We’ve just acquired another electric car. Here’s a photo of M charging it up, which is very brave of him considering that a tuxedo-wearing dog the size of Godzilla has stationed itself near the charging station.
Saturday, December 30
E has decided we need to see some movies. Two days ago we went to a real theater and watched The Boy and the Heron, a new film by animator Hayao Miyazaki. About eight years ago Miyazaki, who is now 82, announced his retirement from filmmaking. But clearly he was not able to stop working and the result is awesomely beautiful. If you haven’t seen The Boy and the Heron and aren’t familiar with Miyazaki’s work, you might think from the title that it is a certain kind of movie. But no, it’s a little more complicated than that.
We also watched Maestro on Netflix. Maestro stars Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein and Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre, the Costa Rican-Chilean actress he was married to. The film is full of beautiful images in both black and white and color. It has a tremendously high energy level and a some great music. It’s seems choppy at times, but biopics are like that. Did it tell us more about Bernstein than we wanted to know? Possibly.
Next up was Ferrari, with Adam Driver playing Enzo and Penélope Cruz as his wife Laura. The movie is set in 1957, a time when the company was in financial difficulties and the marital relationship had been badly wounded not only by Enzo’s infidelities but also by the recent death their young son from MS. The movie mixes racing drama with private life and includes scenes with both Laura the wife and Lina the long-term mistress, with whom Enzo had another son. Yes, it’s another film about a “great” man who is unfailingly unfaithful. But we liked it anyway. Adam Driver was very good and watching Penélope Cruz work was a joy. In the film, as in real life, Laura Ferrari was not just Enzo’s wife, she was also an equal share owner of the company. So there was some meat to the role. Ferrari also features beautiful vintage race cars and lovely countryside along the route of the famous Mille Miglia, a race that was so dangerous to drivers and spectators that it was banned after 1957.
The film is based on the 1991 book Enzo Ferrari: the Man and the Machine by the inimitable Brock Yates. Yates was an amateur racing driver and a long-time automotive writer, editor, and TV commentator. It was Yates, along with Car & Driver editor Steve Smith, who first conceived of the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash–a race that was never banned because it was never legal in the first place. Yates won the Cannonball in 1972 along with co-driver Dan Gurney. They drove a Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona. Gurney later commented: “At no time did we exceed 175 MPH.”
Sunday, New Year’s Eve
Well, we had waffles with maple syrup for breakfast. Lovely. Then we took a long walk in the OSU forest up near where we used to live. It wasn’t raining and it wasn’t too cold. We got around five thousand steps and sixteen floors, or so said the phone. What the phone did not tell us was what that means in terms of tablespoons of maple syrup, which is what we really needed to know. Instead, we had to use the online Steps to Calories Converter. Couldn’t someone just make a Steps to Maple Syrup Converter?
In the afternoon, E had a zoom call with S and Mrs H, two of her friends from the early days. The trio wanted to get together to share their thoughts on this meaningful occasion.
After this we had fondue for dinner and then turned to the vitally important matter of this year’s jigsaw puzzle and its accompanying bottle of champagne.
Monday, January 1st
Progress is slow on the puzzle. After working for several hours last night and continuing for most of today, we’re nowhere near done.
Thursday, January 4th
We had a nice dinner at Koriander with B and B. They had pictures of their neighborhood New Year’s Eve party. Looked like a really great time.
And speaking of New Year’s Eve, we finally finished our puzzle. E says it had way too much snow.
Friday, January 5th
We had our traditional Peppermint Pig evening with B, J, and C. We finished with pig sprinkles over ice cream.
Saturday, January 6th
We’ve been trying to get a few things done before we leave on our trip. We’re flying to San Diego tomorrow, which should be exciting because we’re flying on Alaska Airlines. In the last month they’ve had two incidents, one involving a nutty pilot and another when a door came off during a flight from Portland to Ontario, California. What next?
E walked over to H’s house this morning. She’s tending to Houdini the cat while H and T are in Portland for a few days. Her route led her past Garfield Park.
She found this on the sidewalk. It must have fallen from one of those tall branchy things.
Sunday, December 24th
We had a great meal on Christmas Eve, courtesy of BJEM Enterprises, a (very) local catering cooperative. We started with a couple of black cod salad dock boxes from Local Ocean. The boxes provided baby kale, acorn squash, cauliflower, pepitas, green onions, parsley and white balsamic vinegar, plus four pieces of cod. While B tossed and plated the salad portions, M pan seared the fish. J assisted with plating and sliced up a loaf of olive bread that she had baked for the occasion.
For dessert, E provided a baked Alaska and talked M into flambeing it, thus transforming it into bombe Alaska.
Christmas Day
That tall, light-blue present on the left turned out to be a generous jug of organic maple syrup. Oh yeah.
Our amaryllis was almost at its peak.
Tuesday, December 26th
The day after Christmas was damp and foggy. In the morning we went up to Basket Slough, planning to walk through the wildlife refuge there. It turns out, though, that at this time of year, only wildlife are allowed into the main area. No humans.
So we took a look…but then moved on to Salem.
In Salem we went back to Minto-Brown Island Park, located along the south bank of the Willamette just west of downtown. The park covers 1200 low lying acres, an area that was once a Kalapuyan trading center and later became home to a large lumber mill and a number of farms. The park is named for two early immigrant landowners: John Minto and Isaac “Whiskey” Brown . Minto was a prominent sheep farmer and a long-time state legislator. Brown was not. Today much of the area has been restored and only a few traces of its history remain.
Part of our walk went right along the river.
On our way back to Corvallis we couldn’t help noticing the blueberry bushes and the seed fields.
Thursday, December 28th
E has been enjoying her social life with various animals. Yesterday she had a delightful walk with her canine friend, Asher, in an oak savannah park on the outskirts of town. Asher even surprised E with a luscious bag of Lindt chocolate balls! He clearly knows her taste.
This morning she paid a visit to Houdini the cat. He grumbled that she was late in serving breakfast, but after eating he purred and rubbed against E’s leg before settling down for a rest on the heated floor of the bathroom. What a life!
We’re doing a lot of bird feeding lately, mainly by allowing birds free access to apples.
Some birds seem to prefer pecking at the fruit that is still up in the tree, but we also see them pecking away at ground level.
Monday, December 11th
E had her post-op appointment today up in Lake Oswego. Because she arrived early, she took a walk around the neighborhood. She ran across this sign that gave her pause.
E wishes to stress that this is not the place where her surgeon has her office. It’s another business entirely.
At the post-op, out came the nasal stents, which was a huge relief. E is delighted to be able to breathe through her nose again, in fact already better than before the surgery.
While E was up north, M went to the Albany train station to pick up our friend Charles. Charles has been visiting Seattle and stopped by on his way back to California.
Tuesday, December 12th
We took Charles to the Ankeny Wildlife Reserve today and walked along the boardwalk through the wetland ash forest. The ash trees there grow in one to three feet of water for half the year. It’s a unique scene. Such forests may soon disappear from Oregon. Emerald ash borers, which have killed millions of ash trees in the east and midwest, are now moving into our region.
Wednesday, December 13th
Today the three of us took a walk in the OSU forest. Here we are in front of the old logging wheel at the Forestry Club cabin.
We took Charles to the OSU campus also, mainly to see the food delivery robots in action. Since it was quite cold, we decided to have hot chocolate. We have the app all set up, so it wasn’t too hard to place the order and say where we wanted it to be delivered. The only glitch is that when we ordered three hot chocolates (Swiss Miss), the app informed us that the most we could order was two. Well, okay, two would have to do.
When your order arrives, you use the app to identify yourself. Then the top flips open. Aah…we could almost taste that hot chocolate already.Oops! No drinks. Just two large cartons of Swiss Miss powder packets. The robots serve about a dozen campus entities. Most of them are cafes and restaurants, but…some of them are convenience stores and it’s not easy to tell which is which. Good thing the maximum was two.
Thursday, December 14th
Eve still has nasal swelling but has been feeling a lot better. So good, in fact, that we made short work of this 500 piece puzzle.
Monday, December 18th (Andrea’s birthday)
We’ve been running around getting our gifts ready for an early Xmas and Birthday celebration up at the Andees’ in Vancouver. Here are the things we had to haul up with us. The Charles Leclerc F1 shirt, ordered from Germany, arrived just in the nick of time.
We drove up to Vancouver in the afternoon and had a nice spaghetti dinner, followed by our gift exchange. We did the exchange early because Andy and Andi are leaving this Friday on a trip to Spain.
We had a chance to visit with the English china that once belonged to Lizzie Spanswick Chambers, E’s paternal grandmother. Here are a few pieces as seen on Andrea’s table in Vancouver.
In the evening we went to see Priscilla at the Darkside. We liked it very much, at least at first. The period cars were great as were all the clothes. So was the portrait of Elvis, both in the script and by the actor, Jacob Elbow, who did a great job of reproducing some of Elvis’s voice mannerisms. It was a fascinating story too. It’s all from Priscilla Presley’s book, which E has read and liked a lot. Some of the scenes were filmed in Graceland, which gave them a special kind of eerie realism. But man did that movie go on and on and on. It’s about two hours long, but the second hour seemed like three all by itself. When we discussed it afterward, we found out that we had both wanted to bail at about the ninety minute mark.
Earlier in the day we did a short hike in nearby Chip Ross Park. We went clockwise around the main loop and got four thousand steps and twenty-two floors as recorded by phone and watch. Now we don’t really trust those devices, especially about floors climbed. The counts are sometimes infuriatingly low. Today’s count seems maybe a little high. But we’ll take it. And we will remember to take this route again if we ever feel the need to get our floor count up.
Thursday, November 30
Another busy Thursday for E. First we had tertulia with J and R at Bodhi’s. Next she had to go up to Lake Oswego–about 65 miles away–for a 1:15 appointment. The doctor’s office is conveniently located just west of the Bridgeport Village shops and not far east of the La Provence bakery/restaurant. E managed to squeeze in a visit to both of those. Then it was back home in time for Laughter Yoga at 4:00, followed by a Lemon Meringue Pie Society meeting at 5:30.
M managed to get to the store–about three fourths of a mile away–and buy pickling vegetables. He also got some of the pickling done. (He does refrigerator pickles, which are easy.) He then raked up some late falling leaves from the side yard and spread them around in the flower beds. On a sudden impulse he got up on the roof and swept away the tangle of leaves and branches that had been slowly increasing in size over the last four years. He also continues to work on his memoirs, averaging a couple of paragraphs per day.
Friday, December 1
Bought a Christmas tree. Maybe sometime we’ll get around to decorating it.
Saturday, December 2
It’s a lot warmer around here these days–highs in the 50’s–but also a lot wetter. It’s cloudy all the time with showers passing through at frequent intervals. Between showers, M raked apple tree leaves. With all the clouds it gets dark awful early. Today we went out to dinner at the Dizzy Hen. We got there around 5:20 and by then the light was mostly gone. Dinner was delicious. E loved the leek and persimmon pie.
Later on we watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which stars Tom Hanks as Fred Rodgers. In case you haven’t seen it, we’ll just mention that it is based on the true story of a magazine writer who was assigned to write a piece about Mr. Rodgers for Esquire in 1998. We liked the film very much.
Sunday, December 3
We thawed out some magdalenas for breakfast this morning, real Spanish ones from La Tienda. My, they’re good. Our new mantra–borrowed from a Spanish friend–is “Las magdalenas son mi salvación.”
After breakfast we did grocery shopping. This chore had to be done today as we will be spending most of tomorrow in Lake Oswego, where E is scheduled for surgery to straighten out her deviated septum. An important item on the shopping list was a tub of Tillamook Peanut Butter Chocolate ice cream, which will be required for successful recovery from the procedure.
As our reward for completing the grocery shopping, we went downtown intending to have a coffee at Tried and True and possibly do some Xmas shopping at a couple of nearby clothing stores. That worked out well.
Monday, December 4
E’s surgery went fine. Now comes the recovery, which is not much fun for this sort of procedure.
Tuesday, December 5
We got some packages today, including our favorite sort of Texas grapefruit. That should be of some assistance with E’s recovery.
Our weather continues to be rainy, but only normally rainy. It’s been worse up Seattle way. This weather pattern–the Pineapple Express–comes from the direction of Hawaii and brings warmer temperatures as well as lots of rain.
These jump-up pansies think the weather is just fine.
And here’s a cute little blackberry popping up where it is NOT WANTED.
Wednesday, December 7
E’s recovery continues. Some cardamom buns have been delivered to assist us. We’ve managed to decorate the tree and M is thinking of putting up some outside lights if there’s ever a pause in the rain.
E went grocery shopping at the Co-op today and when she came out she had some trouble finding her car.
Wednesday, November 22
We’re going to K and J’s house for Thanksgiving tomorrow and E has promised to bring a blackberry pie. So that was the beginning of today’s business…but you know…if you’re making one pie…why not make a couple of others? So M made a pumpkin one and E put together a pecan one. And then, if you have all these pies…well, you might as well eat some. We didn’t touch the blackberry, but we did put a dent in the other two. It was enough to make a person feel mildly ill. Good though.
Thursday, November 23
K and J put on a very well-organized dinner for twenty-four. People brought sides and desserts; J cooked the turkey and managed everything. Before dinner K brought out his bingo equipment, which was pretty impressive, and we all played a few rounds. Winners received hand-knitted caps. Neither M nor E won any rounds, but K kindly provided a choice of consolation prizes. The food and drink were delicious and the invitees made for very pleasant company. Among the group were Andi and Andy, as well as three of Becca’s old friends, including, of course, K himself. E’s pie went fast.
Sunday, November 26
It’s cold and rainless these days with nighttime temperatures in the low 20’s. Mornings are foggy and the cold hangs around until the fog burns off at around 10:00 or 11:00. Also, there’s lots of frost.
More wood from the old bins. M seems to like keeping it around.
Monday, November 27
We did our grocery shopping early this morning. When the fog lifted, M went over and fetched the Jaguar from its hiding place and we headed off to the coast. Just ten miles from Newport we turned off at Toledo, looking to take the scenic route into town via North Bay Road. We promptly got lost and ended up on the road to Elk City, which was very much in the wrong direction. We turned around and went back to Toledo and found the correct turn at an abandoned gas station. The North Bay route is slow because it winds along the contours of Yaquina Bay, but it’s pretty and when when you finally get there, it takes you right onto the waterfront. We had lunch there and heard lots of sea lion barking somewhere nearby. We went to investigate.
Lots of work in the yard lately–mostly just dealing with leaves and apples and doing a final round of planting. M has also decided to restructure the sad looking raspberry bed and refurbish the compost bins. E went to the nursery and got two new ornamental kale plants, one purple and one white. She planted in a bare spot near our front door, where they added a nice bit of winter color.
Monday, November 13
E looked out this morning to admire her new kale plants. Oh dear, oh dear. Deer. The purple one was beheaded with its torso half consumed. The white one had just been pulled out of the ground.
E has transplanted the remains to the backyard, which has a fence.
Meanwhile, our flame maple has just about flamed out.
Tuesday, November 14
M was really enjoying his berry patch project, so much so that he forgot to go to his eye appointment. Oof! He’s had to reschedule for January.
Wednesday, November 15th
Not much rain today, but lots of mist and low clouds. Cool but not cold. We went for a walk on Road 200 in the OSU Dunn Forest.
A many-trunked maple at the edge of a fir plantation. The firs behind it are unusually tall and skinny.
Here we saw a large maple that looks like it partially fell, perhaps a decade ago. It didn’t quite make it to the ground and stayed alive. Nowadays, it hosts a thriving colony of ferns and its smaller branches are growing straight up and look like trees themselves. .
Thursday, November 16th
At was another crazy day for E, starting out with a sonacardiogram at 7:00 AM, then exercise class at 10:30, followed by lunch with the THEPAJ at a newly opened restaurant called Odd Bird. In the afternoon there was Laughter Yoga via Zoom plus a visit to Leslie the seamstress. In between times, she made herTurkish soup, which involved a trip to the supermarket to procure the needed kale (non-ornamental), onions, and red potatoes.
M worked outside in the morning and finished up his compost bin project. The compost bins came with the house. They were made with 4×6 posts and 2×8(!) side planks. The posts were pressure-treated–probably in the old way with chemicals that aren’t used anymore. For better or worse, they’re going to last for a while longer. M’s been replacing the side planks. They were not treated and have been rotting away, just as they ought to.
Here’s a piece of the old wood…
…and here’s the new look. E has always felt that the compost bins were an eyesore. She is very pleased.
Saturday, November 17th
E has learned that she was exposed to Covid a few days ago. She tested negative this morning but plans to keep testing for a few more days.
Sunday, November 19th
We did desk work this morning, making some plane reservations for a trip in January and, more importantly, dealing with various tasks required by E’s position as Deputy Assistant Gift Coordinator for Santa Enterprises.
In late morning the sun came out and we took a pre-lunch walk up the hill to the Brandis Natural Area. It’s a good year for mushrooms. We saw hundreds of tiny ones in the natural area, many of them growing in the moss on the sides of trees. Then, as we were walking home, we found these large ones next at an apartment complex .
We went up to Vancouver, WA for a formal cake tasting arranged by A.
Out of six cakes, tasters showed greatest enthusiasm for white, chocolate, white chocolate, and red velvet. Banana and pink champagne trailed the field. Among the fillings, marionberry, raspberry and chocolate fudge led the way; the lemon was disappointing.
Tuesday, October 31st
We had quite a number of treat seekers at our house, several dozen all told. It looked like at least one out-of-neighborhood car brought kids to our area, possibly attracted by our neighbor’s display across the street.
Wednesday, November 1st
E grabbed this backyard photo when we had a few minutes of sun.
We put in our flame maple almost exactly three years ago. Back then it was small enough to fit in the back of the car– and its leaves were green.
Thursday, November 2nd
Here’s how E has been showing up for Zoom sessions lately…
Participant in Laughter Yoga class
Sunday, November 5th
This morning the forecast called for a three hour pause in the rain. We took the opportunity to drive down to the Finley Wildlife Reserve and hike the Mill Hill Loop.
The Mill Hill Loop starts in an oak forest…
…and continues into a area that’s mostly fir.
The reserve is bounded on three sides by agricultural land. The light green in the background here is a grass seed field.
By mid-afternoon the rain had returned, but by then we were safe inside.
Monday, November 6th
Grocery shopping and yoga today. (Yoga of the non-laughing kind.) M worked a little on his memoir. He’s writing about college days now. He says that this sort of work has advantages and disadvantages. The good thing is that when he starts writing certain things down he remembers certain other things, some of them quite nice. Also, some of his remembered failures don’t look quite so bad when examined in detail. So that’s fine. On the other hand, to the extent that he gets lost in the past, he misses out on the present. He doesn’t actually wander around bumping into walls, but it’s close…as E has noticed.
We had a hard frost ten days ago, but since then it’s been warmer and wetter. So we still have a few flowers blooming in the rain. Between showers, E goes out back and rescues them..
Our day started with almond croissants and a lazy few hours of checking up on the news of the world. Which was mostly bad, and was especially bad in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza.
Then we did some window washing, which is good for the body and good for the soul–especially if administered in small doses. The weather this week has been beautiful, 75 and sunny, but the forecast says that the good times are soon to end.
We accomplished another chore when we moved the Jaguar out of the garage and into a storage unit. Given the good weather, this pretty much required us to first spend an hour or so driving around the countryside with the top down. Nice. Then we put the car away, which was a little sad. It’s nice having it in the garage even if just to look at as you walk by. On the other hand, with two cars in the garage, there was barely room to do any walking. So today we also celebrated the end of cramped conditions. Now, not only can we stroll around the garage like lord and lady of the manor, we can get in and out of the Ioniq 5 without contortions.
After that, it was time to deal with some of our large oversupply of apples from our tree. M cored some, not enough to make much of a dent in the total inventory, but enough for E to conjure up both a batch of applesauce and a pan of an upstate NY recipe called Barbara’s apple crisp. By then it was getting on toward supper time. We were tempted to just eat up all the apple crisp and call that a meal, but instead we managed to have a little supper first–onion pie and steamed chard. Then we only ate half the apple crisp.
Monday, October 9
Cold and wet today, with a steady rain all morning. We did our grocery shopping and then E went off to attend a sustainability fair at the county library. She heard about how the owners of a local restaurant are trying to build sustainability into all aspects of their operation. Their to-go containers, for example, are returnable and require a deposit. Their supply chain is organized so as to have as few individual deliveries as possible and they avoid using any pre-processed ingredients.
Meanwhile, M went back to the rock store to get more stepping stones for his back yard path project. He finished the first phase of the project last week and now he is ready–in theory–to do the final phase. But will he now run right out there to work in the rain? Maybe not.
In the evening, after another serving of apple crisp, we watched the final installment of the Frida Kahlo documentary on Passport. It was good to get a more fleshed out understanding of her life and work.
Tuesday, October 10
We had an appointment today to get COVID vaccinations at a Walgreen’s. We showed up on time, only to find that in actual fact they had no vaccine. It would have been nice to have been so informed. But then, our friend T told us that the Good Samaritan Hospital pharmacy was giving walk-in COVID vaccinations. So we headed up there. There were a few people ahead of us, but the wait was not overly long and E was able to get her shot. M, however, was refused service and told to return when he could provide sufficient documentation. Apparently having just arrived from Mars, M had not thought it necessary to bring his medicare card.
The strangest thing about the experience though, was the waiting room. The Good Sam pharmacy has only a small waiting area with five chairs and very limited standing room. And since they were serving the normal stream of patients picking up prescriptions as well as the additional stream of vaccination seekers, there were a lot of people in the room for the entire time we were waiting. For those of us whose minds were on COVID, that seemed terribly wrong.
Wednesday, October 11
E has been quite pensive lately. This is natural, as she is approaching a milestone birthday early next year, which gives one pause. She has not shared all her thoughts, but she has mentioned to Andrea that after much serious consideration, she has decided about the cake: a white cake with white frosting and raspberry filling.
Saturday, October 14
M went out driving his truck in the Cascades today, up in the area around Tombstone Pass. First he drove east on U.S. Highway 20 for an hour and a quarter, climbing up over the pass and then down into the dip between passes until he reached a sno-park called Lava Lake. There he turned onto a forest road leading north. The plan was to explore the logging roads in the area, moving generally northwest. He wanted to find a place called the South Pyramid Horse Camp, where he might rest and eat his meagre lunch of Nugo bar, pineapple juice and trail mix. From there he would navigate southwest so as to loop back to highway 20. Then he could go home. It looked fairly simple on the map. (Ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha.)The challenge would be the usual one: there would be many, many more roads in the real world than were shown on the map, which meant that GPS, per se, would be of little help. Of course that’s the fun of it…sort of.
This road seemed like it might lead in the general direction of the South Pyramid Horse Camp. But it didn’t. Instead it came to a dead end at the top of the mountain about a mile past this point. Rats. Nice views though.
Maybe the road he’s looking for is down there somewhere? Hmm.
The high places across the way are called the Chimney Peaks. Thanks goodness for clearcuts; otherwise you’d never get to see anything.
And here it is–the South Pyramid Horse Camp. Nice place to find, especially if you found yourself pulling a horse trailer through a thick forest. You could leave your truck and trailer here and ride off into the Middle Santiam Wilderness. The lack of any visible horse poop suggests either a fanatic cleanup crew or very little recent use.
There were several of these modern hitching posts.
After lunch at the horse camp, all M had to do was to navigate about ten miles back to Highway 20. The first eight miles were easy, and then things fell apart. Post mortem analysis showed that he made not one, but two wrong turns. You can see his route by following the penciled in arrows on the map. Start on the right side of the map near Lava Lake at the little white Highway 20 marker. Black arrows show where he went; the red arrow shows where he was supposed to go. Note how well he did finding his way north and then west to the South Pyramid Horse Camp. See how he then headed south, back toward the highway. See how he came quite close. But then, at that remote intersection marked by the circle, it all went wrong. Sigh. He ended up going north(!) and didn’t get out of the forest till he had driven around Moose Mountain and followed Moose Creek Road all the way down to the other Highway 20 marker at the far left of the map. That took more than an hour.
Sunday, October 15
We met up with some friends and went to the Greekfest today, or should we say the Greekfeast? Yes, they have music and dancing, but it’s mostly about food. Greekfest comes every year at about this time and serves as a fundraiser for a local Greek Orthodox congregation. The festival is held in the same hall where E and M’s wedding reception took place some twenty-seven years ago. This year there were eight of us who made the excursion. Our friends J, B, and L came first to our house. From there they got a ride to the church in E’s new electric car. At the church we met up and H and T and proceeded to the business at hand. Our many course meal was served in a big white tent pitched just north of the church hall. After the meal, we all bought Greekfest desserts to take away. The group then reassembled at our house to enjoy their treats along with tiny cups of Greek coffee, (which is not to be confused with Turkish coffee, or is it?) The weather, unexpectedly, turned sunny and warm and we were able to move the party out onto the patio. M made a bit of a bungle serving the coffee, but despite this it was a fine occasion.
Monday, October 16
M finally got his COVID shot, at a Rite-Aid in Lebanon.
Tuesday, October 17
We started preparing for our camping trip. M was feverish and weak from his vaccination.
Wednesday, October 18
M’s fever broke at around 4:00 AM and in the morning he was good to go. While E took her friend Asher for a forest walk, M went shopping for last minute camping supplies: a bundle of firewood and ingredients for s’mores. Also some canned margaritas from the liquor store. Cutwater is our brand; they use real tequila and enough of it. Thus equipped, we packed up the truck and headed over to the coast, stopping at La Rockita in Philomath for lunch. We had reserved a yurt at Tugman State Park south of Reedsport, Oregon. We took our little fridge with us. It ran on 12 volts in the truck on the way over; we plugged it in to the 110 when we got to the yurt. Nice.
Pretty good weather on the coast, mostly sunny skies with the temperature in the 60’s. We got to Tugman around 4:00 and moved into our new home. E was impressed that it bore her initial.
Darkness comes early these days and we had to put the porch light on and use our headlamps to clean up after dinner. We went to bed early, but M woke up just after midnight and went outside. He ended up sitting for a time looking up at the stars and listening for what there was to hear. For one thing, he could hear the traffic on U.S. Highway 101. Vehicles passed by at roughly one minute intervals. Usually, what he heard was not engine noise, but only the whoosh of a large, fast-moving object pushing the air aside as it hurtled on its way. The sound would build gradually as each car approached and then fall away as it passed. You couldn’t call it a natural sound, but it wasn’t all that different from the rushing sound that a brisk wind makes as it pushes its way through the trees. Once in a while some kind of large truck would go by and in that case the sound of buffeted air would be accompanied by something else, either the soft whine of an engine running easily downhill or else the roar of a diesel under load as the semi climbed upward. The latter had a sort of burble to it, almost as if you could hear the rapid sequence of individual explosions in the cylinders.
And in the moments when there was no traffic? Well, the ocean was more than two miles away, but the wind was blowing from that direction. There was always a soft roar of white noise from the crashing of that faraway surf.
Thursday, October 19
After breakfast we drove about fifteen miles up the coast and went for a hike in the area around the mouth of the Siltcoos River.
For the first half hour we walked through the dunes in a blanket of mist. There are miles and miles of dune land here. Some of it is bare sand, but much of it is covered with vegetation, ranging from shrubs and grasses to mature pine forests.
The morning mist burned off pretty quickly. The water at the bottom of this photo is the main channel of the Siltcoos.
Eventually we reached the beach and walked along there for a mile or so.
On the hike back from the beach, refreshments were served.
Back home at the yurt, we had hamburgers for dinner–during daylight–and then made s’mores on the fire in the dark.
Friday, October 20
We got up early this morning and took a pre-breakfast walk to the shore of Eel Lake, which is just a few hundred yards from the Tugman campground.
We’d started out in semi-darkness. By the time we got to the lake the world was noticeably brighter.
There was even some color involved.
By then it was breakfast time for sure, so we got ourselves back to the yurt. Now you might think that we would have eaten some kind of delicious bakery treats to help us start the day. But no, that’s not how we operate. We had oatmeal. Then we threw everything back in the truck and headed for home. An hour later we passed the town of Waldport, home of the Pacific Sourdough Bakery and decided to make a short stop there. Why, you might ask, had we not stopped there on Wednesday on our way down to Tugman State Park? It must have been due to the irresistible lure of our oatmeal.
E took Asher for a walk again today and this time M went along. E has been subbing for one of Asher’s owners who has been out of commission for dog walking. The good news is that said owner* is on the mend and and will be able to return to duty soon.
*Asher himself does not use the word ‘owner’ and instead refers to L as “one of my two very well-behaved human roommates.”
This is Verbascum thapsus, common name Great Mullein. It’s common over most of the world, says Wikipedia, but it ain’t very common around here, says us. How exactly did it get into this OSU forest clearcut?
What with one thing and another, it was 3:30 by the time we got ourselves packed into the truck. We travelled east through the towns of Lebanon and Sweet Home and into the mountains. We were headed for an old CCC campground called Yukwah on the banks of the South Santiam River. It was only an hour away, fortunately, so we had enough to time to set up camp, take a little walk along the river, and then have our dinner before it got too dark. You know it’s fall when it starts to get dark at 7:00 instead of 9:00. We were just washing up as the light got dim.
Saturday, September 16
Today was hiking day, so we could justify a big breakfast: eggs and potatoes with cheese along with sweet peppers from the garden. Very nice. But of course we had forgotten to bring bread, so we couldn’t use E’s old stovetop toaster gizmo. Sigh.
After breakfast we cleaned up the camp so that it wouldn’t look too horrible or too tempting while we were gone. Then we got back in the truck and drove the eighteen or so miles to the trailhead. The last 15 miles were gravel, fairly smooth in most places but also quite steep and always dusty. The route took us up out the South Santiam drainage, over the ridge and down into the Middle Santiam, offering a few nice views along the way.
We didn’t plan on a long hike, just a visit to the Middle Santiam Wilderness, one of our favorites places in the Cascades. From the trailhead the first 300 yards of the trail takes you through an area that was logged long ago but is now thickly forested with mature cedar, hemlock and fir. Only the presence of a few giant stumps reveals that it was once a clearcut.
There were many nurse logs in the area. Hard to say how old this one is. 25 yrs? 10? 5?
Another view of the same log.
After 300 yards, the trail comes to the line where the early 20th Century cutting stopped. From there you walk through living old growth forest with trees so big you can’t tilt your head back far enough to see their tops. At roughly the one mile mark, the trail reaches the river and that’s where the obstacle course part of our day began. First came a steep scramble to get down to the level of the river. Along the way, some satirist had placed a number of giant fallen trees, some demanding to be crawled under and others wanting to be climbed over. Okay, fine. Be that way. Then we got to the river, which is low at this time of year, shallow and only ten or twelve feet across. So you know the drill…change into your stream crossing shoes, tie your boots to your backpack and get ready to cross. We don’t hike with trekking poles, so our preparations also had to include searching around for some sturdy sticks to help us keep our balance in the water. Luckily, other people had already done the same and had kindly left their sticks to be found. Once across, it was time to rest a while till our feet dried. That at least was no hardship.
Then we walked another three quarters of mile along the trail, just to see the many three and four hundred year old trees growing on the steep slopes above the river. Of course one or two old trees had fallen across the trail, causing their own kind of fun. At a Y junction, we took neither road, just turned around, went back down the trail, and recrossed the river. Then we made our way back up one obstacle course and down another till we reached our true destination–the swimming hole.
The swimming hole from above, on the wrong side of the river.
The swimming hole from below. E reports that the water was really cold but invigorating.
The trees nearest the river are deciduous, but they seemed tall as well.
After the swimming it was time to go home. Here’s a little stream we crossed on the way back up to the parking lot.
We’d eaten some lunch up in the wilderness, but by the time we got back to camp we were starting to think about dinner. We weren’t too excited about it though because by then we had realized that some key parts of our delicious dinner had been left behind and were still sitting in our freezer back in Corvallis. Oops. Still, we managed to make a meal out of burgerless buns with all the trimmings. Luckily we had not forgotten to pack dessert.
After dinner we walked again along the river, this time leaving the path for a while and walking just beside the water on a very rocky beach. We heard some birds chattering and fired up the Merlin app, which informed us that we were listening to an American Dipper. We then caught a glimpse of it on the other side of the river: a small, dark colored bird that was hard to make out in the early evening light. We’d never heard this bird’s call before, except that E realized that the American Dipper had been featured on the Bird Note podcast just a few days ago, an odd coincidence. Then, five minutes later, when we came up out of the river bottom and approached the fishing platform, what did we see on the railing?
We think we’re beginning to understand how the Dipper got its name.
Sunday, September 17
The previous evening E said she wanted to get up in the night and go out and see the stars and that M should wake her. You bet, said M. Along about 3:00 AM, he gave it a try. “Time to get out and look at the stars,” said he. After a short pause, E answered, saying “Uh-uh. I just finished telling John to stop painting the floor green.” M could not argue with that and so did not persist. It was maybe just as well, since it was getting a little cold out at that point, low forties or worse. And there were too many tall trees blocking out the stars anyway.
In the morning we had a non-hiking day breakfast of E’s secret granola blend topped with yogurt and a homemade concoction of partially cooked fresh strawberries. Pretty good. Then it was time to pack up and head back home. Today was the final day of the season for Yukwah campground, so we were the last campers of the year at site #8.
We would have liked to move the table farther in, putting it closer to the grill and farther away from the road. But it was massive! Must have weighed hundreds of pounds. It was also old. It’s been a while since people made tabletops from 3’x10″ planks.
Monday, September 18
Did we sleep better last night than we had the two previous nights? Uh…yeah.
Once we got out of bed, we decided to go over to Albany and buy some vintage coffee cups that E has had her eye on. And while we were in town, we went over to WalMart where there is an Electrify America charging station. This would be the first time for us to charge the car anywhere except at home. We found an open 350v charger and after some stumbling about, we figured out how to make it work. We charged the Ioniq’s battery from 24% to 87% of its capacity in just 17 minutes, which is about a minute faster than Hyundai promises. Conditions, of course, were near ideal, with an ambient temperature of around 76 degrees.
We went for a hike to Drift Creek Falls, which is in the Coast Range near the town of Lincoln City. We hadn’t been there in ten years or so and we found some “improvements” to the trail and to the trailhead parking area. The were a lot of people on the trail and how could you blame them? It was the perfect day for hiking, partly cloudy with the temperature in the low seventies.
The highlight of this hike is the long suspension bridge above the waterfall. The creek is barely flowing this time of year, bit it’s still a pretty sight.
Were all those vertical notches made by previous versions of the waterfall? How old is this place anyway? It could be even older than we are.
We sat on a log to have our lunch. There were other, smaller logs nearby,, logs that you could just sit down on without getting into a major climbing project. But no, E wanted this one.
Another view from the bridge.
Friday, September 8
E went for another walk with her friend Asher, this time up to Cronemiller Lake near the OSU Arboretum. It was another fine early fall day, clear and calm.
Saturday, September 8
We got up early today, E well before 6:00 and M soon after. We’d signed up for a tour at a State Natural Area twenty miles away and we were supposed to get there before 8:00. By the time we finished our breakfast, decided what to wear, and packed up our water bottles and binoculars, it was just past 7:15. Off we went, gliding along in the Ioniq 5. We got to the parking area at 7:45 and found that we were among the last to arrive. Our tour mates were no sluggards, despite their combined ages running well into the four figure range.
After a general presentation by staff of the Luckiamute Watershed Council in the parking area, we walked a couple of hundred yards to our first stop, a bird banding operation in full swing. The banding team included Josée Rousseau, a post doc fellow at the Ornithology Lab at Cornell who got her PhD here in Corvallis. She was doing the examination and banding. Other team members included a data recorder, who made a record of Rousseau’s observations, and a group of five or six runners. The runners’ job was to set up the mist nets and then check them at regular intervals. When they found birds, they would extricate them from the net and put them into small cloth bags for transport to the banding station. At the station Rousseau measured each bird and looked for various clues that would allow her to determine the bird’s age. As she announced her findings, another team member entered them into a ledger.
The bird bander at work, watched by another member of the team. In the background you can see a bagged bird awaiting its turn to be examined and banded.
Here Rousseau is looking at the width of the various color bands on the wings of this bird to help determine its age.
This photo shows how to hold a wild bird, the so-called birder’s grip. Also visible is the band on the bird’s left leg.
Banding groups such as this one get the bands from the North American Bird Banding Laboratory of the U. S. Geological Survey. The NABBL keeps a database of band numbers that includes a history of all encounters with banded birds. People who run across banded birds (alive or not) can check that database to see where and when the bird was first banded. They are also asked to go to the NABBL website and enter the details of their own encounter.
After spending about 45 minutes at the banding station, we left the banding team to their work and started off on a loop tour of the restoration area. The North Luckiamute State Natural Area ( NLSNAT) includes a total of 615 acres at the confluence the Luckiamute and the Willamette rivers. The entire area is a natural flood plain, but of course some areas are lower than others. About 275 acres are so low that they are flooded almost every year. These sections have never been used for agriculture and remain in their natural state, with towering cottonwoods and a thick understory of smaller trees and shrubs. This kind of riverside forest is called a gallery forest and once grew on both sides of the Willamette along the entire length of the valley. Very little of this forest remains because in most places farmers were able to extend their fields right up to the edge of the river.
In addition to the 275 acres of habitat that was never cleared, various conservation initiatives have allowed for the purchase of 340 additional nearby acres. This land had been used for agriculture for over a hundred years. This agricultural use ended in 2012 and restoration began. The restoration work was done in five phases and our tour guides were able to show us the results. Our first stop was Phase 5, the most recent one, which consists of one 60 acre field that was planted with native species trees and shrubs in 2020. The plants there are now just one to three feet tall and since they were planted in rows the area still resembles a cultivated field. The older phases, however, show what such a ‘field’ can become. Cottonwood trees planted just ten years ago are already twenty feet tall and protrude from a dense ten foot high understory. They have already become a native species forest.
We were passing through one of these areas when M caught a glimpse of sudden movement just beside the trail. When he stopped to take a good look, whatever it was seemed to have disappeared. But he finally made it out. It was a very well camouflaged frog:
The frog gets its name from the bright red coloring on the underside of its legs, which is not, alas, visible in this photo.
When we pointed it out to the others, one of our guides identified it as a Northern Red-legged Frog (Rana aurora) and told us that it was listed as a “Species of Concern” by federal and state agencies due to habitat loss and displacement by invasive American bullfrogs. It was nice to see evidence that this newly created habitat was doing its job.
We got home from our tour at around noon, in time to rest up for our next event of the day, a birthday party for our friend J, who recently got herself some shiny new shoulder hardware. She’s been working hard on PT and we wish her well as she faces the challenges of regaining her full range of motion. At the party, we all sat in her nicely shaded back yard enjoying good food and great conversation.
Monday, September 11
Errands and appointments today, plus grocery shopping. E had Zoom yoga. M took the Ioniq 5 for its first wash.
Tuesday, September 12
It was time for a meeting of E’s THEPAJ group, this one hosted by P at her cottage on the coast. The other members usually carpool to and from, and it was E’s turn to drive, which was fine with her since she’d get to show off her new car. The car lived up to expectations, making it there and back with 132 miles of charge still left.
Three members pose at the recent THEPAJ gathering. H,A and P are in the picture. E took the photo. T and J were absent.
