wants it to be exactly like the old one. So off she went down to Eugene Leatherworks and ordered herself one. She’ll get the same color, size, shape and features as the old one, with a few little upgrades. It’s promised by August. Here’s the old one and the planned materials for its replacement.
:
E returned from Eugene in time for a meeting of the Lemon Meringue Pie Society. They met at A’s house, with E, H, T and L in attendance. The pie was delicious and a good time was had by all.
But the events of the day were not over. In the late afternoon a package arrived. Here’s what it contained–the newest member of our household.
Saturday, April 15
Nice day–mid fifties and lightly overcast. Also, chocolate croissants for breakfast! Then a hike in the OSU forest to check on the wildflowers. There were lots of trilliums around, but many were turning pink and drooping. The height of their season has passed. The fawn lily blossoms, on the other hand, have not quite arrived. We’ll need to check next week.
What we noticed most today were the yellow violets.
Sunday, April 16
M went out trucking in the rain today, messing around in the Coast Range, where there isn’t any snow. The plan was to go west on Hwy 20 to Burnt Woods, then south to Harlan, then farther south across the mountains to connect with the Falls Creek road and finally come out on Hwy 34 near the fish hatchery sign. It didn’t work out though. M came out onto 34 okay, but had drifted too far east to even come close to Falls Creek. Must try again sometime.
Harlan is more of a crossroads than a town, but the area is very pretty.
M’s route is up out of the valley into the mountains. The road goes on and on through a whole bunch of trees, which is somewhat monotonous. Also rainy.
Clear cuts make for a change of scenery.
And very occasionally, there’s a lake. M found this one high up in the middle of nowhere. Strange looking stubs in the water. Anyone know why are they’re shaped that way?
For our last few days in Spain we stayed with Lesley and Marciano at their house in Rivas. Lúa, Ke, and Buddy reside at the same address.
Lesley invited some of E’s old friends to lunch today, giving us a chance to see them one more time before we leave. The temperature was around 70, nice enough for a dinner outside. Lesley outdid herself with a multi-course banquet: fondue in a bread bowl, mushroom soup, Chinese vegetable salad, followed by the choice of salmon or cod in hollandaise. Then came two awesome desserts: brownies with a thick coconut topping–contributed by Margo–and Lesley’s fresh fruit pieces in port wine sauce over blueberry ice cream. Wow.
It was a shame that we only had half an hour to rush through this meal; we really should’ve planned better…Nah. Just kidding. We gave this meal the time it deserved–more than three hours.
Wondering about all those initials? Left to right: Paco, Margo, Marga, Lesley, Marciano and E. Photo by M.
Sunday March 26
We went to downtown Madrid today for some last minute details, including half a kilo of magical powder:
Monday March 27
Another nice day. We went for a walk through an old olive grove, and later on we grilled some halloumi cheese to help with the midday meal. Also, of course, we packed up the suitcases. We are really tired of packing.
Tuesday March 28
Marciano and Lesley got up early and got us to the airport by 4:00 AM so we could catch our 6:00 AM flight. Heroes both of them! By 8:30 we were in Amsterdam and by 10:30 we were on our way to Portland. The bad news was that our plane’s in-flight entertainment and wi-fi were both down. You can imagine the groans that greeted that announcement. In other areas the Delta/KLM service was wonderful, including the main meal, which was very tasty and healthy too.
We finally got back to our little house at around 4:00 PM, 21 hours door to door.
Wednesday March 29
When we arrived yesterday, Oregon seemed cold and damp; but the sun came out today, long enough to dry out the long grass in the back yard. M took the opportunity to break out the mower and go on the attack. Inside the house, both of us got back onto our computers as soon as we could. Besides being really tired of suitcases, we were super tired of small screens.
E took a walk and was happy to come across a new friend from the animal kingdom.
Thursday March 30
Cloudy today, but not raining. In the morning we worked on our taxes. In the afternoon we did some weeding and cleaning up outside. Jet lag is making us feel sluggish. We woke up at 3:00 AM wondering if it was time for breakfast.
Today marks the 4th wedding anniversary for the ANDEES. E sent them a gift of flowers, since an internet source said that flowers or fruit were the appropriate gift to signify the deeper blossoming and ripening of the relationship.
Friday March 31
Progress on the jet lag front: this morning we didn’t wake up till 4:00 AM. In the afternoon we took a forest walk and saw lots of Trillium and a few tiny yellow violets. Also we saw that the Indian plum is leafing out. It’s always the first. When we got home, we took a closer look at our two Indian plums, and sure enough, they have new leaves too–and blossoms.
We are reminded once again that spring starts early here but then seems to proceed very slowly. Besides the not very showy Indian plum blossoms, we have a few nice hyacinths and some long rows of daffodils, but these all look a little forlorn since so much else is just barely getting started and there’s a lot of brown around. It doesn’t help that the weather has turned dark and rainy and is predicted to stay that way for the next week or so. Of course there are buds everywhere and new red leaves have appeared on the roses. If we look closely we can see that the flowering currant is on the verge of flowering and that the forsythias are about to turn yellow.
Saturday April 1
It’s nice to be home of course. It’s comfortable and there’s an easing of tension. Certainly there is tension involved in traveling, especially when you’re older. But we kind of got used to it and now we miss it–at least a little. Today we were trying to figure out something about our finances and had to go over our credit card transactions for the last couple of months. It was so exciting to see all the transactions from the trip. Look, there’s the Senator Hotel. Remember that? And what was the Hungry Grill? Must have been in an airport. What was the 62 dollars at Puerta del Sol? Was it the purse? Remember the purse quest? Etc.
Our Visa cards are issued by our credit union. We used them a lot, but we were always a little nervous because they didn’t always work. E ended up calling the credit union twice to try and get them working again. This helped some but did not solve the problem completely. On our unexpected descent into the Lyon subway system, for example, we found that the ticket machines didn’t like our cards. The machines took cash, so it wasn’t a serious problem, but it was disconcerting. Has anyone else experienced such issues with credit cards in Europe?
One thing that worked well was Apple Pay/Apple Card. It was especially handy when used in combination with the Trainline app on the iPhone. Trainline makes it easy to arrange train travel in Europe. You just enter where you’re traveling from, where you want to go, and the date you want to travel. You then push a button and it gives you all the different train types along with all the possible departure and arrival times and all the prices. You choose what you want and then pay for the tickets by choosing Apple Pay and pressing one button on the phone. Then you’re done. Trainline sends you an e-ticket that you can show to the conductor when the time comes.
Of course Trainline is not that easy the first time you use it, because at that point you have to input all your basic information: name, address, email, age, passport number for everyone you are buying a ticket for. You can also enter any discounts you may qualify for. In our case, we got a Dorada (golden) card from the Spanish rail system, which provided a 40% senior discount on long distance tickets. Other EU countries honor the Spanish discount and Trainline remembers it all. Using Trainline costs $5.00 per ticket, but it’s worth it. (It should be noted that Trainline is not idiot proof, as M demonstrated on our trip to Granada, but we won’t go into that.)
Sunday April 2
Damp, gray, calm. There’s a bit more yellow on the forsythias.
We took the train south to Córdoba today. Our train was an Avant, which are high speed trains that make more stops than the intercity expresses. But even with a few stops, the 190 miles to Córdoba went by in less than two hours. So comfortable, so much leg room, and so much elbow room—just three seats across: two seats, a wide aisle, then one more seat on the other side.
The Romans founded Córdoba sometime around the year 150 BC. The oldest part of town is on the north bank of the Guadalquiver River and eventually, in around 75 BC, the Romans got around to building a bridge to the south bank. Eight centuries later, the bridge remained but the Romans had gone and the Muslim Umayyads ruled southern Spain. Somewhere around the year 750 the Umayyads did a major renovation of the bridge. After that, the bridge remained in continuous use until the middle of the 20th Century. Until 1940, it was the only bridge in town. These days it’s still in use, but it’s pedestrian only.
The building in the background above is the Great Mosque of Córdoba. But, you may object, if it’s a mosque, what’s that Christian-looking bell tower and cross and stuff.? Well, that’s because since 1356 the place has had a new owner. Like many new owners, they’ve been doing some remodeling. And they’ve turned it into a cathedral.
It’s still very mosquelike inside, light and airy like most mosques, even though it was built 1200 years ago.
It’s a huge space. The building is a rectangle a block long and most of a block wide. Presumably all the interior walls at one time looked like this….
…or this.
Only a few of these original Umayyad style interior panels still exist. Dozens of others have been replaced by elaborate Christian-type niches. There’s also a huge organ, an elaborately carved wooden choir box and a beautiful basilica.
The lower part of the basilica
Much of the Christian stuff is beautiful in its way, but the overall effect is as if someone planted groups of showy exotic flowers at random places in a tranquil natural landscape. But never mind, much of the original effect is still there, especially in the Patio of the Orange Trees shown below.
In the afternoon we took a tour of the city. Here’s our tour bus. It was called a tuk-tuk, but being electric, it didn’t do a lot of tukking.
One stop on the tour was the 13th Centrury Santa Marina church, which was built soon after the Muslims were forced out of the city by King Ferdinand III. The site previously was occupied by a mosque.
Tuesday March 7
Responding to a reader request, we also visited the old Córdoba Synagogue. It was a ten minute walk from our hotel through a maze of medieval era streets.
The upper floor is the women’s section..
Here’s the menorah…
…and here is an inscription just above it.
The inscription reads: “Provisional sanctuary and abode for the Testimony completed by Yishaq Moheb, son of Mr. Efraím Wadawa, in the year of seventy-five. So return, Oh God hasten to return to Jerusalem!”
On the way back from the synagogue E stopped to talk with Maimonides, the great 12th Century philosopher, scholar and physician. Maimonides was born in Córdoba, but alas, he was born a hundred years too soon to have worshipped in the synagogue we had just seen.
Amazingly, while E was there the Maimonides statue actually bent down and spoke to her! M quickly snapped a photo but found later that it had disappeared from his phone! E has not revealed what it was that Maimonides said.
After visiting the synagogue and doing a little shopping in the morning, we got back onto a train in the early afternoon. Before long we were in Granada and safely into the Hotel Grisol de Guadalupe, up on a hill, just across the road from the Alhambra. That evening we took a walk down the hill for a ways and got this view of the oldest part of the city.
Wednesday March 8
Granada is a city of about 225,000 people and, to be honest, most of it doesn’t look at all like the old part shown in the last photo. Granada is home to a number of universities and, of course, to one of the most popular tourist attractions in Europe. One of our taxi drivers said that education and tourism are the only two things that keep the city alive. He claimed that the Alhambra gets an average of 8,000 visitors per day.
The Alhambra is a large complex of palaces and gardens on a hill overlooking the city. It consists of three main areas. The Alcazaba is a fortress dating from the 11th Century. The Nasrid palaces were built later and were home to the rulers of Muslim Spain for about 300 years. The Generalife is a garden complex on a hill above the palaces. The Nasrid palaces are the star attraction and access is by appointment only. Our appointed time was 2:00 PM, so we went into the complex at a little after 12:00 and went to the Generalife first.
One of the nice things about these Muslim era gardens is how much water there is: in pools, in fountains, and best of all, flowing in small stone runnels along one’s path or across the courtyards.
A view from the Generalife down into other parts of the complex.
Here are a few photos from inside the Nasrid palace. They hardly do it justice.
Thursday March 9
We managed to get back to Madrid today, despite an unexpected two hour layover at a new high speed rail station in the middle of nowhere.
Was it lunchtime? Yes. Was there a cafe at the station? No, there was a vending machine. Did the cellophane wrapped sandwiches all have a little blurb that said Improved Recipe? Yes! What exactly had the recipe been improved from? Very hard to say. And who, you might ask, is to blame for this scheduling catastrophe? Well, you might ask, but we might not say…
Sunday. March 12
Nice spring weather these days with highs of around 70. We are pausing to rest up and plan our next phase. It’s almost time to say goodbye to our little apartment. We’re visiting some of our local shops for the last time. While M was busy working on the blog, E took an excursion to visit her former neighborhood downtown. She walked through the Retiro Park and found that Avenida Menéndez Pelayo #37 was still intact. Roberto’s family owned three apartments in the building. E lived on the second floor in the back. E remembers that most buildings in Madrid were dingy looking back in the day. Pollution levels are much lower now and everything seems spiffier.
Later, as she returned to her current Madrid neighborhood and emerged from the dark caverns of the metro, she was greeted by this sure sign of spring.
Today it seemed as though we had travelled back through time. Were we looking at the prehistoric cave paintings at Altamira? No, no, not that far back. Did we visit the castle where Columbus made his pitch to Isabella and Ferdinand? No, not that either. We traveled back to a time that for many of us is within living memory. We visited a travel agency.
And you know what? It was really busy. There were six agents working and several more customers waiting for a turn. When you walked in, you had to take a number. Our number was R74. After a minute or two, we noticed that there was a big board that showed which numbers were being currently served. Oh good, now maybe we could get some idea of how long we might have to wait. Or could we? The number that had just been called was K42. Hmm. The next customers called had number M60. Hmm. But wait, those particular people had come in right before we had! Our spirits rose. We had to be getting close. But when the next number was called, it was J03. Our spirits fell. But, as it happened, J03 was a no show. And the next number was ours.
Our agent was Alejandra, a young Spanish-Venezuelan woman whose family lives in Florida. She was great, although her computer system was really slow. But it was good enough so that we could make all the basic arrangements for our late March travels to France, Switzerland and Germany. Good!
By the way, if you’re thinking that most of the customers in the travel agency were older people…you’d be right.
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Today we took the train north and had another nice day with M and M. First we did a walk along the river and then had a nice meal at their place. M made merluza (hake) and it was delicious. (We don’t get hake in Corvallis, which is a shame.) M’s merluza recipe involves a sauce which consists of tomato sauce, sweet red pepper and mayonnaise. We could have just dipped fresh bread into the sauce and even without the fish we would have eaten pretty darn well.
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Today we made a visit to the Gran Cafe de Gijón. It’s a Madrid landmark and as one writer puts it, es uno de los Cafés más prestigiosos del mundo. It was established in 1888 by a man named Gumersindo Garcia. He was from the northern coast of Spain and he named his new cafe after his hometown of Gijón. Over the years it developed a reputation as a literary and cultural gathering place and was frequented by several generations of celebrated Spanish writers and artists. In her day, Mata Hari came to the Cafe Gijón, as did Hemingway during his time in Spain. But we did not visit the cafe to imbibe the exalted literary atmosphere. No. We visited because of another, even more important figure who was also connected with the Cafe Gijón. In the early seventies E herself taught classes in a building two doors down. Every day, at around 11:00, she would take her coffee break in the nearest cafe. She doesn’t remember meeting any geniuses there, but she does remember the pastries. They were good.
In the early 2020’s E went back to the Gijón. Here she is at lunchtime with her wine and bread, waiting for her primer plato.
E recognized the Gijón interior right away. After a bit M noticed that the Gijón still had a cigarette vending machine. When he pointed it out, E said, “Oh, that’s what’s really different, this room used to be full of smoke.”
The announcement says that the management is not responsible for any malfunction of the machine and gives you a number you can call if you have an complaint. No mention of possible lung malfunction.
When M zoomed way in on this picture, he could make out the names of the cigarette brands currently on offer. As a former smoker he found them interesting. He saw Fortuna, a brand that he smoked when he lived in Barcelona, and a few unfamiliar brands such as Nobel and West. But the great majority were old American brands: Lucky Strikes, Marlboro, Chesterfield, L&M, Winston, and Camel. Chesterfield? Seriously? Back in the day, Chesterfields were the original coffin nails—long, fat and unfiltered.
Thursday, February 23
We got up really early today, had a quick bite for breakfast, then got a taxi to the train station at 6:15. E’s friend, another of the M’s, was taking us on a day trip to see the city of Leon, which is in the northwest of Spain. Leon is three hours from Madrid by car, but just two hours by high speed train. In our case, the train got us to the outskirts of Leon real fast, but then came to a halt. There were some issues to resolve before we could actually get into the station, 45 minutes worth.
Eventually we got off the train and began walking into the center of town. It turns out that Leon is a really lovely city. It was quite cold, so once we got to the center we were happy to drop into a cafe for cafe con leche and some little do-nuts called buñuelos. Then we were off to see the Leon Cathedral—which is awesome.
Another place we visited was the Casa Botines, which was designed and built by Antonio Gaudi between 1891 and 1894. Gaudi is most famous for the design of the Sagrada Familia and other buildings in Barcelona. Casa Botines is one of only three of his creations that were built outside his home region. Now a museum, it was originally designed as a mixed use building. The ground floor housed the family’s textile business while the Botines family lived on the top four floors.
Work downstairs, live upstairs. Just your basic mom and pop operation.
A little after 1:00 we stopped for lunch at a cafe/restaurant where a member of M’s family worked as a cook in times gone by. The dining room didn’t open till 1:30; we had a glass of wine while we waited. The barman also helped us warm up with some little cups of hot fish broth on the house.
We also had a tour of the Basilica of San Isidoro, a religious building whose history dates back to the early tenth century when a Christian church was built over the ruins an ancient Roman temple to the god Mercury. That church was destroyed in the middle of the tenth century by invading Arabs. A new Christian church was built just a few decades later at the beginning of the 11th century. Parts of this church still exist and our tour guide helped us to see the difference between those oldest parts and the many later additions.
In the book room of the basilica we saw hundreds of medieval era books, the oldest dating back to the 7th century. Another room, called the Pantheon of Kings, shows wall art from the 12th century. And, yes, the Holy Grail is also here, the very cup that Jesus drank from at the last supper, more than two thousand years ago. Wow. But how do they know for sure that this is the one? And aren’t there also more than a hundred other places in Europe that claim to have the Holy Grail? Well, yes. But hey, maybe more than one cup was used during that meal. Anyway, the one here is technically known as the Chalice of Doña Urraca. It has definitely been in Leon for a thousand years; but during the thousand years before that, the story is a little sketchy.
Here’s what we saw, but this photo is from the internet. No photography was allowed in the museum parts of the Basilica.
We stopped briefly in another religious museum so that M could say hello to an artifact from her personal history: the old wooden confessional from the parish church of her childhood.
After the museums, we spent some time having hot chocolate and churros at the Parador, the Hostal San Marcos. Then we walked back to the train station and caught another fast train home. It was late by then, so there we were rolling along at 150 miles an hour through the darkness, letting someone else drive, wearing no seatbelts, and facing backwards.
Friday, February 24
Fresh raspberries for breakfast today. From Morocco. Awesome. And then a nice restful day. Some grocery shopping in the morning. Later E went to the papelería and got us an actual paper map of Madrid. She’s busy working back and forth between what she sees now and the host of places and memories that rise up out of the past.
Saturday, February 25
Two days in a row with nothing major on the schedule. Nice. We did take a walk down to the nearest plaza to get a few essentials: pastry treats for our traditional Sunday breakfast and a bottle of champagne for some occasion TBA. It was about 1:00 PM on a cold, sunny day and it seemed like everybody was out and about. Despite the temperature, the cafes had all their outdoor tables out and just about all of them were full. Twelve o’clock to 1:00ish is the time for the aperitivo, a pre-dinner drink usually served with a little snack. We found a table outside a place called Bar 29 and ordered two small beers. They came with a complementary dish of green olives. By around 1:30 the tables started emptying out as people returned home to get ready for their midday meal. We headed home for the same reason.
There weren’t many children having aperitivo al fresco, but we did see a couple of little boys at a table near us. Mom was not there. E speculates that some time earlier Mom had said to Dad, “You know, maybe, while I’m getting this big dinner ready, you could get the boys out of here for a while.”
Sunday, February 26
Today, we went to a birthday celebration at M and M’s place up north. There were two birthday honorees: M and M’s daughter E and our very own E. Dinner featured two rice dishes: a yellow one called arroz a banda and another that they call black rice. Here’s a photo of the latter.
This has shrimp and squid and gets it color from squid ink.
After dinner there were cupcakes made by L and C, with help from their grandma, and also grandma’s wonderful pineapple upside down cake. There was candle lighting and Happy Birthday singing—in English.
Here are a couple of the cupcake makers at their own table.
7:30: Breakfast and final packing. 8:30: Metro to Chamartin Station. 9:00-9:45: Locate car rental place, sign out VW Golf, find our way back to our neighborhood, find parking place. Whew! 10:00: Have small second breakfast. 10:20: Wheel luggage down the block to parking place, depart for the Basque Country, M driving, Siri giving directions, E reminding M to stop at stoplights. 10:38: Notice that we are finally out of Madrid and on the freeway north. Whew!
By 1:00 PM we were more than half way to our destination, but our energy was flagging. We decided to stop in the next little town, which happened to be Lerma. Couldn’t find a parking place at first, had to go down a side street.
We went to small cafe and had coffee and bizcocho, a kind of pound cake. They said it was de la casa and it was good. We also went into a little supermarket, where E found some face cream that she’d been looking for.
After our coffee break we found our orange Golf right where we’d left it. And then it was adios Lerma.
Fifty miles later we stopped for gas near the town of Mondragón. By this time we were officially in the Basque country, much of which seems to be quite mountainous. We didn’t go over or around any mountains, though, we went straight through them. We’ve never seen so many tunnels, at least a dozen.
Here’s a view of Mondragón. Filling up with gasolina cost us 60 euros, about 64 dollars.
It’s close to 3:00 by the time we reach our destination, the town of Hondarribia in the extreme northeast corner of Spain, just a few miles from the French border. The border makes a political separation between the French and Spanish parts of the Basque Country; as far as language and culture are concerned, the two parts are much the same.
Our hotel is the Parador Hondarribia, which has been created within the walls of a castle fortress whose history goes back to the 12th Century. The castle was built at the top of a hill overlooking the harbor. We could see two or three (hundred) sailboats moored just across from us.
Tuesday, February 14
Early in the morning we woke up and looked out the east facing window of our room. Some lights were still on in the town, but things were definitely happening in the east. And speaking of things to the east of us, we’re pretty sure that mountain is in France.
The castle walls are pretty thick, close to three feet, so the windows in our room look like this:
We spent the morning exploring the area around the castle, which seems to be the oldest part of the city.
In the afternoon, we got back in the Golf and drove to San Sebastián, a much larger Basque city just twenty miles away. En route we took a small detour up to the top of another hill to see the Fuerte Guadalupe, an early 20th Century fortress. It turned out to be pretty strange looking. It appears to have been mostly underground and is now long abandoned, so it just looks like a bunch of grassy mounds.
But you can see what appear to be artillery firing ports…….and what seems like it was the main entrance.
We found that downtown San Sebastián is lovely, but a challenge to drive around in if you’re a stranger. As recommended by our friend M, we had coffee at the Hotel Maria Cristina, a lovely palace-like building in the central area of the city. The coffees were five euros apiece, but the setting was pretty nice.
Wednesday, February 15
Breakfast is served in shifts here at the Parador, sort of like on the train. Our scheduled time was 8:15. Did we make it on time? You bet we did. And what a breakfast—fruits, fresh juice, cheeses, baked goods and cold cuts of all descriptions, eggs or omelets if you want them. It was a challenge, but we did our best.
So that was one major goal accomplished. Next we had to get ready to check out and move on to the next segment of our journey. Since the next leg was only 70 or 80 miles, it promised to be a pretty easy day. We had time to take a few photos of the hotel before we left.
One wall of the breakfast room had lots of big windows. This was the view into the castle courtyard..That’s the main entrance to the hotel there in the middle. On the morning we left, there were a bunch of kids in the plaza on a field trip.That’s the coffee shop….….and this was taken in the old stairway to the upper floors. The canon, presumably, is to keep the riffraff out.
We left Hondarribia around 11:00 and headed southwest toward a different part of the Basque Country. On the way, we took a side trip to what the map said was a nature park. It turned out to be way up high in the mountains, and the narrow road up to it had some of the sharpest hairpin curves that we could remember. There was snow up there, but fortunately not too much.
The nature park was way up high……and kind of wild.
We didn’t stay long, though it would have been a really nice place to hike had we been prepared for it. But we were trying to take it easy, so we made our way down the mountain and back onto the main road. By 2:00, we were checking into our next hotel, the Parador Argomaniz, which is in the southern part of the Basque Country near the city of Vitoria-Gastiez.
Thursday, February 16
Clearly, we’ve come out of the mountains and away from the ocean. The weather here is cooler than on the coast, but still lovely—in a late winter/early spring kind of way.
After breakfast, we set off on another ridiculously complicated project, a visit to Bilbao. Bilbao is the capital of the Basque Country and by all accounts it is a city worth seeing. And since it is only about an hour’s drive north of Vitoria, we thought we’d run up there to see the Guggenheim and maybe have some lunch. Easy as pie.
(But what exactly does that expression mean? Easy as eating a pie? Easy as making a pie? Easy as picking the berries to make the pie? Easy as planting some wheat and harvesting the grain to grind some flour to make the crust? We’re not sure.)
Anyway, we made it into the center of Bilbao, the famous and very beautiful Plaza de Euskadi, and found ourselves a parking place not too many levels underground. Back above ground, we went into the Museo de Bellas Artes. Entrance was free and the art was arranged so that in each exhibition room there was a mixture of old art and new. We found several things of both sorts that we liked. Then we went down the street to the see the Guggenheim—Frank Gehry’s mishmash architectural masterpiece.
What a building.
The featured artist was Joan Miro. That seemed worth a look, so we paid our seven euros each and went inside.
The lobby was largish, maybe a bit too large.They had plenty of beautiful Miros. We especially liked this one, called The Hare….….and this one called Soirée snob chez la princesse. (Snob party at the princess’s)
Eventually, enough was enough. We went out through the gift shop—where M bought a Kandinsky mousepad and E got some socks—and then went to a cafe for a snack. It was warm in Bilbao, perfect weather for sitting outside, especially if you were wearing sun block, which of course M was not…
Next we located our car, extricated it from the underworld, and made the drive back to Argomaniz. We ended the day with dinner in the hotel cafe and a walk around the grounds to look at the stars.
Friday, February 17
Today was travel day and also use the car while you can day. We left Argomaniz around 10:00 and got back to Madrid at 2:00. At that point, instead of going straight to our apartment, we stopped at a shopping center called Gran Vía. There we ate lunch. One floor of the mall was a little bit like a food court, so E went to Rodilla and got a tuna salad that came with a crustless sandwich and M went to Bosforos and got a chicken kebab plate. Then we met up and shared a table. It was pretty nice.
Then we did our grocery shopping in the big supermarket, trying to focus on heavy items that are harder to carry on our walks to and from our local market. It seemed like it would be a lot easier to just load everything into the car. Of course when we got home, we still had the major job of hauling both food and luggage from parking place to apartment. (We will spare you the details of how all that works. Suffice to say that the process involves four different keys.) Once we had everything inside, we breathed a sigh of relief and sat down for a short break. Then it was time to go out again and return the rental car at the train station. That done, we took the Metro home.
So there we were sitting on our couch with lots of food on hand but both too tired to make dinner. But actually that didn’t matter. After a Parador breakfast and a mall lunch, neither of us was too hungry. So we sat down in our dining nook with wine, a banana, peanuts, and a cookie or two. We then watched an old James Garner movie on TV. It was in Spanish and—for those who might have trouble understanding spoken Spanish—it also had Spanish subtitles. It was fine.
Saturday, February 18, 2023
A quiet day today, but we did make a nice discovery in our local shopping area. We went into the Herbolaria—a small place packed full of organic, eco-friendly items, mostly personal care things. E was delighted to find a couple of things that she was running out of. From there we went to the paper store because E was looking for ribbon to wrap some gifts. It turns out they didn’t carry ribbon, but they offered to just give us some from their own roll that they kept at the counter. E happily accepted about 12 inches. We didn’t think of paying anything. Should we have? Too late now.
Back at home we decided to try and adapt to local rhythms by having a fairly big lunch around 2:00 and planning only a light supper later. E made a green salad dressed with some of our newly purchased vinegar and olive oil. M heated up some Barilla bottled spaghetti sauce and boiled some fresh spinach and cheese ravioli. We also had bread and wine plus a small flan for dessert. In other domestic news, we did laundry, which involves throwing stuff into the washing machine located in a little unheated room off the kitchen, and then setting up the drying rack next to the radiator in the living room.
Sunday, February 19, 2023
Today we had dinner with the C family at Taberna de la Daniella, a restaurant that specializes in something called Cocido Madrileño. MC is a Spanish friend of E’s from the days when they both lived in Chicago. When MC had a baby, who is now a distinguished architect, E became a godmother. She’s been a rather distant godmother over the years, but they’ve always kept in touch. Today we got to see the godson as well as the many of the rest of MC’s extended family, including the youngest generation. It was wonderful for us to get to meet them all. E, playing Santa, had brought enough gifts for everybody.
We’ve had Cocido Madrileño twice now, so maybe we know enough to describe it. First comes a soup course, thin little noodles in a yellowish broth that looks like chicken broth but tastes much more complicated. Then comes a plate of chickpeas served with boiled potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. After that, they bring out a giant platter full of all sorts of meatish things including chicken, ham, sausage, beef, tocino, morcilla and whatever else they have on hand. (Tocino is a kind of salt pork—pretty much all fat—and morcilla is a kind of blood sausage made with rice.) E, of course, skipped all the meat, except for the morcilla, which she has always loved. M liked it too, though he hadn’t expected to.
When we got home, M took a nap while E went out for a stroll in the beautiful weather. She found a sidewalk cafe and ordered an orange soda. Oops! She had forgotten that beverages often come accompanied by a free tidbit of food. This time it was a very small open faced sandwich of Serrano ham. E was still full from lunch and doesn’t usually eat ham, but she couldn’t let it go to waste. It was very good.
A bright, sunny day. After a long stretch of clouds and fog, suddenly the world is full of light. But we’re busy packing. Our trip starts on Monday and we want to be ready! We’ve been packing for days, which seems ridiculous. Making a list of things to take is not too hard; narrowing it down to what will actually fit in a suitcase is a little harder.
Monday January 30, 2023
Still packing. It’s hard to pack for two months. And it’s not just our clothes and things. There are also all those presents that we need to take. In fact, each day that passes, E finds that she needs one or two more presents. Finally we just give up and leave, whether we have packed correctly or not.
We’re heading up to Portland in a rental car, which turns out to be a Prius with adaptive cruise control, which we have never tried before. M is happy. Once settled in Portland, we have a nice dinner at ParkStone and then go back to the Comfort Inn and set our alarms for 4:00 AM.
Tuesday January 31, 2023
Off we go into the sky, headed for JFK. We’re on Delta again, flying Comfort+ class, which just means more leg room. That’s fine. Our layover in New York is three hours. We depart just as darkness falls. Delta gives us dinner. Not too bad. One dinner option is chicken and one is vegetarian pasta. In the old days, E would have to make a special request for a vegetarian meal and then might or might not have gotten it. We don’t miss that.
Boarding at JFK was interesting. There were two lines. In one line people had to show a boarding pass for scanning, either a paper one or one on their phone. But in the other line, which we happened to be in, you just showed your face to a scanner and the agent waved you on. Yo! We might have known that it would come to that. But it’s here already?
The flight to Madrid took six and a half hours. M usually can’t sleep on planes, but this time, thanks to chemistry and a kindly supplier, he slept for half the flight.
Wednesday February 1, 2023
It’s just after 8:00 in the morning and we’re sitting surrounded by our luggage in an airport restaurant breakfasting on cafe cortado and croissants. We’ve landed, shown our passports, and collected our bags. But one thing remains, a formality related to our phones. We must face the dreaded activation of the E-sim. We purchased and installed these a few days ago. M has signed up for a cellular data plan. He won’t be able to make European phone calls, but he’ll have internet. E will have cellular data plus a European phone number, so she can call actual people and talk to them. But not unless we can successfully activate, which can’t be done until you’re in country. A tense moment. Will they work? After a bit of fumbling around…yes!
E then made direct contact with our AirBnb host to set up our arrival time. She also called her friend M who tells us not to take the airport train, but to take the airport Metro line (subway) instead. The Metro took us most of the way to our little apartment. A taxi took us the rest of the way. Soon we were installed and mostly unpacked. Whew.
That was the end of the easy part.
Thursday February 2, 2023
So our apartment turns out to be in a somewhat weird spot, not weird in a bad way, just a bit different from anywhere we’ve lived before. The immediate area consists mostly of apartment buildings, seven or eight stories high. There is lots of open space, however. The buildings are often arranged around large courtyards with mature trees, most of those now leafless. Our place, for example, is near a fairly busy street, but we are never aware of it because our apartment looks down into the courtyard rather than outward to the larger world.
Looking down from our living room window.
Our particular place is on the fourth floor and has three rooms: kitchen, living room, and bedroom. All the rooms are small, but the kitchen is fully functional with oven, cooktop and fridge; the bedroom has a nice large closet; and the living room has…a really tired couch and some interesting artwork. Here’s what our building looks like from the outside. Our place is in the middle of the photo. That air conditioner type thing is just under our living room window. The window to the right, on the rounded part of the building is our kitchen and breakfast nook. The window on the left is the bedroom.
Although most of our view is down into the courtyard, we can also get a glimpse of the outer world. Here’s what that looked like at dawn this morning.
Friday February 3, 2023
Today we went with E’s old friends M and L on a drive up to Salamanca, where their daughter T lives. T is a cloistered nun who is currently serving as the leader of a group of Clarisan Sisters. Her monasterio is located in a small village out on the Salamanca plain. To get there we drove on the autopista for a little over an hour and then turned off into a mostly flat agricultural area with broad fields punctuated occasionally by villages and small towns. Eventually we came to T’s village and found our way to the monastery, a long, two-story, beige-colored building with a mostly blank facade. We parked near the main entrance, which was a heavy door of darkened wood. We pushed a button and after a bit someone buzzed us in. We entered into a wide, high-ceilinged hallway, somewhat dimly lit, which ended in another heavy wood door. On the right hand wall of the hallway, there was a built-in display case showing examples of the various baked goods produced by the order. On the left side there was an open doorway that led to the visiting area. This was a plain but cheerful room with an orange tile floor.
It was really fascinating for us, first just to have a chance to see the setting, and then to see how such a visit took place. E and M sat in the two chairs facing the window, while T’s father sat on the left side of the table and her mother the right. After a few moments T came and pulled back the curtain on her side, which revealed a similar sized room on that side of the dividing wall. T greeted us all and sat facing us through bars. Parents and child all seemed really happy to see each other and we also felt welcome. We sat and talked for a long time. The whole visit lasted several hours and included a nice midday meal served at our table. This included tomato rice soup, lettuce salad with flakes of tuna and olives, baked fish with a layer of mashed potatoes and cheese on top, menestra de verduras (mixed vegetables in a thick sauce,) a fruit selection, and, finally, tiramisu with a selection of cookies from their bakery. After the meal we were joined by about twenty other sisters who sat in rows of chairs in the room behind Teresa. So we had a chance to chat with them as well. We talked about all sorts of things. It was quite an experience. On our way out we decided to buy some cookies, both because we wanted to show our appreciation for feeding us and because the cookies that we had sampled at lunch were so delicious.
We may have gotten carried away. In our defense, two of these items were gifts that we did not expect.
Saturday February 4, 2023
We took an early walk this morning and picked up some pan rústica for breakfast along with a few other items we’ve been missing. A mouse tried to get at the bread. And it turns out that it was a mouse that E herself had brought back from the monastery! The things that M has to put up with.
We tried to get a big red pepper, but we had to settle for this little tiny one.
Later in the day we went to visit some more old friends, who had invited us for dinner. P and M live in a town north of Madrid. We went by Metro and train to Las Matas station where P picked us up and took us to their lovely house in the hills. What a nice time. We talked a lot and ate too much.
Sunday February 5, 2023
Today we saw M and L again and had a meal at their house in a suburb to the south of Madrid. It’s not easy dealing with all this public transport, but for the second day in a row we managed to get where were going without getting lost or even being late. Good for us.
M and L—along with Buddy, Ke, and Jaeger—invited us for a dog walk into the nearby hills that overlook the Jarama river valley. The area was the site of a great deal of fighting during the Spanish Civil War, when a Francoist army came up from the south as part of a campaign to capture Madrid from Republican Loyalist forces that included International Brigade volunteers. During the fighting the hills were stripped of vegetation, but since then they have been reforested with Mediterranean pines. The area is now a reserve heavily used by cyclists and dog owners.
Part of the Jarama valley. The river is in the far background. The ponds in the foreground are old gravel quarries now flooded.Recent housing developments extend right to the border of the reserve.
After our walk we had appetizers and drinks by the pool. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, L served us up a lavish dinner of Cocido Madrileño, a traditional sort of stew with garbanzos flavored with salt pork and various meats and vegetables. L made a special effort to prepare this so that M could try it for the first time. E had eaten it years ago, but it was a much simpler version.
Monday February 6, 2023
We went the Corte Ingles department store in the Nuevos Ministerios neighborhood. We did a little shopping and then went up to the top floor cafeteria for a midday snack, just as E was wont to do back in the seventies, when she was a Madrileña. We were happy to see that despite the march of time and change, it was still a nice place to be.
Back at home we did some household chores: vacuumed, did laundry, cooked our own dinner. Wow. And then, having purchased a mat at Corte Ingles, E joined her Zoom Yoga class. 10:30 PM here, 1:30 PM back in Corvallis. It’s odd how seamless everything can be if you have a good internet connection. Stream Netflix? Sure. YouTube? Apple+? Banking? All pretty much the same. A little strange.
We have a slow leak in the left front tire of the Mazda. We took it to the tire shop, but they couldn’t find anything. That was weeks ago. So it’s still leaking and we keep on filling it back up. At least we have one of those new-fangled inflators right in our own garage. Not that we’re going to be driving much. We’re off to Cancun tomorrow, traveling by Uber, airport shuttle and Delta.
Friday, January 13, 2023
Our flight was at 7:00 PM, so we dutifully checked in at the Portland Airport around 5:00. The security check was our first opportunity to try out our newly purchased TSAPre status. Which did not work. We were rejected from the line of privilege despite what it said on our boarding passes. Plus M was selected for a random check even after he got through. Sigh. Is this what we get for traveling on Friday the 13th? But after that everything went well. We flew to LAX, then got onto the long flight to Cancun. M couldn’t sleep during the flight and ended up watching Triangle of Sadness, the Palme d’Or winning movie about a group of super rich folks on a luxury cruise. Was that a good thing to see while on one’s way to a full-service tropical resort? Maybe. Maybe not.
Saturday, January 14, 2023
We arrived in Cancun early in the morning. It took a little while, but eventually a hotel shuttle arrived and soon we found ourselves in a lovely room in the Solaris Grand Caribe.
The Caribe wing of the Solaris has space for 200 guests. The Royal wing beside it holds 300 and has much less interesting architecture.
The hotel strip in Cancun extends along 14 miles of a sand dune peninsula shaped like the number seven.
The blue colors on the right side are the Caribbean; the greens to the left are wetlands and lagoons that separate the hotel strip from the mainland. The hotels are all on the strip in the middle.
Here’s the view from the top of our hotel, which is located near the bottom of the seven. Cancun has strikingly beautiful colors.
Along with the Andees, our friends K and J had also come down. One of the nicest things about the trip was having a chance to visit with all of them.
Sunday, January 15, 2023
Wonderful day at the beach. Some areas of the beach were closed due to ocean conditions; others were open. Where we went the surf was just rough enough to be entertaining.
Monday, January 16, 2023
The Andees hired a car and took us all to Tulum, about an hour and a half away. Tulum is a Mayan city that was built around the year 900. The Mayans abandoned it soon after the Spaniards arrived in the 1500’s.
We had a wonderful guide, a Mayan himself, who had lots to tell us about Mayan history and culture. Along with much else, he taught us the Mayan number system and also told us a dramatic story about how the Mayan written language was deciphered. This last may be have been apocryphal.
Tuesday, January 16, 2023
We took a bus today up along the strip to a shopping area. We got some tee-shirts and some Mexican vanilla, the latter costing about the same price as it would in Corvallis, but never mind. Along the way we passed lots and lots of hotels. There were a few ugly square towers, but most of the architecture was impressive. And the sheer scale was awesome. There are more than 80 hotels along the 7-shaped strip, enough to accommodate many thousands of guests and to provide some thousands of jobs.
This was our first experience with an all-inclusive resort and it was pretty nice. It’s true that the free drinks weren’t very strong, but that’s actually a good thing because it means you can have many drinks with little ill effect. (And real drinks are also available, at the so-called Premium Bar.) The food was mostly good, which is to say, rarely great but very rarely bad. Day-long free food sounds dangerous; but when a buffet is free, there’s really less motivation to heap up your plate. There were also sit down dinner options, which were awesome because the portions were small! What a welcome change that was. Also, we never had to deal with a bill at the end of the meal. Very nice.
On our last evening there was a members only ‘gala dinner’ with live entertainment. Just before we went down to dinner, we took at last glance at the sunset.
Wednesday, January 17, 2023
Up at 4:30 to get an airport shuttle at 5:00. A long travel day, but all went well. All planes on time or early. Even our Portland to Corvallis shuttle found light traffic all the way.
Thursday, January 19, 2023
So now we’re home. The Mazda tire was way low again. We took it back to the tire shop and this time they fixed it. Okay! But wait, now we have to get Roto-Rooter to unplug the sewer lines. Geez! Shoulda stayed in Cancun.
Saturday, January 21, 2023
Okay, so maybe we can relax today. Not too much though because we have another, bigger trip coming up in a week or so…
The day has arrived for the belated birthday party for A and N. E’s plan was to start the proceedings with dinner at Kim Hoa’s Vietnamese, followed by a pavlova dessert at our place. She made the meringue early in the afternoon. A arrived from Vancouver at 5:00 and at around six we set off for the restaurant, picking up H on the way. N joined us there. By 7:00 or so we were back at our place and E started whipping cream and spreading berries. N opened a bottle of champagne and M found sparkling cider for H and some suitably fluted glasses. After candles and song, the pavlova was served. Vay, vay vay, as the Turks might say. It was good. There wasn’t much left at the end.
E had also gotten each honoree a confetti popper. They were spectacular, firing out masses of shiny, sliced up ribbon. Made almost entirely of hard plastic, they were about as environmentally unfriendly as you can get. Fun though.
The pink and green cylinder is a used party toy. The shiny debris on the floor is some of what flew out.
Friday, January 6, 2023
January 6 is a special day in Spain, the day the Wise Men arrive bearing gifts. Here there was a special event of another kind. There was a small gathering by the river to celebrate the birthday of Morris Walker, a recently deceased acquaintance. There was flute playing by a native American, memorial remarks and finally the tossing of a little bottle of ashes into the river. The amazing part about the bottle is that it was made of some sort of dissolvable salt that would not hurt the river.
Monday, January 9, 2023
M has been reading The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan, which is basically just an annotated list of sixty-six American popular songs from various eras and musical genres. Each entry shows the song’s title, the songwriter, the performer, and the date of release along with a number of photos that are related to the song’s time period or genre. And of course each song gets a few pages of text wherein Dylan shares some of his thoughts about it. Some of the songs are quite old–the oldest are from the 1920’s–and a few are from the early 21st century. The great majority, though, are from the years between 1945 and 1980.
Many of the songs are very well-known or at least somewhat familiar to people of a certain age, e.g., Blue Suede Shoes, On The Road Again, Strangers in the Night, Mack the Knife, On the Street Where You Live; but quite a few are decidedly lesser known. For M this latter group would include such titles as Nelly Was a Lady, The Little Cloud That Cried, Take Me from the Garden of Evil, and Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy. Part of the fun is to see how many of the songs you recognize. And then you’re curious to see what Bob Dylan has to say about them. What you find is that his response to each song–famous or not–will go off in all kinds of (mostly) interesting directions.
Inevitably, you’ll want to listen to each song when you read about it. Once Dylan lets you know, for example, that the harmonica part in a certain song was played by Stevie Wonder, how can you not want to hear that song? In the old days, finding and playing it might have been difficult. Now it’s just hey Siri, play Ball of Confusionby the Temptations…
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
We made a return visit to the Herbert Farm Natural Area. Went a little farther this time.
Just like last time, the route was a tad waterlogged right at the start.
But this is different. When we were here two weeks ago, this area looked like…
…this.The three legs of the triangle are big logs, but the top of the triangle is resting on the remains of a much larger one. How long have these pieces been here? How’d they get like this? We don’t think nature would do it. Most likely it was a Herbert with a Cat.
In the evening we had dinner with J, B and C at J and B’s house. A fine meal followed by peppermint pig smashing and a shortbread crust lemon tart. Hard to beat.
Wednesday, January 11
Today it’s back to work for E, who is trying desperately to finish sewing a beach cover-up for our upcoming mini-trip to Mexico with the ANDEES and friends. Oh boy!
Of course after yesterday’s indulgences, E is thinking she may have to enlarge the waistband on the beach skirt.
A Christmas miracle: the temperature rose and along with it came rain and a great thawing. Suddenly the roads were passable, and the ANDEES were able to come for Christmas. A good time was had by all, we hope. We had a lovely Christmas Eve dinner of salmon and trimmings enclosed in the Dock Box that we ordered from Local Ocean, a seafood restaurant at the coast. Santa came overnight and we opened our presents the next morning.
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Here’s a quick summary of the last three days. Rain. Cold rain. Steady rain. Lots of rain. And sometimes, gusty winds to go with it.
Thursday, December 29, 2022
We met R and J for coffee this morning. We went to Tried and True down in the south part of town and breakfasted on great coffee and so-so croissants. Thus fortified, the four of us headed farther south for a mile or two to Herbert Avenue, intending to do some walking. There’s a place down there, past the edge of town, called the Herbert Farm Natural Area, which we had never heard of till Joe the builder told us about it. It wasn’t a bad day for a hike–rainy, windy and cold, but not seriously so. Bad weather in a jovial mood, you might say.
The chief feature of the natural area is Muddy Creek. The headwaters of Muddy Creek are only 18 miles away as the crow flies, but the creek wanders a lot and its total length might be twice that. Muddy Creek flows into the Mary’s river just half a mile north of where we went walking. Usually the creek is a lazy thing only a few feet wide. Trees and brush grow thick on either side of it, so you usually don’t see any actual water as it winds its way through farm fields and across a part of the Finley Refuge. But if it rains enough and you get close enough…
It’s hard to tell where the main channel is exactly. This may be just a side channel, one which seems to be getting a lot of use today.
The satellite map below shows what the area looks like in the summer. We walked in from the east along the road that you can see in the upper right of the map. On the way we found that a short section of the road was flooded, but we were able to detour around it. But then, when we came to the place where the road curves to the left, we found it completely submerged under rapidly flowing water. We were able to continue our walk, but we had to go along the edge of an old field to do it. R pointed out that the higher ground at the edge of the field didn’t seem natural. Past farmers had probably moved earth to the area to create a berm to keep Muddy Creek out.
We walked all the way down to the lower left corner of the map. See the big oval broccoli floret down there? It’s a single oak tree. That, of course, was in the summertime. Here’s what it looks like from ground level in the winter.
At the place where the road was just about to dip down and disappear into the creek, we found something interesting. Here’s what it looked and sounded like. (Turn up your sound for the full effect.)
The bubbles, we think, come from air that is being forced out of the soil as water begins to saturate it. As the water pushes in, the air is compressed. What we were hearing was the sound of the air escaping from the ground under the water of this puddle. As we stood watching the bubbles rise in the water, we also noticed something else. At our feet we saw tiny spurts of water popping up out of openings in the soil. These were silent, appearing and disappearing in an instant. It was like the ground was spitting at us.
These phenomena suggested the possibility that the floodwaters were spreading as the creek continued to rise. That was an unsettling thought. The whole area, including the parking lot and the road back to the highway, is just a foot or so higher than the water. In the end, though, if it was rising, it wasn’t rising very fast and we were fine.
Later, as we were driving back toward the main highway, we saw more evidence of earthmoving activities sometime in the past.
Saturday December 31, 2022
The forecast for today called for rain of the intermittent sort. We decided to take our chances and go for a hike in another place we’d never been before. It’s a place about an hour north of us called Miller Woods. Frieda Miller donated the area to the Yamhill County Soil and Water Conservation District in 2004. The drive up was pretty rainy, but our luck was good and things had improved greatly by the time we arrived. Our walk through the Woods covered about three and a half miles.
We saw some wonderful trees, including this big old fir growing in the embrace of an even more impressive oak.
We also ran across a fawn standing motionless in the middle of the trail, while mom stood motionless a few yards away.
Just past the fawn statue, we paused for lunch on a bench at K.T. Summit, so named for Frieda’s husband K.T. Miller.
Later in the day, this being New Year’s Eve and all, we had to deal with three long-standing traditions: fondue, champagne and jigsaw.
By 7:30 the fondue was done and the puzzle was started, but we’d made no progress at all on the champagne.
By 9:00 there had been progress on both remaining fronts.
By 12:30, the puzzle still had a long way to go. But we were running low on champagne, so we went to bed.
Sunday, January 1, 2023
Serious puzzle work.
Monday, January 2, 2023
Monday morning
Monday evening. Now the new year can begin for real.
Tuesday, January 3, 2023
Nice weather in the morning today. The dark clouds have given way to some white ones, which makes a big difference. After spending a couple of days obsessing over the puzzle, we now turn to more real life concerns such as taking down the Christmas tree, tending to appointments, and planning a dessert gathering for two December birthday girls. We also need to do something about all of these horrible Christmas sweets. We’ve eaten enough to make us woozy and fat. The rest we need to freeze, give away, or maybe just toss out the window of the car next time we take a joy ride. (Except for the Frigor and the Christopher Elbow. We’re not done with those.)
Not much rain or snow here lately, but still it was a cold and frosty world this morning, with winter mist in the air and a crunchy layer of frost. E walked to tertulia while M drove. Coming home, we switched roles.
Sunday, December 18
Fairly nice weather today with intermittent rain and sunshine. Our new neighbors down on Maple Street marked the upcoming solstice by inviting the neighborhood to a celebration. It wasn’t an open house party, but rather an open garage party that also featured canopies in the driveway and a couple of propane heaters. They served snacks and drinks and also gave every departing guest a bottle of homemade soup to take away. They had quite a crowd, but they were ready. What a nice idea and what an undertaking!
Wednesday, December 21
We visited Niagara Falls today. We didn’t know if we could spare the time, but we decided we needed a break from all this Xmas business. And as it turns out, the Oregon version of Niagara Falls is only a few hours away. Why had we never been there before? We don’t know. And why is it called Niagara Falls? Is it because it looks so much like that other, more famous, Niagara Falls? No. It’s pretty though.
There are actually two falls on this hike, both dropping into the same box canyon. The first one is called Pheasant Falls.
The trail goes past the base of Pheasant Falls…
…and ends near the base of Niagara, which is where we had our lunch.
At our lunch spot we were at the end of the box canyon, with sheer walls rising on three sides. Only the northwest end was open, which means that the base of Niagara Falls hadn’t seen direct sunlight for three or four months. And you know what? It was cold down there. The temperature up on hillside was somewhere around 40. Down in the bottom, it had to be in the twenties. We ate our lunch there anyway, but we did not linger.
The trail leading down to the falls was only about a mile long, but it is a lovely walk. In the beginning it follows a small watercourse downward. On the hillsides the trees are mature but not really old, maybe fortyish. But down near the stream in the bottom of the ravine, it seems like nothing has ever been cut and many of the trees are mammoths. Most prominent are the huge old ash trees, but there are also a few ancient hemlocks and cedars. On the ground lie their immediate ancestors, just as impressive in their way.
When big conifers die, they usually topple over from ground level, exposing their root balls. But when these old ash trees go, it seems that they often break off a good distance from the ground, at least six feet or so like this one…
… or maybe twenty feet from the ground like this one. The foliage at the top is salal, which is normally a low growing ground plant. How it gets started on the tops of stubs like this we don’t rightly know. It seems to like it there.
The ash trees are leafless this time of year, but mosses still thrive .
Here’s the trailhead. Note that our driver’s backpack matches his truck.
Thursday, December 22
So we had a break yesterday, but today was super busy. E started at 4:00 a.m.(!) by doing some digital correspondence. M slept in till 6:30 when he finally rose and made coffee. We had a pre-breakfast of wonderful Texas grapefruit and then read the paper for a bit before heading off for tertulia. It was pretty cold, 24 degrees, and the news was full of warnings about possible ice rain. So E decided to come with M in the car instead of walking. Later in the morning we went down to visit Wild Yeast, the newest bakery in town. Then we were off to Trader Joe’s for a few tidbits–boy were they crowded–before coming home to do some baking of our own.
M made pecan sandies. They filled the house with a wonderful aroma as they baked. But that may have been their high point. Our preliminary conclusion is that, as cookies, they’re not what they should be. Serves M right for having used an internet recipe. E, on the other hand, did something tried and true; she made her famous bars. They’re definitely good.
After the baking, it was time to deal with fact that the Mazda’s left front tire has been leaking. So off we went to drop off the Mazda at the tire place. Then it was time for a quick lunch: humus for M and leftover Solstice party soup for E. Then the guys from Lane Marble arrived to install the shower glass–the final piece of the bathroom remodel. Joe the contractor also came by to see how it went and to celebrate the project’s completion. Somewhere along the line, E had put together a small platter of cookies and fruit for him to take away. Then the tire place called to say the Mazda was done. Off we went again. E then went directly from there to a medical appointment, returning an hour later just in time to tune in to Laughter Yoga.
Meanwhile, we’ve been getting bits of news from the world outside. From Big Sky, Montana, we’ve heard from our friends L and P. P has been working at the Big Sky resort for many years now, after leaving his job in Bend, Oregon back in the 90’s when that town got too crowded for his taste. Finally, this year, it was time for him to retire. We hear there was an awesome party to mark the occasion. We’re not sure how old P is; we think he’s 92.
Friday, December 23
We got up to find Corvallis locked down by a layer of ice. Nothing is moving on any of the streets around us. We’ve never known it to be so quiet here. At 8:00 the temperature was 24 degrees and a light rain was falling, perfect conditions for making the ice even thicker.
Not a time to be driving…or walking either.
Our photographer trod very, very carefully and did not venture far.
By 1:00 the temperature had risen to 32. Not much help there; the ice was worse than ever. By 3:30, though, there were clear signs of melting. They say it will get into the 40’s later this afternoon and stay that warm overnight, so we may be able to move around tomorrow. Meanwhile we have heat, light, food and an abundance of unhealthy sweets. We’ll be fine.
