M spent the morning on a tour of local businesses including Home Depot, Kaddy carwash, the Cork and Bottle Shoppe, Market of Choice, and Trader Joe’s. Was he satisfied with all this purchasing? No. When he got home he went online and ordered himself a Chef’n FreshForce Lime Juicer. Chef’n? Really? What kind of word is that? Maybe a cute way of verbifying the noun “chef?” As in “What’s Tyler doing these days; is he still chef’n?”
Tuesday, July 20 Deaths 2,832 (+6) New cases 595
E harvested a lot of rhubarb today, enough for two pies. Half of it has gone into the freezer, but not the other half. She has plans.
Wednesday, July 21 Deaths 2,833 (+1) New cases 421
Made a trip to Eugene today. Went to REI and then had a Thai lunch at the 5th Street Market. It had been a long time since we’d seen that old place. It’s doing well.
A pie has materialized in our kitchen. Oh boy. We plan to have either a light supper followed by pie or else a light supper consisting of pie.
Thursday, July 22 Deaths 2,834 (+1) New cases 539
COVID new case numbers are rising in Oregon, as is the percentage of positive COVID tests. We suppose this is natural, given that almost all restrictions have been lifted and people are reverting to pre-pandemic habits. The death rate has not increased lately, but neither has it continued its previous declining trend.
In the news today there is a report that U.S. life expectancy has dropped significantly in the last year and a half. COVID has played a major role, but so has the opioid epidemic. Another factor is the increase in the number of murders, with many involving young people. (Deaths of young people have a relatively large effect on life expectancy calculations.)
It’s M’s birthday today and he started it off with a chocolate hazelnut scone at the coffee shop with J and R. Heard a memorable story from R about his family moving house in the wintertime back when he was a child in Australia. Afterwards, E went immediately into high gear, first doing her Zoom exercise class, then shopping for birthday balloons, then making a salad for later, then meeting with the seamstress, and finally getting back home in time for laughter yoga.
M continued his celebration by going outside and trimming away a ton or so of out-of-control squash runners and then watering some things that seemed to need it. He noticed that the blackberries are coming along nicely.
Then came the installation the shade cloth roll-up blind on our westward facing window. That took some time. Getting a translucent blind was E’s idea, and she likes it pretty well so far.
In the evening we went to dinner at B and B’s place in North Albany. One of the B’s made margaritas, which were just the thing on such a warm day. Dinner was also wonderful, out on their new deck with its big blue shade.
Friday, July 23 Deaths 2,836 (+2) New cases 613
Watched an episode of Ted Lasso. Can’t say it really grabbed us. E got some rest though, which gave her the strength to stay up and read more of The Spy Wore Red.
Saturday, July 24
Had some friends over for dinner in the back yard. We were lucky in that it wasn’t too hot and that the evening breeze was gentle–sometimes it’s a gale back there. The difficulty was in finding consistent shade. There was a lot of good food. E, for example, provided enchiladas, which she says were made following recipes used by La Rockita, one of our favorite local restaurants. It was nice to see some people we hadn’t seen in quite a while. After our guests had gone and we had cleaned up a little, we sat outside and watched the full moon rising in the east.
Sunday, July 25
Sibling Zoom meeting with J and J. Despite some technical difficulties, it was a good long talk. We’re looking forward to being at the lake again. It won’t be long.
M left in the middle to go to a baseball game in Eugene. It was the Eugene Emeralds vs. the Hillsboro Hops. The Emeralds are an SF farm club; the Hops are part of the Arizona Diamondbacks system. The visitors jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the top of second. Yikes. The Ems stayed with their starter, which paid off when he held the Hops scoreless for the next three innings. The Em’s got two runs in the fifth on back-to-back homers by their number 8 and number 9 hitters. You don’t see that too often. After eight innings the score was Hops 5 and Ems 4. The Hops number 2, 3, and 4 batters were scheduled for the top of the ninth. The Ems brought in their best reliever, who quickly retired the side with two strikeouts and a pop-up. That seemed to give the Ems’ batters some momentum. In the bottom of the ninth the Hops’ reliever gave up a walk and a double with one out. Then, with runners on second and third, the next batter also doubled and that’s all she wrote. Ems win, 6-5. Pretty good game.
Mostly routine stuff today. E had a yoga class and did some shopping at the Co-op. M did watering chores. We also did some preparation for our camping trip trip to Humbug Mountain. This involved making chocolate chip cookies.
Tuesday, July 13 Deaths 2,800 (+3) New cases 340
A bit cooler today. E had her exercise class and tried again to get her teeth cleaned. The electricity was on this time, so all went well. M did his grocery shopping in the morning and in the afternoon started packing the camping things.
Wednesday, July 14 Deaths 2,803 (+3) New cases 251
The camping expedition left Corvallis around 10:30 and headed down the I-5. Turned off the freeway at Curtin and took the road to Drain. We stopped at a store there because E felt that the expedition had not packed enough chocolate. M took photos.
Beautiful downtown Drain. No Drainians visible
From Drain, Highway 38 follows the route of the Umqua River toward the coast. We stopped by the river at Scottsburg Park and ate our lunch of sandwiches, celery, carrots and little cans of Dole pineapple juice imported from the Philippines. In the old days, when the world was right and good, we used to take little cans of Texsun grapefruit juice imported from Texas. Now that things have deteriorated, the only way we can get those is via the internet and that is just too weird.
By 4:00 we had found our spot in the Humbug Mountain State Park campground, which is located just off Highway 101 at the base of…Humbug Mountain. We put up our tent, blew up our mattress and settled in as best we could. When we arrived the site on our right was occupied by a quiet couple and the site on the other side was empty. A small stream flowed just behind us. It was nice but became a bit less nice when a family of four arrived in a Honda Odyssey to occupy that vacant space. They set up their camp quickly and efficiently. As often happens, however, there was a certain amount of tension in the family. This gave Dad a chance to practice some of the techniques he had been learning in his anger management classes. Mom rarely spoke and when she did it was in short, clipped phrases, clear but rapid. Her tone implied that she was just fine thank you; she had restrained herself from hacking anyone to death so far and was pretty sure she could get through at least one more day. We bought some wood and spent much of the evening watching the fire burn.
It was a really annoying to have to get up in the night–for one thing, it was cold when you got out of the covers–but seeing the stars made it nice once you got out there. It had been years and years since we’d had a proper look at the Milky Way.
Thursday, July 15 Deaths 2,810 (+7) New cases 322
In the morning, while the neighbor kids got pancakes (yum!), we ate granola bars and fruit salad. Then it was time to go up the mountain, at least as far up the mountain as we wanted to go. From our campsite, a ten minute walk took us to a foot bridge over the stream and a tunnel under the highway that opened out onto the trailhead.
The trail starts in a wonderful grove of old myrtle trees and from there climbs up into a mixed old-growth forest of Douglas fir, myrtle, maple, cedar, and hemlock. The firs are the most impressive, the largest being six feet in diameter, but there are some gigantic old maples as well. It’s a steep trail with 1700 feet of elevation gain if you go all the way. That seemed too much for us in our current state, so we stopped at a viewpoint about halfway to the top.
A hiker admiring an old growth fir on the steep north slope of Humbug Mountain.
Black stemmed ferns, something we don’t see back home.
And here’s a rare glimpse of the Southern Oregon tree climbing dog. Amazing how they do that.
When we got a little higher up the mountain, there was this view out to sea.
And from still higher up, here’s the view to the north. You can see the town of Port Orford on the south side of Port Orford Head with Cape Blanco in the far background.
In the evening we walked out to a quarter mile long beach, which is only accessible by a trail from the campground. The beach is partially visible in the lower right of the photo above. To get to the beach, you follow a creekside trail that passes under a highway bridge that is home to many a swallow.
Swallow nests under Highway 101
Friday, July 16 Deaths 2,817 (+7) New cases 369
We had intentions of a short walk in the morning. There is an abandoned stretch of old Highway 101 that looks quite wonderful, all dark and overgrown. But as it happened we didn’t have the energy. It was enough to pack everything away and get on the road. We had a clam chowder lunch in Reedsport at the Lighthouse Cafe and then headed east back to Drain.
Drain was pretty much unchanged.
Eventually, we found the freeway, filled up with gas, and changed drivers. Just after that, as we were tooling along northward, we came up a major accident scene involving the southbound lanes. We couldn’t see what happened, but there were at least ten(!) emergency vehicles at the scene. Southbound traffic was backed up for many, many miles. No problem in our northbound lanes, so we made it home just before 5:00.
Saturday, July 17
E went out for croissants! Which are of course better than pancakes or granola bars. After breakfast we finished putting our camping stuff away and tried to get mentally prepared for our afternoon activity–a vineyard tour and dinner out with J and R.
The vineyard tour was very fine. We each got a three wine ‘flight’ for tasting. The pourer put the flights into some clever carriers so that we could take our total of twelve glasses out onto the terrace to sit down and sip at our leisure. We were then required, as a condition of taking the tour, to buy a bottle of wine, at which point we got to have the ‘tour’ part of the experience. We loaded into a Polaris ATV and the vineyard manager drove us through the various blocks of grapes. He explained that each of the five blocks produced grapes for one of the five wines they offered. He then dropped us off at the top of the vineyard, where we found another seating area on a shaded wooden pavilion. The pavilion was the highest point in the vicinity, so the views were very nice.
Our driver had brought along our just-purchased wine, four wine glasses, a thermos of cold water and four water glasses. We had brought our own light lunch of crackers, cheese, and fruit. After getting us settled, our host left us and went back down to the winery, so we had the pavilion to ourselves for a couple of hours. Then we went back down to the winery and bought a couple more bottles to take away. On the way home we had dinner at a logging themed restaurant called the LongTimber where M ate way too much pot roast and mashed potatoes. Will he not learn? Lovely day.
Sunday, July 18
We had a quiet day with a bit of gardening in the morning and then shopping and other chores. The Oregon Health Authority has stopped issuing COVID statistics on weekends. They are–we think–including the weekend numbers in their Monday reports. We will follow suit.
The weather forecast was a day of cooler temperatures, 60’s and s70’s. That sounded like good Boxster weather, warm enough to put the top down but not so hot that the sun would broil you in your seat. The plan was to go see some roads in the Coast Range up in the northeast corner of the state. I made a lunch and was off by 10:00, heading north on U.S. 99. The first leg took us–the Boxster and me–up through the farms and vineyards of the western Willamette Valley. Just past McMinnville, U.S. 99 turns east, so we turned onto Oregon Highway 47 to continue north. It was a pleasant drive through lovely countryside, not much excitement but few annoyances. Finally, near the town of Banks, we came to Oregon Highway 8 and turned left to go into the mountains toward the coast. This was one of the roads we’d come to see.
Oregon 8 turned out to be a pretty major route. It’s a two-lane highway, but it is a mature highway, wide and well graded. There seemed to be a lot of traffic in both directions. Despite the curves, people were going pretty fast. There are a number of passing lanes on the uphill stretches, so no one had to crawl along behind a truck. The highway crosses through what is called the Tillamook State Forest. I was getting hungry, so I started looking for a place to stop, preferably some kind of park with a picnic table a little distance from the highway. I saw a sign for a campground and pulled off onto what turned out to be a very narrow gravel road that traversed down a steep slope. Yikes. Too narrow, too long and too rough. It took me about ten minutes before I managed to turn around and get back to the highway. When I got there, a heavy truck was approaching; so I had to wait for it to pass before I could pull out. Great. But very soon a passing lane appeared, which let me get around it. And then I found something odd. There were no cars visible ahead of me. Nice. I started going a little faster–not real fast because that stretch was near the crest of the coast range and was really curvy. Plenty of cars were coming from the opposite direction, but I had my side all to myself. I went up over the top and started down the other side. Still no one in front of me. So I scooted right along, letting the Boxster have a bit of fun. Where had everyone gone? I don’t know. I had fallen into an inexplicable lacuna. I was alone for quite a few miles. Finally, I came upon a line of cars and rejoined the normal world of traffic.
About then I noticed a sign that said Smith Homestead Day Use Area. This was another fortuitous event. It was a lovely place with few visitors. I ate my lunch at a wonderful secluded picnic site next to the Wilson River. As it happens, there are quite a few campgrounds, picnic areas and hiking trails in the western half of the forest. It looked like a place E and I should come back to for some camping and hiking.
The Tillamook State Forest came into being as the result of a series of terrible forest fires in the years 1935 to 1945. The 1935 fire was the worst, burning 340,000 acres of old growth timber, trees that were up to 400 years old. The fire was started during a logging operation when friction created by a steel cable rubbing against a dry dead tree caused it to burst into flame. Fanned by high winds from the east, the fire burned for eleven days. Ash from the fire drifted as far as 500 miles out to sea. The fires stopped only when the weather changed and a thick damp fog drifted in from the west.
A second fire in 1939 burned another 190,000 acres. In July of 1945 two fires combined to burn another 180,000 acres. These fires came to be the most well-known because the forests they destroyed were on either side of Highway 8, which was then the most popular route from Portland to the coast. One of the fires began on the Wilson River, caused by a discarded cigarette. The cause of the other is unknown, though some believed it resulted from a Japanese incendiary balloon.
The fires left vast areas of desolation and were a great loss to the land owners, who were mostly large timber companies. Timber companies in those days were hooked on old growth and had little interest in replanting burned over land, so they simply abandoned it. The land eventually came to belong to three Oregon counties via foreclosure for unpaid taxes. Eventually, the state legislature approved a plan to merge the county lands into a state forest and appropriated funds to begin restoration activities. Restoration involved the planting of 72,000,000 new trees over the next twenty years. Of these, about 1,000,000 were planted by students and other volunteers. Today the forest consists of 364,000 acres of fifty and sixty year-old trees. There are also a few original old growth trees that somehow survived the fires, including two or three at my luncheon spot by the Wilson River.
After lunch we continued west on Highway 8 to where it ends in the town of Tillamook. There we turned south and started the long road home.
A map of the Tillamook State Forest showing Highway 8, the route that runs through it.
The town of Tillamook, besides being famous for its cheese factory, is also home to the Tillamook Naval Air Museum. The building is a blimp hangar dating from 1943.
Twelve miles south of Tillamook lies the town of Beaver, Oregon at the mouth of the Nestucca River. The plan for the afternoon was to drive up Nestucca River Road for twenty miles or so and then turn south for twenty more miles on an unnamed mountain road that would eventually lead me to Willamina, Oregon. At that point I could get back onto a real highway and have an easy drive home. My travel guide said that the route through the mountains from Beaver to Willamina was about two thirds “two-lane paved” and one third “one-lane paved.” The one-lane part, naturally, was the middle third where the mountains were highest.
After some minor difficulty we found Nestucca River Road and headed east. The road was narrow, but it had two lanes. You could tell it had two lanes because occasionally you could see the faded remains of a yellow stripe down the middle. The first ten miles were fairly level with bucolic views of pretty little farms along the river. Then the road started climbing into the forest. It got curvier and a little narrower and there was no longer any trace of a center stripe. That was all right with us because there was hardly any traffic and the stripe had always seemed to be more like wishful thinking than anything else.
We weren’t going all that fast; well maybe a little bit here and there, but mostly not. We were just tooling along enjoying ourselves. The top was down and the temperature was perfect. How long could such an idyllic interlude continue? Not too long. A pickup truck appeared behind me, moving fairly fast. It was a smallish truck, and I couldn’t tell the make. Almost all trucks have front end brand emblems or badges. It appeared that on this truck the emblem had been removed. The truck was an odd color, a kind of beige with small slashes of a darker brown that appeared to have been applied in a regular pattern. But perhaps I only dreamt the pattern; I just got quick glimpses in the rearview mirror as we moved from sun to shade and shade to sun.
There was no way to ever pass on such a road and no place to pull over either, so we were fated to be together there for a while, that other driver and I. Eventually I decided to speed up; life would be more pleasant for both of us, I thought, if there were some space between. But that did no good. The little truck was able to pull strongly enough to keep pace. The truck seemed more at home on this sort of road and I wondered how many times the driver had been on it before. I wondered what the other driver might be thinking. Was it something like “Hey, I bet I can keep up with a Porsche on this road.” Oh dear. I decided to get serious, very serious.
We were on the “one-lane paved” section, which featured a very narrow road with lots of steep inclines and dozens of sharp curves, half of them blind curves around big pieces of mountain. Fortunately the road tended to widen just a bit at the worst of the blind curves; perhaps the makers knew what they were about. I stayed mostly in third gear, dipping into second at the sudden right angle turns and up into fourth very occasionally. (The Boxster has a six-speed manual transmission.) That kept the revs up to between 3,000 and 5,000 rpm, where the Boxster is very strong and very loud. Even though we were going mostly uphill I was braking a lot, blasting out of curves and charging up the tiniest straights before standing on the brakes for the next turn. The pickup fairly quickly disappeared behind me. The Boxster absolutely loved this kind of driving. It seemed to be laughing and yelling like a banshee. “Why,” it asked me, ” don’t we just do this all the time?” “I know it’s fun,” I answered, “but this particular thing is stupid. Just because you are so awesomely capable that I can keep keep from running off this road at these speeds doesn’t mean that we won’t run into something unexpected around one of these curves. That would be very bad.” “Fine,” said the car, as I gradually slowed down to a more reasonable pace. Alas, after a short while, shorter than I had hoped, the truck again appeared behind me. I could hear the Boxster snickering. We had to do it all over again, for real this time. I like pickups. I own a pickup. But pickups behind me bring out the worst.
So we went back into insanity mode and stayed there, cresting the mountains and heading down the other side. Gradually the road got a little wider and a little straighter, which meant we could go even faster. We met two other vehicles coming the other way, but they were no problem. We didn’t slow down until farms and houses began to appear. I was pretty much exhausted by then, all out of adrenaline. The Boxster wasn’t tired at all, but was sympathetic anyway. We never saw the little pickup again. Was it ever really there or was it just an apparition conjured up by an evil spirit of the place?
For the last few miles into Willamina the road was legitimately two lanes and there was a lot more traffic. The posted speed was 25. I noticed that the locals were going 50. It was a little disorienting. I settled on 40. By coming into the town via its back door, as it were, I passed by the largest lumber mill complex I have ever seen. Its owner, Hampton Lumber, claims that it was for a time the largest mill in the United States. I don’t think I want to see the current largest.
Here’s a satellite view of the Willamina mill. The rectangle on the left is the log storage yard. The road that comes down from the northwest and curves around the main building is the one I came in on.
From Willamina I got back onto familiar roads for a sedate drive home. Such a different world.
M shopped Winco for Winco-type stuff, including sliced almonds for the granola that E plans to make in her slow cooker. The recipe includes maple syrup, so it’s likely to be pretty good. E is also planning gazpacho.
Tuesday, July 6 Deaths 2,782 (+1) New cases 463
M made BLTs for dinner. E’s sandwich featured Morningstar Vegetarian bacon strips, which aren’t bad tasting, but which have a very long ingredients list–not our favorite thing to see. While dinner was being prepared and eaten, granola was slow cooking.
Wednesday, July 7 Deaths 2,788 (+6) New cases 273
M tried the granola. It was great, especially with handful of our own raspberries. For E it was not a cereal day, so she has to wait until tomorrow.
After lunch M went shopping at the Co-op(!) and got himself some pickling vegetables. He then turned around and pickled them.
E made the gazpacho for dinner. We had a bit of rice with it and some canned fish. Good summer supper. We have strong opinions about gazpacho, both of us believing that the only real gazpacho is the kind popular in Spain during the seventies and eighties when we lived there, which is exactly what E makes. We don’t know much about other gazpachos and we don’t seem to care. We have, over the years, tried gazpacho in several restaurants here in America. It has been uniformly terrible. We find this very sad and at the same time deeply satisfying. As for the wretched stuff that restaurants in Corvallis call sangria, don’t get us started.
Thursday, July 8 Deaths 2,790 (+2) New cases 212
Adventure day. E went on her annual HEPAJ outing to P’s cottage at the coast. She rode in J’s new Honda CR-V hybrid. Nice. Lunch was at the Drift Inn. One of the group related how she had recently had a somewhat traumatic experience with a pedicurist who had just had cataract surgery and could only see out of one eye…
Meanwhile M took the Porsche out for a few hours. We won’t describe that here since he’s made a separate post about it.
Friday, July 9 Deaths 2,792 (+2) New cases 265
It was the first day of the Crazy Days shopping weekend in Corvallis and E was eager to get downtown. But first she had to do some gardening and then several errands. Such self-discipline! Finally she had a few moments to slip down to the Clothes Tree and the Golden Crane and try to remedy her desperate lack of decent clothing.
Later on we took the Boxster over to Albany to have a dine-in supper at Ba’s, our first time doing that since the beginning of last year. M had Vietnamese sticky rice for the first time ever. He says he hopes it’s not the last.
Saturday, July 10 Deaths 2,??? (+?) New cases ???
Having had to rush through Crazy Days yesterday, E went back downtown to see what else she could find out on the sidewalks. While she was gone, M got out his 1/16th scale T-90 Russian tank. He reattached its broken radio mast and recharged the main batteries. After relearning how to fire the cannon, he made some cardboard targets and started shooting them up in the living room. Yellow BB’s were flying all over.
Just after he was done and had put everything away, E came home with her bags of loot: a pretty cloth wine bag, a couple of greeting cards and some gift tags (70% off!). She had also taken a necklace to be fixed at the bead shop and of course had stopped to socialize here and there. Along the way she’d spotted a lamp marked down from $189 to $90. She liked it, but wasn’t sure. After she got home she shared the idea with M and they ended up going back to get it. Its unique feature is that it’s a flip lamp with two positions: one upright for room lighting and another facing down. The down facing position is ideal for E to see her embroidery work while watching TV.
Sunday, July 11 Deaths 2,??? (+?) New cases ???
We got up and ate Bodhi sugar buns for breakfast. They’re good alone; they’re good with jam. But, being covered with sugar, they are messy to eat. They gave us the strength to do some yard tasks in the cool of the morning. At 10:00 we took off to explore more up country logging roads. The plan was to drive by normal routes up to Grande Ronde and then turn south into the maze of logging roads, though which we hoped to navigate to Falls City, thirty miles away. In this we failed. Sigh. First, we had a hard time even finding our way into the forest. The best option that our Avenza map suggested did not, in fact, exist, having been consumed by an enormous casino parking lot. The next best option was likewise missing. Was this map made by someone in a parallel universe? Or was it just based on old information. Probably the latter. Despite these setbacks we kept trying. We found a way in and climbed high above the South Yamhill River valley. The forest was lovely, the temperature was ten degrees cooler than it had been below, and the scenery was wonderful. It was a nice feeling to be in a place that seemed so large and mostly empty of obvious signs of the earth’s rapacious dominant species. (This was partly an illusion, of course, as we were driving through a human-created tree farm, but it was a fine feeling nevertheless.)
All too soon, however, a locked gate barred the way on the route we had chosen. There were other roads in the area, but the map showed them all as dead ends. We parked in the shade as best we could, took a short walk past the gate, and then returned to the truck for a Nugo bar lunch. Then it was back the way we came, down down down into the valley.
We got up pretty high, but encountered a gate just a mile past this view point.
The gate has a homemade look. It’s simple but serious: one hefty I-bar upright, one heavy steel pipe barrier bar, one steel rod bar support.
Here’s where the support rod meets the bar…
…and here’s the hasp and chain lock.
Our consolation was that on our way back to Corvallis E found us a nice coffee place in the town of Dallas, Oregon. Karma Coffee is its name and they use beans from Allan’s coffee roasters. Later on we made a dinner of cabbage-potato subzi with rice and raita.
Also, E has just finished reading The Wind in the Willows. Her favorite takeaway from the book is a quote from Badger, “Stir your stumps, Toad! We just got your house back for you and you haven’t even offered us so much as a sandwich.”
A very warm night, but better weather arrived during the day. Afternoon temperatures were in the 80’s leading to low 70’s in the evening. As usual E was busy today. After breakfast she did her Co-op shopping. One of her next projects was to pack up a couple of vinyl albums to be sent away for digitization. One was a record of Dame Judith Anderson reading poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The other was an album of folk music by La Tuna de la Universidad de Puerto Rico.
M had an eye doctor appointment at 8:00 a.m., which he managed to remember at 7:40 a.m. Fortunately the clinic is very near. When he returned, he used his pupil dilation as an excuse to take a morning nap. Later on, he did his half of the grocery shopping. After lunch he took another nap for which he offered no excuse whatever.
Tuesday, June 29 Deaths 2,770 (+7) New cases 230
E had a Zoom exercise class today, her first after a two-week layoff. The instructor took it easy on them–at least a little. While E did stair steps and such, M made tuna sandwiches and packed a traditional lunch of celery, olives, potato chips, chocolates and Oban Little Bay. At about 10:30 we carried the lunch out to the truck along with a big package to mail and a collection of bags and boxes for Good Will. Once the errands were done, we drove out to the Beazell forest for a hike up Plunkett Creek. We had our lunch down by the stream where it was lovely and cool. The hillsides and uplands of Beazell Memorial Forest are covered in third or fourth growth Douglas fir, but down in the hollow where the creek flows the trees are are all maples and mountain cherries, as tall and sturdy and old as they naturally can be.
Plunkett Creek is not exactly raging at this time of year; but if you look carefully, you can find chocolate.
Wednesday, June 30 Deaths 2,774 (+4) New cases 196
Oregon Governor Kate Brown has announced the ending of most COVID restrictions as of today. Oregon COVID deaths in June were 40% lower than in May. The average daily rate was 3.40 in June vs. 5.71 in May. The number of new cases and the percentage of positive test results have also been low.
Mostly cloudy in Corvallis today. We spent the morning outside, catching up on garden work that we had not been able to do in the heat. We also counted several plants that were seriously damaged by the heat wave, perhaps fatally. M’s thimbleberries and salal are looking especially bad. E’s favorites have suffered less serious damage. Could that be because she rigged up a shade-cloth cover for them?
After lunch, M went to the store to get a new hose wand and a refill bottle of windex. He took the Porsche and didn’t return for two and half hours. He says he was exploring covered bridges around Scio and Crabtree. E celebrated by going downtown to her favorite store in search of a pair of shorts. Did she find some nice ones? She did. Did she find a few other nice things? Uh-huh. At check-out, did the shop owner, who is no dummy, give E a bonus discount which encouraged her to buy one more thing than she had planned? E thinks she probably did, but is not complaining.
Thursday, July 1 Deaths 2,778 (+4) New cases 198
E tried to keep up with her usual hectic schedule. First she dealt with a request to change an medical appointment time. It wasn’t an appointment she needed, so she cancelled instead. She then had her exercise class, and went to Bi-Mart for supplies. After lunch she got ready for a dental appointment and had M drive her over there so she could get some exercise walking home. She got the walking exercise sooner than she expected because just as they were getting started with her cleaning, there was a power failure and they sent her away.
For dinner we went to Sky High Brewing and ate at the rooftop bar. Quite a nice view there. Also an interesting system of ordering. A staff member shows you to a table, but then you’re on your own. There’s a sign on the table with a QR code and a table number. You scan the code with your phone and go to the web menu and decide what you want. Then you get up and go over to the bar, give them your table number, and place your order. You can either pay right then or keep a tab open. We just paid. After a bit, your order is delivered to the table. Easy. Eve had her favorite caesar salad and M ate himself sick with an overly elaborate burger. Hopefully, he has learned never to do that again, at least not for a while.
In the national news we hear that Donald Rumsfeld has died. The media question of the day has become whether he or Robert McNamara was the worst secretary of defense that we’ve ever had. A preachy sort of question. We are who we are in this world. And anyway– as is explained in Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone/Twelve Beauties of Jinling–the Land of Illusion and the Paradise of Truth are one and the same.
Friday, July 2 Deaths 2,781 (+3) New cases 209
An important event took place this morning as Eve had her nails done in in honor of the 4th of July. While she was gone M did prep work for touching up the paint on the garden shed. Then it was time for E’s Zoom yoga, followed by moving furniture around to get ready for a tea time visit from E’s friend P. M opened a bottle of Segura Viudas–P is a champagne lover–and also helped grill up some haloumi, which P had never had. We served it with pita and cherry tomatoes, which eventually left us not very eager to have dinner. In the course of conversation, P mentioned that she knew someone else who got sick from a Sky High burger. Hmm.
In COVID news, Oregon has today reached the 70% target level of vaccinated adults and now stands 18th in the nation in percentage of adult population vaccinated.
Saturday, July 3 Deaths 2,xxx (+x) New cases xxx
We were up early today. E went off to get some croissants and M went out to do more shed painting, all this before breakfast. That came at around 8:30, and found us happily chewing on fresh pastry and sipping café con leche. Then we took a walk up the top of Garryanna. There were two houses for sale along our route. One is 2,400 sqft for $595,000. The other is 4,100 sqft with a six car garage for $875,000. M wants to make an offer on the latter. It seems like everything sells for 10% over the asking price these days, so he needs to come up with around $950,000. We’re not sure if this is a reasonable price, especially since the only thing M really wants is the six car garage. Problem is, he’d have to sells his cars to come up with the down payment.
After the entertaining part of the day, we faced the matter of refrigerator cleaning, which we had been dreading . Once we got started, we did it all–took everything out, pulled the fridge out of its niche, took it apart, scrubbed all its shelves and bins, and vacuumed and swept behind and underneath. Then we had to put everything back and re-adjust the front height so the door would close by itself. It took us hours, but it was–we suppose–a good thing to do. It hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned since we bought it way back before the pandemic.
Sunday, July 4 Deaths 2,xxx (+x) New cases xxx
The Oregon Health Authority is taking a holiday and we have no current COVID data. So let’s us take a holiday also, and just share some photos of the 4th of July party we went to at K and J’s in Salem.
The setting, just before the guests arrived to mess it up.
Two of said guests.
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More party goers. Photos courtesy of C, who was visiting from the 1950’s.
M went grocery shopping and dropped by the liquor store for a couple of agave wine cocktails, that we thought we might enjoy with dinner at the camp. We did a lot of packing and a certain amount of garden watering. E rigged up shade cloth to protect her pansies. It seemed that all was well.
Tuesday, June 22 Deaths 2,757 (+1) New cases 267
Our camping expedition left Corvallis at about 7:30, headed east in the Nissan truck. We arrived at the Sisters Bakery by 10:00. We found a new policy in place–no donuts on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. Well. Fortunately they have lots of other good stuff. We got a couple of Marionberry scones. Very nice. The land around Sisters and Bend is good ranch land, but as you go east the terrain rapidly becomes drier and unsuited to agriculture of any kind. There are miles and miles of empty sage brush vistas as you drive on roads that run dead straight for ten miles at a time. We didn’t see a single solitary cow for over a hour. But then, near a place called Hampton, suddenly there it was: we saw a cow, a single solitary cow, in an otherwise empty landscape. Then, five minutes later, we started seeing lots of cows. We passed Riley and Hines and stopped for a break in Burns. We went to the little park next to the highway on the east end of town. Whoa. There were three or four police cars there. There wasn’t much action though. The incident that brought them seemed to have ended. We found a rickety table and ate our lunch. Then it was back onto the road.
Our first hint of trouble was when we arrived at the address of the vacation rental where we had planned to stay on our first night.
Now we have to admit that this was not actually the one in the photo. In fact we hadn’t got a ‘vacation rental’ at all and we don’t know how this photo even got in here. We actually had a reservation in a Best Western in Ontario on the Oregon/Idaho border. It was fine. All still seemed well.
Wednesday, June 23 Deaths 2,759 (+2) New cases 233
Our Best Western breakfast was not all that great but it sufficed. We got on our way about nine and decided to top up the gas tank. So…uh…should we buy Idaho gas (self-serve) or Oregon gas, where an attendant must pump it for you? Very confusingly, we ended up at a self-serve Chevron on the Oregon side! Huh? What? It seems that a change in Oregon law has allowed a few exceptions to the prohibition against self-serve. We had heard about this radical new idea, but we’d never seen an example.
On our way to Lake Owyhee we passed some onion fields. The leaves were a rich dark green; each plant consisting of a tight bunch of vertical spears about a foot high. There were lots of onion fields, miles and miles of onion fields. So exciting. And then there were the sugar beet fields. There were lots of them too. And the biggest excitement? An actual sugar factory! For Eve it had an awesome grandeur. She said that it was too bad we didn’t have time to stop and take a factory tour. To M, this factory looked like it would be very unlikely to be offering factory tours. But who knows? The factory had no obvious company name, but there was a large sign with a picture of a bag of White Satin sugar. So we can guess that the factory is owned by the Amalgamated Sugar Company. Although its headquarters is currently in Boise, that company was originally founded in M’s hometown of Ogden, Utah in 1897. About 55% of the sugar produced in the U.S. is made from sugar beets; 45% from sugar cane.
Their motto: Naturally Sweet from Western Farms Their alternate motto: Not as Good as Cane Sugar but a Little Cheaper.
So that was exciting, but what about camping? Well, we went down to the town of Nyssa, and thence to the small town of Adrian, then a few miles farther. Suddenly we had left farm country and were traveling into a range of low and barren mountains, following the course of the Owyhee river. We were a little anxious about finding a campsite because there were very few campgrounds in the area and none of the tent sites are reservable. When we arrived at the campground, we were pleased to see that in fact we had our pick of any site we wanted.
Here’s what the campground looked like…
…and this was the view.
So that seemed pretty good. But then we got some bad news. As we were putting up our tent, we were informed that there was a strong likelihood of a severe storm developing in the early evening, with winds gusting to 85 mph. Well. Pitching our tent did not seem wise. Sleeping in the truck did not seem pleasant. (It’s a small truck.) We couldn’t know how severe the storm might be, or even if it would come at all. As you can see from the photos, the weather was pretty nice at the moment. But still. We decided to retreat to a motel and continue our visit as a series of day trips. Off we went. But then we got more bad news. There were no motel rooms available anywhere nearby. Zero. None of the search engines offered us any options. As soon as we entered any date from June 23 to 25, we got the simplest possible message. “No rooms available.” By searching farther afield, we did find an opening at a La Quinta in Boise; they had one room left at $379 plus 20% tax. That seemed like a lot, especially since Boise was nearly a hundred miles away in the wrong direction. Late June is a busy travel time in normal years, but this year is special. It seems pretty clear that large masses of people are feeling confident about getting out on the road again and staying in motels.
We decided to just abort and go home. It was a long drive, but interesting in its way. Here’s a view out the windshield as E had us tearing along at 73 miles per hour. We know it was 73 because…well, never mind.
Rolling through the high desert on a non-winding road. Are those the Three Sisters out there waiting for us?
E was still at the wheel when we reached Bend. It was clouding up a little as we reached the town; perhaps a few sprinkles were in the offing. We went on through town, planning to stop for a picnic dinner in Sisters, twenty miles farther on. Just we were leaving Bend, however, we ran into major drama–an intense hail storm. Hail the size of mothballs started banging on the hood and cab of the truck. What a racket. We did not have the presence of mind to take a video. What we did have was time. The storm went on and on. Visibility was very low and we pulled off to the side of the road for a bit, as did some other drivers. After a while, even though the racket continued unabated, the view ahead cleared just a little. We realized that we might as well push on through. The storm, after all, came from the west; the quickest way out was to drive straight through it.
And how about our planned picnic in Sisters, a few miles down the road? It was fine–a peaceful 80 degrees and sunny. M drove from there across the mountains to home.
Thursday, June 24 Deaths 2,760 (+1) New cases 232
Here we are home again, where we are quite comfortable and where the winds are only gusting up to 8 mph. We did a little shopping and a lot of putting things away. We dined on smoked salmon, steamed chard, and a rice salad. Later we watched another long episode of Bitter Daisies, a Spanish series set in Galicia. It’s funny how some many shows these days seem to be descended from Twin Peaks. In this one, a young Guardia Civil officer tries to solve a series of murders. Galicia is in the northwest part of Spain and includes the city of Santiago de Compostela, which is the end point of the Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James), perhaps the best known pilgrimage route in Europe. The show is exposing us to Galician Spanish, which is quite strange in places. The series is well-done and we like the actors, but we’ve been put off by some gratuitous sexual content.
Friday, June 25 Deaths 2,761 (+1) New cases 232
E got a flat of raspberries today and made two batches low sugar freezer jam. We missed out last year because of a serious and inexplicable shortage of low sugar recipe pectin. So this is a major event. Besides the purchased berries, the new jam includes a pint or so of our own raspberries, which are small but very tasty. E made a total of 15 jars. Here are some of them. The two tall ones in the back are jars that we brought back from Turkey twelve years ago. They have been used many a time since.
M did reading, writing and weeding. For dinner we went off to J and B’s for a Cypriot meze dinner featuring grilled haloumi and stuffed grape leaves. We contributed fava beans and baklava.
Saturday, June 26 Deaths 2,763 (+2) New cases 227
It’s Becca’s birthday today. We went out and got ourselves a piece of cake to mark the occasion. Eve talked for a long time with A and also spoke via Zoom to an old friend who was close by when Becca was born in Madrid, forty-six years ago. Several of E’s friends faithfully remember Becca’s birthday. It means a lot.
Ninety-nine degrees today, 109 forecast for tomorrow.
We watched the ending of Bitter Daisies. It was very good. It had a couple of nice surprise twists and also some very satisfying developments which confirmed a couple of things that we had suspected.
Sunday, June 27 Deaths 2,763 (+0) New cases 138
Toast and jam for breakfast. Delightful. We did some watering in the morning. E worries that about the heat and its effect on plants, bugs, birds and everything else.
M, being a kind of masochist, went to a minor league baseball game down in Eugene. Originally he was to go in company with four other Corvallis guys. Tickets were bought and all arrangements made. Then came the forecast of 110 degree temperatures. Four of the group, not being masochists, decided to take a pass and go some other time. But M had already had to change plans once this week due to weather. He wasn’t ready to change plans again.
The crowd was sparse, but the game was pretty good. If the young players were suffering, they didn’t show it. M’s reserved seat–originally picked out by his savvy friend R–was as good as it could be, being in deep shade just behind home plate. Attendance was on the sparse side.
The home team has a dual identity. Usually they are the Eugene Emeralds, part of the San Francisco Giants organization, and are clad in green. Occasionally, though, they transform themselves into the Monarcas, who wear black. And so it was on this day.
It was 102 when M arrived with a small but welcome breeze blowing out toward left. M saw four home runs hit in that direction. Between innings there was usually a bit of entertainment. One of those was an interview with Eugene outfielder Ismael Munguia, who is from Nicaragua. They asked him what got him into baseball–his father. Who was his favorite player–Jose Altuve. What was his best baseball memory–winning the Nicaraguan championship. Then they asked him what he liked best about being in Eugene, Oregon. “The heat,” he said. “I hate the cold. Baseball is really good in the heat.” It was about 108 at that point, so we must assume that he was happy. By the end of the seventh inning it was 110 and the home team was up 7-2. M decided that was enough and took a nice walk in the sun back to his truck. He found out later that 7-2 was also the final score.
It’s nice to start the week with good news on the COVID front: no new deaths and a relatively low number of new cases.
Shopping in the morning: E to the Co-op, M to Market of Choice and Trader Joe’ . Around 10:30, when the weather cleared, M went out to attend to the weakest section of the front rain gutter. Armed with drill, hammer, spikes and ferrules, up the ladder he went. A titanic struggle ensued, but finally success was won and that which was weak is now strong(ish). M found that some gutter cleaning was also in order. Messy work, but satisfying.
In the afternoon we had a visit from R who showed up in a new Honda Accord, a very nice car. M approves the choice and says that R and G’s former car, a Honda Fit, did not actually ‘fit’ with R’s personality.
Tuesday, June 15 Deaths 2,737 (+7) New cases 314
So E went to two different doctors today and found both visits quite helpful. She also visited the jewelry store–which required making an appointment in advance. She decided to reward herself by having a Bodhi’s scone for lunch along with a banana. That lunch was delicious but also a little rich for her system. Bohdi’s scones are that way. She then went for a walk in the OSU forest, went downtown again to trade her five pound dumbbells for some four pound dumbbells, and finally returned home and announced that she was hungry and that we needed to eat at 4:30. Too bad, said M, our slow cooker meal will not be done until 5:30. Somehow she managed to wait and was rewarded with a dish that the vegetarian slow cooker cookbook calls Arroz Con Pollo. Of course it has no pollo, and instead has a host of other things including chick peas, carrots, green beans, bell peppers, tomatoes, olives and fresh salsa. M, who was the one who got to put it all together, calls it Arroz Con Todo. Anyway, he served it with chard and a California cabernet to rave reviews.
Before serving up that delicious meal, M spent most of the day on a Porsche trip to the an area southwest of Eugene where some of the forest roads are paved. They are also narrow, winding (see below) and mainly empty. At one point M drove for an hour without seeing another moving vehicle. All told, he was gone five hours. The day was warm and beautiful, with lots of sun punctuated with the occasional sudden, drenching shower. The Porsche top went up and down three or four times.
Here’s a bridge that M didn’t cross today.
He walked out onto it though, and took a picture of this placid section of the Siuslaw River.
Later on he came to a place called Austa, which is where the Long Tom River joins the Siuslaw. The Long Tom is the one coming in from the left under the covered bridge.
M says he had to take this picture in case he ever needs a model for building a covered bridge in the back yard.
The car stayed here while M went off to take pictures of the bridge.
M saw this sign a lot. He says that in one sixteen-mile section of road, he saw eight of them. Hmm.
He didn’t even try this road though. Too much winding!
Wednesday, June 16 Deaths 2,744 (+7) New cases 247
We took a short hike today, up in the Dunn Forest, just a mile up and a mile back on Road 420. We climbed the equivalent of eight floors, or so our phones tell us. Back home M started planning for next week’s camping trip. He wants to buy an air mattress. They have really nice ones now.
Our camping destination is the Owyhee River canyon in southeastern Oregon. The river got its name in 1819, when two Hawaiian fur trappers working for the North West Fur Company were killed there. Company administrators decided to name the river in their honor. “Owyhee” is how Captain James Cook spelled the “native name” of the Hawaiian islands when he first made report of them in 1778. His spelling persisted for most of a century but was eventually replaced by the one we use now.
Here in 2021, E zipped down to the OSU Thrift Shop and bought a couple of sherry glasses that she had had her eye on. The two glasses were identical, obviously part of a set, but one was marked $3.00 and the other was marked $1.00. The volunteer who was staffing the cash register decided that $2.00 for the pair would be fine. Now if we only had some sherry.
Thursday, June 17 Deaths 2,745 (+1) New cases 300
Tertulia on J and R’s deck this morning. J had made chocolate chip scones; R made cappuccinos. Excellent all around. We got to see the progress on their new addition–a main floor master bedroom with bath and an adjoining deck. So far the foundations and subfloors are done, along with the framing for the exterior walls. Today was interior wall framing day. Roof trusses arrive next Monday. We also got to see their five-year old granddaughter, who did not wish to socialize but instead watched us from afar. Maybe next time.
Next up came hair appointments. M went to see his favorite barber, who is harder and harder to find these days because he is focusing more on his other career as a house painter. E, whose long-time stylist retired, went to try out a new person. Decidedly mixed results. Nice cut, strange color.
After lunch it was off to Portland to buy an air mattress and some camp food at REI and look for shoes at the New Balance Store. Success in the first case, no luck with the latter.
M provided take-out dinner from Tacovore. Our order included a generous glass of Tacovore’s own virgin margarita mix, which we deflowered by adding our own ice and t’kill ya. Yum.
Friday, June 18 Deaths 2,750 (+5) New cases 315
Big doings today, we’ve invited H and daughter T for dinner. We thought we might eat outside on the patio, so E spent a lot of time bringing table and chairs out of hibernation and generally spiffing up the area. She was also corresponding with the Extension Office about what’s wrong with our poor sick lilacs. M did a bit of garden work and then rummaged around in the camping equipment that hasn’t been used for ages. We need to sort out what’s relevant to our upcoming trip and what is not. As for dinner prep, we already had a couple of main courses prepared (one by M and one by E) and H had promised to bring a salad, but what about dessert? E decided on chocolate mousse, to be served in demitasse cups. This latter method has the advantage that the cups are so small that accepting a second helping seems quite natural. It is required, really, out of simple courtesy. In the end we had a lovely evening and appreciated being able to socialize in person with good friends.
Saturday, June 19 Deaths 2,753 (+2) New cases 289
We did trip planning and equipment sorting, then continued on with list making. This camping thing seems to require so much preparation. Was it always that way? Later E went foraging out in the country to get eggs and then paid a visit to Natural Grocers. M went to Bi-Mart to secure a sufficient stock of dark chocolate M&M’s. E also found time to issue a Zoom invite to her siblings. Soon it was time to make a flying visit to Albany and pick up our online order from Ba’s Vietnamese Comfort Food. They make these wonderful noodle salad dinner bowls, a meaty one and a vegan one, either being just right for a warm evening.
Sunday, June 20 Deaths 2,754 (+1) New cases 200
Took a walk in the OSU forest this morning. Quite beautiful. It seems like early summer now, with clear skies and lots of sun. Thankfully, the severe heat is still to the south of us, in California and Nevada. For now, even in the desert where we plan to go camping next week, the forecast is for highs mostly in the eighties.
We had a good Zoom meeting with brothers J and J. (Hard to tell those two apart, isn’t it?) They are well. J the younger showed us a present he got for Father’s Day, a wooden nameplate to be attached to his newly built cottage at the lake. Pine Ledge will be its name. E showed the sibs a freeze-dried ice cream sandwich, one of two that we just acquired.
The garden is in fine fettle. So far, only the grass is heat stressed. We have to announce that the most successful plant in our yard was not actually planted by us. It’s a giant sunflower, which we have accepted even though we did not invite it. It’s already seven feet tall and if you look closely, you can see that it appears to be hosting of its own ecosystem. Here’s a pic of the one of the top predators.
Here’s another healthy specimen, one that we did plant. Part of our native plant mania, it is called Checker Mallow; and seems to think that it can outgrow our four-year-old red maple.
Our second day at the coast. As usual it was cloudy, but still we had a nice view of the ocean as we ate our modest breakfast. Then we walked a fourth of a mile or so over to the Devil’s Punchbowl, which was in fine form at near high tide. For lunch we drove down to the Newport bay front to Local Ocean restaurant. E had a crab and avocado po’r boy and M had a breaded rockfish sandwich. They were delicious and right-sized (not too big). The cabbage and fennel slaw was a new thing for us. It was very good and looked to be very simple to make. While we were eating we couldn’t help but notice a very noisy orange and white Lamborghini as it passed by, first in one direction and then in another. After lunch we drove about twenty miles up the coast to Depot Bay in search of the Spouting Horn. Alas, the tide was wrong to see spouting. We did see the Lambo again though. Hard to miss.
Otter Crest is a resort about ten miles north of Newport. E and her family had a time share there in the 80’s and 90’s. E and A both have lots of good memories of the place and it does E good to see it again once in a while.
The tiny beaches in the center of this photo are accessible at low tide, but if you stay too long high tide will leave you stranded. There’s a warning sign to that effect, which also mentions that if you require rescue, it will be expensive. The main Otter Crest beach and tide pools are on the other side of the little headland. On that side there is a sturdy stairway.
Otter Crest is aging now, but it is pretty well-maintained and E says that the grounds are more beautiful than ever since it’s a bit overgrown with some native species creeping back.
Besides its view of the sea, our unit had an active swallows’ nest in the eaves out on the balcony.
Tuesday, June 8 Deaths 2,700(+6) New cases 307
We had to leave Otter Crest at 9:00 so as to get back in time for the Mazda’s oil change appointment at 11:00. With the Mazda delivered to the shop, we walked over to Tried and True for a coffee, then stepped into Peak Sports, which is always fun. E got sunglasses and a very lightweight Patagonia rain shell made from recycled nylon. M got an Osprey daypack. Soon we were all back home and the rest of the day was mostly quiet, though E did track down the Joe Coffee mystery. She did not lose any money, but she did have to get a new credit card number. Sigh.
M spent some time working an a more detailed posting about last Sundays trip to Valsetz and the Siletz River Gorge.
In Oregon COVID news, we’re seeing that positive test rates have been quite low lately, averaging only 2.78% over the last 21 days.
Wednesday, June 9 Deaths 2,716 (+16) New cases 269
Sixteen Oregon COVID deaths today! Where did that come from?
Lovely spring day, mostly sunny with temps in the seventies. E mowed the front lawn and worked on dead heading; M pulled some weeds and tied up the ninebark next to the clematis. The clematis is doing fine, by the way. The brown towards the bottom is the ninebark. We’re going to make them grow together whether they like it or not.
Thursday, June 10 Deaths 2,726 (+10) New cases 370
The rate of positive tests remains low, but Oregon deaths have spiked in the last few days. Not what we want to see. Here in Benton county, reports for the last 24 hours show eight new cases but no new deaths.
Another almost normal tertulia today. While M and E had been dodging potholes in the forest on the weekend, J and R had been serenely kayaking on a calm lake. Sensible people. After her tea and zen roll, E had to get back home for exercise class. It was the last one of the term, so now she gets two weeks off. After class, we worked in the garden a bit and then decided that it was time to buy more plants! Off we went to the nursery and returned with five marigolds, one coreopsis, and a pair of thimbleberries. The first six are for E; the last two for M. There they sit on the patio, as neither of us felt like running out and planting them.
E then had a HEPAJ meeting at Common Fields, a new food cart pod on the edge of downtown. The pod is on a property that used to be a transmission shop. Times change.
While she was gone, M pretended to be an electrician and replaced a broken wall outlet in the sewing room. Or was it the guest room? Whatever it is, it’s in the older part of the house, where the wiring dates from the early sixties. That wiring did not include ground wires for either ceiling lights or wall outlets. So the old outlets have only two slots and will not accept modern three pronged plugs. This is annoying, of course, when you’re trying to plug in anything newish. Generally, you can get around this in any number of fun ways. For one, you can just take a pair of pliers and rip out the third prong on the cord you’re trying to plug in. Simple and effective, but inelegant and destructive. Another method is to just replace the old outlet with a modern outlet, which does accept three-pronged plugs. The new outlet will have a place to connect a ground wire; but since you don’t have a ground wire, you just ignore it. The new fixture costs three dollars or so and is not difficult to install. (Unless you forget to turn off the power first, then it could be hardish.) One potential problem is that anyone who sees the new outlet is likely to believe that it really is grounded, which conceivably could have serious safety issues. You’d have to put a little sign on the outlet with a warning stating that it is not what it appears. That would be quite inelegant, at least until it fell off and was lost.
The best option, short of rewiring, is to replace the old outlet with a new GFCI outlet, which provides a different kind of fault protection without requiring a ground wire. M chose this option, though he grumbled about the GFCI outlet costing four times as much as the normal one. Once he got the new outlet installed he tested it and found that it didn’t work. Deadsville. Eventually he realized that it needed to be turned on.
After that, M needed a nap and E had Laughter Yoga. For TV we watched an episode of the PBS’s Mrs. Wilson. It’s good, but we’re struggling to figure out if we’ve seen it before.
Friday, June 11 Deaths 2,726 (+0) New cases 308
Rain in the morning kept us indoors for a while, but soon we were out putting yesterday’s plant purchases into the ground. Eve had Zoom yoga in the early afternoon and later on went to visit her friend P. M mounted his newly arrived license plates onto the Nissan. Dinner was tempeh, squash and sautéed mushrooms, followed by the last piece of anniversary cake.
Saturday, June 12 Deaths 2,729 (+3) New cases 285
The morning was cloudy, damp but rainless. Having given up on the too-crowded Patissier, E went to the grocery early and got some fresh kalamata olive bread for breakfast. She promptly slathered hers with peanut butter, raspberry jam, and Divina Sour Cherry Fruit Spread. She says she had to include that last ingredient because it comes from Greece and thus complements the olives in the bread. M dabbed a bit of jam on his but was more focused on the butter.
Then we did some yard work. E trimmed azaleas and M made some emergency repairs to the rain gutters, which were failing in two different places. Clearly, the gutters are old and need replacing. But M wants to try shoring up the weak spots first and see how long he can extend the old gutters’ useful life. Now if that sounds like a dumb idea, that’s because it probably is. You can’t tell M that, though; he has already ordered some 7” gutter spikes with 5” ferrules. And he’s thrilled to have learned a new word: ferrule. So we’ll see how that goes.
Rain began in the early afternoon and kept us inside. E did correspondence and M did various sorts of route planning. In the evening E spent time with her book about Ladybird Johnson, which she is liking more and more as she gets into it. Johnson was an early proponent of natural landscaping with native plants and was also a powerful force in efforts to create and preserve green spaces in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Johnson’s predecessor as First Lady had been the quite glamorous Jacqueline Kennedy. When a reporter asked Ladybird what kind of clothes she liked, she is said to have replied that unfortunately her clothes were completely unremarkable and to have suggested that they talk about something else. The biography, which is subtitled Hiding in Plain Sight, is by Julia Sweig and is based largely upon Lady Bird’s White House diaries.
Sunday, June 13 Deaths 2,730 (+1) New cases 167
We had rain off and on through the night, then a quiet overcast morning. The yard was damp and beautiful. It looked pleased with itself and asked for no immediate attention. We stayed in and did some trip planning. We’ve reserved a campsite at a state park in the Wallowa mountains. We took the first free dates we could find, which were in the second week of September.
The rain started up again around noon and continued all afternoon. We went out anyway and took a walk up to the natural area by the water tanks. The foliage is getting thick up there. Everything is leafed out and growing madly. We saw a doe with a little fawn, the smallest either of us had ever seen. It was amazing to watch it bouncing along behind its mother.
Alas, we fear that both doe and fawn could be in grave danger. A powerful predator has been seen in the neighborhood.
Between the Pacific Ocean and the Willamette valley lie the mountains of the Coast Range. There are a number of east-west routes that run through the mountains. Highway 22 connects Salem to Lincoln City via Grand Ronde. Highway 20 connects Corvallis to Newport. Between these two highways, there’s a roughly rectangular area that has no major roads. The mountains aren’t too high, but the terrain is fairly rough and the area is populated only around the edges. The climate is very wet and not terribly cold, just about perfect for growing Douglas fir. So of course that’s what we do. It’s farming country of a kind and while there are no paved roads, there are lots and lots of logging roads. Our plan was to get to the coast by traveling through this area. We’d drive west from Falls City until we reached the site of the ghost town of Valsetz, roughly in the the center of the rectangle. From there we would make our way southwest in the direction of the town of Siletz. From there we could connect to Highway 20 and Newport.
Some of the land in the coast range is part of the Siuslaw National Forest and is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, some of it is federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and the rest is owned by private timber companies. The patchwork pattern of ownership requires cooperation in the matter of road usage and some of the roads are open to the public, even when they cross miles and miles of private land. Recreational visitation on work days is discouraged–the roads are narrow and logging equipment is big–but on the weekends the loggers are gone and the roads are mostly empty.
We left Corvallis on a Sunday at 10:30 in the morning and by 11:15 we were in Falls City, where the pavement ended and the gravel began. As logging roads go, the first stretch of road west from Falls City seems like a major artery. It has only a few steep sections and is fairly wide–wide enough, in many places, for log trucks to pass each other coming and going. The day we were there, there was a fair amount of washboard.
In the years from 1919 to 1983, this was the chief access route to Valsetz, a logging town that was established by a lumber company called Cobbs and Mitchell. Cobbs and Mitchell was a Michigan company, but by the early 1900’s Michigan had no more old forest left to cut. Looking for new horizons, the company acquired large tracts of virgin timber along the upper reaches of the Siletz River in Oregon.
In earlier times, loggers had lived in isolated logging camps, sleeping in company-provided tents, eating company provided food, and being away from their families for months at a time. In 1919 that era was passing. To harvest the upper Siletz, William Mitchell built a rail line into the area and created a semi-permanent company town. In addition to setting up a sawmill, the company built individual homes for workers and their families, set up company stores, and established a K-12 school. A dam was built to create an artificial lake to serve as a log pond. A post office opened in 1920. Mill workers could walk to and from work and logging crews could make daily commutes to the harvest areas via the company railroad.
All of the land and all of the structures in the town were owned by the company. In 1924 Cobbs and Mitchell sold the entire operation to a new entity called the Valsetz Lumber Company. In 1959 the operation was sold again, this time to the Boise Cascade Corporation. Over the years the town’s population fluctuated between 300 and 1,000 inhabitants. In 1974 the Valsetz High School football team won an Oregon state championship.
By 1979, however, the old growth forest in the area was depleted and the company decided to shut down the Valsetz mill. After the shutdown all the structures of the town were removed and the area was replanted with fir trees. In 1984 the railroad was torn up and in 1988 the dam was removed and the lake was drained. Today, there is no obvious signs that the town ever existed.
We arrived at the Valsetz site at 12:30. Navigation had been easy so far, as we had had GPS location data on a forest road overlay of a satellite photo. The road to Valsetz is pretty easy to follow even without a map, but once we were actually in the area we found a couple of intersections where the GPS was helpful.
It’s still possible to deduce where the lake used to be. It is now crowded with ten and twenty foot tall trees, but the trees are clearly the product of natural reseeding, mostly deciduous and still not too large. The road splits at one point, with one fork going to the left going along the south side of the old lake and one fork to the right going along the north side. That northern road leads past the only obvious remnant of the project–the concrete and steel floor of the old sawmill.
Here are two maps of the Valsetz area. The first shows the old lake as it was and how the road coming in from the east gets complicated as it splits into northern and southern forks. The dam was in the narrow section at the north end of the lake. The town was lower down in the east side of the lake.
Part of the northern road was named Cadillac Avenue in honor of the city in Michigan where the Cobbs and Mitchell Company had its headquarters.
The next map is a relatively recent satellite photo of the same area. The rough outline of the lake is still visible in the form of the lighter color foliage that grows in the old lake bed. (The very lightest colored areas, though, are recent clearcuts.)
After touring back and forth a bit to get oriented, we sat down inside the old sawmill foundations and had our lunch. When it was time to leave, we had to choose our route out of the forest. Our GPS compatible map had been nice, but Valsetz was at its extreme western edge and no similar map was available for the next part of the route. We had some print maps and these showed two possible routes. The road on the north side of the old lake led northwest from Valsetz before it eventually looped back down to the southwest, which was where we needed go. The road from the south side of the lake seemed to more directly in a southwest direction, but in its lower reaches it also looked to be somewhat complicated, providing abundant opportunities for making a wrong turn. So off to the north we went, leaving Valsetz just at the spot where the dam had been, following the outlet creek. On our map, that creek appears to be the headwater of the South Fork of the Siletz River.
The road was very different from the one we had come up on, narrower and less well maintained. In the upper reaches it was quite beautiful, often cutting across forested slopes giving us glimpses of fantastic deep ravines. The road had a gravel base, but it was old gravel and there were potholes wherever the road was level. There were lots of unmarked intersections. We navigated by trying keep a sense of where the main stream must be.
It was a long, slow descent, basically just following the path of the Siletz River, which is shown below. At the top of the map the South Fork coming up from old Valsetz merges with the North Fork. (Only a tiny portion of the North Fork is visible.) Just past the confluence point, the river starts to turn down toward the southwest. There are dozens of small tributary creeks and the river becomes steadily larger as it flows south. The larger it got, the easier it was to see that we were on the right road. Eventually we passed through the Siletz Gorge and finally came out of the mountains at Upper Farm, which is in the bottom left corner of the map. At this point we were back on pavement and headed for civilization.
In the northern part of the route, the terrain is rugged and the trees are thick enough so that an occasional clearcut is a welcome change. Lower down, the Siletz Gorge is a potentially wonderful place, but these days it is marred by intensive recent logging. In the photo below we have stopped at a place where one side of the gorge is currently covered with young trees, maybe five or six years old. New clearcuts are of course much uglier.
Some parts of the gorge are fine. Here’s a view from the road, looking down river.
In the same place, looking back from where we came.
At another wide spot in the road these stacks of logs had been piled up and then abandoned, some of them recently, some of them a long time ago.
Now that we know this route, we can take it over to the coast anytime, provided that we’re not in a hurry. It does add four hours to the trip.
COVID continued taking its toll in May, with daily average deaths returning to about the level of March.
Tuesday, June 1 Deaths 2,674 (+3) New cases 177
On Memorial Day, M and E went for a drive in the mountains and forests west of Corvallis. The holiday meant that no log trucks would be about. We went to the same area where M had gotten lost more than once on his previous journeys. While he did succeed in finding his way out of the forest on those occasions, he never managed to come out of the forest where he had planned to come out. Ah, but this time would be different, because we now have a detailed map. Here’s a portion of it, showing some of the area M had been trying to cross. As you see, there are lots of roads, most of which are dead ends and none of which are straight. Plus there is very little useful signage down there. The squares are one-mile sections.
This is part of a downloadable map that cost us $5.99 and opens in an app on the iPhone. We didn’t get turn-by-turn directions, but the phone was able to tell us exactly where we were in the maze.
So, did we go in where we planned and come out where we planned? Of course we did. With E helping with navigation, we made nary a wrong turn. It was lovely and cool up there among the trees. And once in a while, big clearcuts would open up the scene to the big picture.
Did we mention it’s all just a huge tree farm?
Here’s some salal growing in an old stump. On the left vine maple is thriving. Both of those plants have come to our yard recently as part of our native plant mania, but ours don’t look as good as these.
Wild iris are just now blooming on the mountain. They were out a couple of weeks earlier lower down.
Wednesday, June 2 Deaths 2,676 (+2) New cases 356
The New York Times–according to our sources–has revealed that some New Yorkers are now able to “show they were vaccinated using a phone app.” Exciting news. It is not yet clear when this might be available in the rest of the country.
We’ve made reservations to spend a couple of nights in Newport, on the Oregon coast, starting on Sunday. Although there is fine paved highway that leads directly from Corvallis to Newport, M has suggested a different route for the trip over. Of course he has.
That fine paved highway, by the way, is U.S. Highway 20, currently the longest active Federal highway. From Corvallis to the west it goes 49 miles to Newport where it ends at the junction with U.S. Highway 101, half a mile from the Pacific Ocean. To the east it goes 3,310 miles, ending at Kenmore Square in ___________?
Thursday, June 3 Deaths 2,683 (+7) New cases 267
A full day today, whew. M got up at 4:30 to set his drip irrigation timers. Later, but not much later, E got up and went out to do watering. Then it was time for Tertulia at 8:00 at Coffee Culture. J and R arrived on their electric bikes, but M and E, prosaically, came by car. It was nice, warm enough to sit outside. And with no mask requirement it seemed like old times. J and R’s house addition has progressed through foundation work and now has floor joists.
We had to rush off so as to get E home for her Zoom exercise class and for M to get busy on his edging project. After class E prepared for her last infusion session, which involved packing up bakery treats to give to the staff at center. After the last infusion, the PICC tube was removed and the staff made a kind of completion ceremony, which included telling her that they never wanted to see her there again. After all, 5 weeks of daily infusions is enough!
After lunch, M took a long nap while E used her time to have a phone call with her brother John. At 4:00 she had her weekly laughter yoga session. M woke up in time to cook some spinach and open some sardines and kippers that we could have for dinner along with E’s potato salad.
After our post dinner walk we watched a Tom Hanks movie called News of the World. It’s about a young girl who was taken captive by Kiowa Indians when she was very young and then ‘rescued’ by the U.S. Army about 10 years later. The story comes from a novel by Paulette Jiles and contains some basis in fact.
Friday, June 4 Deaths 2,686 (+3) New cases 436
A routine day today. E celebrated her first day of freedom from infusion by working in the garden waging war on spider mites. Her weapon is a garden hose. M worked on spreading compost and bark mulch on good old Hummock #3. That project has to be done soon, doesn’t it? Later on we looked at bank statements and paid some bills. Why, asks E, am I paying another $4.75 to Joe Coffee when they are doing nothing for me?
Saturday, June 5 Deaths 2,691 (+5) New cases 330
We planned to get some croissants this morning at Le Patissier. Arriving at 8:10 in the morning, we saw perhaps thirty other folks standing in line outside with the same idea. Oh, that’s a long line, and, as we know, it is not a line that moves fast. Fond as we are of those pastries…just a few hundred yards away, the Mother of Markets also had croissants and they’re weren’t bad.
Then came another morning of weeding and fighting the mite wars. It was great weather to be outside and we got a lot done. Then it was time for grocery shopping and rhubarb harvesting. Sadly, there was not enough time to turn around and make a pie. Hopefully sometime soon.
Later in the afternoon, E had a phone conference to discuss Cousin’s Week accommodation issues. We made progress there too.
Sunday, June 6 Deaths 2,694 (+3) New cases 258
Time to head for the ocean, which is just the other side of the Coast Range. We took the scenic route, leaving the pavement at Falls City and traveling from there to the site of the old company town of Valsetz. The road was washboarded in places, but also wide and pretty easy to follow. We had the same basic GPS as our last trip but hardly needed it. We stopped to eat our tuna sandwiches at the site of the old Valsetz mill. Valsetz was founded in 1924 and continued in existence until 1979. It was a company town in the true sense. Everything was company owned. When the company shut down operations, they also removed all structures and replanted. Just forty years later there are no obvious signs that the town even existed. That’s probably enough of that, but M is planning a separate post about Valsetz, in case anyone would like to know more. It will be in the Road Trips category
As we neared Valsetz we began seeing wild rhododendron in bloom along the road.
After lunch our problem was how to get down off the highlands and make our way to the ocean. In theory, the route was simple, just follow the North Fork of the Siletz River from its headwaters near Valsetz down to where it passes a hamlet called Upper Farm, from which a paved road would take us to the Newport highway. This part of the trip was more of an adventure–no GPS and a narrow, pot-holed road–but eventually it took us through a lovely area called the Siletz River Gorge.
From the west bank of the Siletz, looking back up the gorge.
There’s a long history of logging in the gorge. Why these big old logs are still lying here by the river is a mystery. E found them very sad.
