Fidget

Wow, the summer is moving right along. The weekend right after our anniversary I took a drive down to the Bay Area to visit my family. Blair couldn’t go because he was still in the middle of summer teaching, but a friend from church has elderly parents living down in Santa Cruz so she and I drove down together to share gas & driving. We had been planning to take my car, since it gets good gas mileage, but then we discovered a coolant leak (we had overheated on our trip to Bend, that’s probably why) so we ended up taking LL’s minivan. It had cruise control which made such a difference. I wasn’t exhausted like I usually am after the 10 hour trip.

I got to hang out with my “kids.” Except now they are young adults. My youngest 2 sisters made the flower fairies shown above, and they remind me of the things SS and I used to make when we were their age. I also got to hang out with my siblings that are married with their spouses. That was fun - thanks S & N for hosting me, and J & S for treating me to a lovely dinner.

Big changes at my parents’ house - Grandma M has come to live with them, and GC & RC now live in the “dorm” that was constructed in what used to be the garage. It felt really strange to go into a new room in the old house I grew up in. It was also good to see my Grandma since I haven’t much in recent years. Everybody is adjusting to each other, and it’s often not easy especially for my Mom since my Grandma needs a lot of help. I was only there for a few days but I was wishing I lived close so I could help with cooking and driving and such. I did drive the ‘burb, which felt like driving a tank - I mean it’s an automatic so it’s actually easier to drive than my honda, but it’s very wide, long, and heavy.

I took MA and HN to go visit JI and her new little guy, JMI. He was born premature, just little less early than his big brother SM was, 2 years ago. As of this writing he is home from the NICU and doing well. It was really special to be able to see him when he was just 10 days old.

Click here to see pictures.

So, that was 2 weeks ago now… I have had a busy time with work and trying to keep up with my fitness regimen - we are planning to hike the South Sister again this year and I vow it won’t hurt as much this time! Other than those activities I’ve just been hanging out and enjoying the warm and mostly sunny weather. I’m also knitting a sampler from a book I checked out from the library about how to design your own sweaters, “Sweater Workshop” by Jacqueline Fee. That’s fun. I have gotten so many invitations from friends to join Facebook that I finally did. It’s actually caused me to get in touch with a few friends-from-the-past so that’s good.

What’s new with you?

Aren’t these pretty? BN got them for me to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary. That’s not all - he also made me a wooden jewelry box with embedded magnets to keep the lid on. He used some exotic hardwoods he’d gotten for Christmas - purple heart and zebra wood. I love the way the cross grains and lengthwise grains create subtle contrasting surfaces. Inside was a whole collection of silver earrings - I’d been wanting some hoops to wear all the time comfortably with no posts poking into my head.

We took a weekend getaway to Bend, which is east of Eugene. We stopped for lunch at Sahalie falls. It was a warm day but sitting within sight of the falls was cold! The rushing water really cooled the air.

Our hotel room looked out over the Deschutes river, which had a slight dam to create a calm surface for ducks and geese in Drake park downtown. We drove a short ways into downtown to find some dinner, and discovered that there was a pro bicycle racing event going on right in the middle of town - they’d closed off a several-block area and the racers did laps. Our dinner location was right at the corner of the home stretch and after we ate we watched the women’s race. It was very exciting!

From there we went to watch Wall-e. It was a sweet little movie. I appreciated that the tone wasn’t preachy (it could easily have been, with a planet made uninhabitable by garbage and the human race turned totally sedentary) and I think perhaps we were meant to identify with the robots more than the humans? It was definitely more about Wall-e and Eve than about the cruise passengers.

On Saturday morning we went to Smith Rock. We hiked up to the top of one of the formations and got some great views of Central Oregon, the various Cascade peaks, and a cute little lizard.

Smith Rock State Park is a rock-climbing hotspot, and we observed some climbers on Monkey Face, a huge pillar that’s a signature feature of the park. If you click on the image above you can see a climber right below the shadow on the lower left face.

We were very hot and sweaty after our hike, and we wanted to go swimming in Tumalo creek but we figured we’d go back to Bend first and get some lunch. A short way into our drive back we realized the car was overheating. To make a long story short, we did make it out to the creek to swim, quite a bit later than we’d planned, and after learning several new facts about the cooling system of the car, plus discovering the insider trick of pouring roadside creek water over the engine to cool it off.

When we got back to town after our swim, we cleaned up and went to check out the street fair that was going on downtown. (When we planned our trip we had no idea that Bend was going to be such a happening spot this weekend!) There were lots of booths selling art and crafted goodies, and several live bands. One of them was really groovy and we stayed to listen. The singers reminded us of some girls we’d heard singing down by the creek. I think it was the same girls.

We ate dinner at Typhoon, a very good Thai place. Best Thai we’d had in awhile, and it felt very upscale without being too pricey. Bend as a whole is so much more upscale than Eugene, astonishingly so. After a leisurely breakfast on Sunday morning we strolled in Drake park and looked at the geese and ducks.

Driving home, we took a detour to Waldo Lake, where we’d been with my family last summer camping in the Cascades. The mosquitoes were just as vicious this year, but we scampered past them as best we could and the lake was cold, clear and refreshing. I’m amazed by how many activities we fit into this trip - besides the ones we planned on, even. It was a lot of fun.

This week was Spring Break - or, as the Canadians do, we should call it March Break. This year we didn’t go out of town, rather we just took a day trip on Thursday. Even here in Eugene, we’ve had snow flurries all week (nothing that stuck around, but still! Hello, chilly! Where is spring and what have you done to it?). So, we packed our snow gear and tire chains and went cross-country skiing at Hoodoo.

It was a lovely day. The snow was much fresher than our X-C day last year, the trails were groomed, and the sun was out. Cross country skiing is so much easier to become competent in than downhill. But it is an intense workout - it feels less “impactful” than running, but you are in constant motion and your muscles get worked. I’m still a bit sore 4 days later.

We didn’t bring the camera on the trails but here’s a picture of us back at the car. My face looks like it was sunburned but I think it’s just the red Honda reflecting the intense sunlight.

Then, we went to Belknap Hot Springs. It’s a mountain resort along the McKenzie river and they have a swimming pool fed from a hot spring. It was nice to go in the hot water after our day of snow exertion. It wasn’t too, too hot. Just like a nice hot bath. Here’s the view from across the river, where the actual hot spring bubbles up. Apparently they pipe it across the river. All that steam rising from the pool is quite impressive, I guess the day was pretty cold!

… about my courageous husband. When we were starting out on our hike to the South Sister, during the first hour, BN voiced an idea - wouldn’t it be fun to do this hike at night and get to the top in time for the sunrise? Well, I thought he was nuts and would forget the idea by the time we’d actually done the hike. But, a short week later, he did it! Got some great photos, too. Check it out. (The fresh memory of being barely able to walk earlier in the week, plus doubting I could hike all night with no sleep, prevented me from going with him!)

Last weekend we attacked the South Sister, Oregon’s 3rd-tallest mountain at 10,358 feet. The trail we took has 4,900 feet of elevation gain over about 6 miles, so yeah, it’s steep. It’s a “non-technical” climb, as we were warned by the sign at the trailhead. Only climbers need apply!

We drove to Devil’s Lake on Saturday night, pitched our tent and cooked some curry. We wanted to get an early start and were on the trail before 7 on Sunday morning.

This trail seemed a lot longer than 6 miles, and most of it is very steep except for a sandy, rolling plateau that gives a great view of the intimidating peak you’re about to tackle, and a pretty good idea that you’ve got a long way to go, and a few strong clues that it ain’t getting any easier from here…

Then, the section we’ve been dreading: the gravelly, scree-strewn scramble to the top. Miles of gray, and more miles of red, gravel and rubble. My right hip/thigh started to hurt on this intense uphill. I have been fairly active all summer, hiking, riding my bike, and such, but I haven’t been doing my strength/stretch routine (or running much since, the Butte to Butte.) So I had quite a bit of pain from my muscles and joints being out of condition, but I wasn’t having any endurance problems. I was expecting major altitude issues, because I’d experienced that so much in the past, but breathing was really not the problem this time. Kinda strange…

The South Sister has a very short hiking season, because it’s covered in snow most of the year. At this time, though, there’s no snow on the actual trails and it wasn’t cold until we got to the top. Then, it was absolutely freezing due to high winds whistling across the glaciers and right through our clothes. BRRR! We had planned to eat lunch at the very summit, but after spending a short while getting buffeted by all that windchill up there, we decided to have a second course a bit lower down, inside the crater where there was a bit more shelter from the icy wind. (It’s hard to smile when your teeth are chattering, see below)

Of course, the main reason people climb the South Sister is the awesome views. On a clear day, they say, you can see all the way down to Mt Shasta in California and all the way up to Mt Ranier in Washington. This was a moderately clear day, and it was quite a stunning view, except to the north, where Mts Adams and Hood were mostly obscured by the thick smoke from a raging forest fire that was threatening the vacation homes outside Sisters, Oregon, until it rained the following Tuesday…

For those of you reading this who came to Cascade Lakes this summer, we got an awesome all-in-one view of the region we were in for that trip, which I’ve labeled above. Check out Sparks Lake, the big twisty one just to the right of Bachelor. It’s dried up a lot in one month! If we went there now, we’d be walking in mud rather than water!

I was all psyched up for the ascent, and it was tough, and my leg was painin’ me. But I have to say, the way down was so much worse. The gravel sections were slippery, seemed unending, and the high winds were constantly blowing grit into my eyes. (There were quite a few other people on the trail, as you can see from the picture above.) By the time we got to the flat(ish) area, it was too late for us to enjoy it and even the gentle uphills caused me to limp since I could barely lift my stiff right leg. All those downhills killed our knees, and my toes had that stingy, pinched feeling. Then there was the final descent down through woodsy switchbacks, which hadn’t seemed like a big deal in the morning when it was cool and we were anticipating the attack on the summit. Going down it was not a pleasant trip, hobbling down each stretch of downhill hoping it was the last. It wasn’t. Nope, neither was that one… that part was maybe 1.5 miles, but it felt more like 4.

But, obviously, we made it. And lived to tell the tale. Happily, our car was a short distance from this sign, and we hobbled over and grabbed our swimming gear. It was after 5, and still windy, but we were glad for the chance to drive over to Elk Lake for a quick dip, to rinse off all that gritty trail dust. (No way were we going into Devil’s Lake. Remember how cold it was!) My feet were killing me and I turned the low vents on full-strength heat in the car - that felt really good! We ate dinner out, back in Eugene, and the restaurant had a fire pit right near our table. A perfect ending to our adventure.

Last weekend was our annual church Family Camp. It was the usual old-fashioned good time of sports and games, water-balloon wars, and baptisms down by the river. A highlight for me this year was that our resident jewelry designer, EL, had brought all of her supplies and held bead workshops for us crafty types. I was interested in making something with shells since I hadn’t worked with them before. Here’s my finished necklace:

The most-awesomest swimming area ever is about 20 minutes from the camp, Colliding Rivers. You can jump from the rocks, travel down the rushing stream, (deep, though - no dangerous rapids) and as we tried for the first time this year, riverboarding!

I didn’t really know about the existence of this sport before this week. The picture at left is not of anyone in our group, and we didn’t have any fancy equipment - just a home-made wooden board with a normal (non-bungee) rope and a water-ski type handlebar. But we surfed! I say “we” because I did give it a go, and almost got all the way to a standing position. BN basically rocked, getting up on his first try and staying steady for quite awhile.

Before any of this could happen, the guys had to find a way to anchor the rope well upstream from our chosen rapid (a perfect spot, too - smooth, fast-flowing rapids with no big rocks sticking out.) In order to do that they had to dislodge a huge log from its perch among the cliffs, get it floated across the river without letting it get sucked downstream, and get it firmly lodged with rocks on the side closer to the smooth rapids. I was skeptical that it would all work out and be worth the effort but the group got 2 days of riverboarding out of it.

After camp, BN and I drove to Diamond Lake (with a view of Mt. Theilsen)…

… and camped out one more night to watch the meteor shower, which was at its peak during that time, and there was no moon. It was amazing. I’ve never seen so many stars, and it was actually not that dark in spite of no moon. We didn’t need flashlights to get down to the boat dock where we got all cozy in our mummy bags with camping mattresses and even pillows. The trouble was, I was all worn out from our big day of swimming and I was too comfortable. So I wasn’t able to stay awake for very long. But we did see a lot of shooting stars (compared to most nights!) and I’ve never seen the Milky Way so bright, so clearly visible, and stretching all the way across the sky. Wow!

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Psalm 19:1

For this summer’s main event, we went camping with my parents and four youngest siblings. They had never been up here to Oregon, except MA and RC who made separate visits within the last year. Our apartment was bursting at the seams for a few days, while we got all ready to go and enjoyed some local activities such as touring the campus, walking up Donald, swimming in our pool, and visiting the grocery palace. We also went blueberry picking!

It was fun to host my family in my home - something I’d never done before, even when I lived on my own in my studio apartment I don’t think I had more than 2 or 3 of my family there at one time. I cooked for 8, and they liked the food. I felt very gratified. I’m like the Italian grandma we never had - “eat, eat!”

We camped at Little Lava Lake. (With views of Mt. Bachelor and the South Sister.) Our campsite was just a short distance from the water and we did a lot of swimming and rafting. RC and GC swam all the way across!

A creek came out of the lake and passed right next to our site, and on the first day BN led us on a log-riding adventure. We each had our own log, except RC and HN were sharing a big one and they kept rolling off… We had to paddle because the current wasn’t much at all… there was a deep layer of ooze at the bottom, and lots of floating crud that was so disgusting it was hard to believe it was real. It was like… like… sea serpent barf. Or something. My stomach hurt from laughing and my legs hurt from scraping them on the stumps of branches sticking out of my log.

We took day trips to various other lakes:

Waldo lake is famous for being very clear and blue. It was beautiful, the weather was nice, and the water was cold but swimmable. We had an easy swim out to several tiny islands, and took turns with the swimming goggles looking under the water. Looking out towards the deep center of the lake was an intense shade of blue.

Waldo lake is also famous for mosquitos. I’m pretty sure I got my most painful bug bites while I was there. But other than that, it’s perfect.

We took a long hike (it turned out to be about 11 miles!) on a trail that passed 5 or 6 lakes. We stopped for lunch and a swim, and RC promptly cut his foot. Mom and I duct-taped him back together and he made it home fine.

Devil’s Lake was bright green and very, very cold. After a quick dip we were chilled through. Next was Elk Lake, which was big, popular for swimming and sailing, and quite warm, at least near the beach where it was shallow for a long distance.

Our last day of swimming was at Sparks Lake. We’d spent some time and effort getting our various rafts into my parents’ Suburban along with the 8 of us… We piled into the rafts and laboriously paddled out to the middle of the lake. Then we realized it was only waist deep! Almost the entire lake was shallow enough to take on foot. The only problem was the muck at the bottom - eww, gross!

Other excursions included:

A hike up Tumelo, a mountain that’s short in comparison with the South Sister or Mt. Bachelor, but affords great views of both of those larger peaks.

We also visited a lava-flow area, with big jumbled piles of black volcanic rock.

Scrambling over piles of loose rocks is one of my least favorite things to do, so I stayed at the base and explored the meadow/creek area below. On that big boulder by the creek I saw graffiti that was quite old - some was from the 30’s. You could tell it was authentic because who nowadays would chip into a rock, “Mr & Mrs C. Gaines” ?

A striking feature of this trip was the high number of close encounters of the wildlife kind. We were adopted by a duck named Winona, who had the distinguishing characteristic of a damaged foot-web. We weren’t sure if she’d lost her flock or what but she sure loved to hang around people. She would just come strolling into our campsite to say hello. Whenever HN was feeling bored she would take a stroll down to the lake to visit Winona.

Then there was the deer. It was after dinner, pretty dark already, and the lanterns were lit and a fire was going strong. Everybody was hanging around doing various things - Mom standing at the table doing the dishes, BN and RC sitting by the fire playing guitars, and I had just finished sitting near the lantern with HN, working to fix the jammed zipper on her jacket. Pleased at my success, I moved over to a free seat between BN and GC. Looking up, I saw a humongous deer standing right there, practically in the midst of us. I gasped, there’s a huge deer in our campsite! and everyone turned to look. The weird thing is how it got so close before we noticed. She was quite large, but obviously a she since no antlers… She stood still, gazing at us with large gleaming eyes. She slowly turned her head from side to side to get a good look at each of us in turn. We just stood there, gaping… wondering if she was quite all right in the head and trying to prepare for a crazed deer to charge us or something. Finally, she just turned and walked away into the trees.

Well, it sure was a fun trip. Thanks, Mom, Dad, and Kids for the fun times. Oregon behaved itself very well for my family, and I’m looking forward to next time.

Today is our anniversary. BN and I have been married for 3 years now.

To celebrate, we took a little getaway to the Oregon coast this past weekend. We drove to Heceta Head and ate our picnic lunch. The day was pleasant and sunny, but a bit on the windy side. After we ate we took a brief hike up to the lighthouse.

We took a leisurely drive the rest of the way up to Newport, where we checked into our Room with a View:

As you might notice from the picture, Agate Beach is a bit unusual in that it is all carved in very low dunes. The sand is super-fine, and anywhere there is a patch of moisture the wind has carved fascinating shapes, miniature sculpted cliffs, bluffs, and columns, like the gem on the left, only a few inches tall.

After we’d played on the beach and shaken off most of the sand that had been blown into our hair, ears, etc - we went out for dinner in Newport’s Historic Bayfront. That sounds fancy but it’s mostly funky little shops and narrow streets with big murals of whales on the old industrial buildings. We got back to our room just in time to catch the tail end of the sunset:

Even after it was totally dark, we got a view of a few fireworks from the crest of the hill to the right of the hotel.

On Sunday we took our time and stopped at several places along the way back down the coast. Most notably was this spot where we wandered among “tide-cliffs” - you’ve heard of tide-pools, well, the tide was so low that we were walking on flat sand all around these masses of rocks with all kinds of barnacles and sea anemones covering the walls. I’ve never seen so many starfish, all clustered together trying to stay wet and out of the sun.

What a lovely excursion. Even though we were only away one night, we felt that we’d maximized our time, spending almost two full days doing what we do best: exploring and relaxing, keeping each other company.

… is a wilderness area where we went backpacking this past weekend. It’s west of Portland, near Mount Hood. We didn’t see Mount Hood except in the dark while we were driving out to our target base camp, a campground near the Salmon River. We got a late start and when we arrived the road was unexpectedly closed, ahead of the campground, due to a wash-out. So we pitched our tent on the road, just beyond the barrier, and waited to see what the morning light would show.

As it turned out, this road-closure area was a fine place to park our car and our hike was not very much longer than planned. We did have to drive out to get a recreation pass before we started, though.

On that first day it was overcast but not too cold. Much of our trail was along a narrow path on the side of a steep hill. Tall, narrow trees densely covered the slopes and masked most of the scenery except for smaller bushes and trees, and thick underbrush, near the trail. There were lots of interesting sights - moss-covered trees and logs, luminous green maples, various wildflowers, and pink rhododendrons - only a bit more wild-looking than the ones you see in gardens all over Eugene during this time of year. Beautiful.

The first night we camped quite a scramble down from the trail, near a rushing creek. At first it seemed like a good idea to soak my hot, nearly-blistered feet but it was so, so cold that a quick dip was all I could manage without my knees starting to ache! There had been a constant sort of mist for most of the afternoon and evening. It didn’t actually rain much, but there was always moisture floating down from the sky and dripping off of the trees. BN gave it a good long try to build a fire, but it was just too wet. Wet ground, wet wood, wet rocks around the firepit. Oh, well.

Here’s a picture of some trees in our first campsite:

Some parts of Oregon are significantly covered in moss! When you spend time outdoors in places like this Salmon river area, you know why. It’s like a rainforest, there’s always a “rain” falling from the branches.

On our second day we had slightly heavier, more continuous rain. Walking along the narrow trail thickly lined with wet ferns and bushes, one gets pretty soaked from the knees down. And, this trip really brought home the point that it’s really hard, once something gets wet, to dry it out with no sun and no fire. We camped on the edge of a clearing that sloped steeply down to the river, which we could hear but not really see.

BN set up one of our ponchos as a makeshift shelter, and water collected and ran out through the opening where the poncho’s hood was. We collected enough water during the night to fill several Nalgene bottles. Wow!

The area that we were in had several waterfalls along the Salmon river, but we never saw any of them because they were down in steep, inaccessible canyons. We crossed various little tributary creeks on our hikes, and camped and rested at several sizeable creeks. The most visibility that we got of the Salmon river itself was on our hike back out to our car. It was lovely, and made me dream of hot sunny days where some of the spots we saw would have definite swimming-hole potential.

An interesting note about this trip - no mosquitoes. Anywhere to be seen - we didn’t get a single bug bite. Though, after our trip to the Antelope Refuge last June, we had been careful to stock up on bug repellent spray and packed our bug hats. Both items stayed in the packs. Fine with me! Well, we earned a different scout badge this time - the Damp Conditions badge.

First, for a not-very-springlike picture:

This is Mount Shasta. It is 14,179 feet in elevation, and it stands alone. We get to see various perspectives on it during our travels to and from California - this shot was taken on our way back to Oregon. During winter it’s almost always got its head in the clouds, but this is a pretty clear view of the top. Shasta really has a presence to it - you have to keep staring at it and convincing yourself that it’s real, and it’s really that big. Wow.

We had a nice long spring break. BN didn’t have to take any finals this quarter, so after he got done giving his trig students their final, we were free to go. I had planned on taking the 2 weeks off from work completely, and I’m so glad I did. I did 6 loads of laundry on Tuesday… We drove down on Wednesday, March 21. We had lots of good family visits, and caught up with quite a few friends. I think this might have been our busiest visit yet - we had at least one event scheduled practically every day. I got to meet baby SI for the first time - he was born 2 months early and, since we didn’t come at Christmas, I was 3 months late meeting him! I got to go with TS and her kids to the park. They rode bikes almost the whole way - those kids are troopers! Lots of good sister time: Yarn shopping with MA, breakfast with SW, coffee with SS. The little sis’s had a little more free time - we painted with watercolors all afternoon one day and went to the San Jose art museum another.

When we first arrived in San Jose the weather was really nice. We figured we’d better head to the beach and take advantage.

Hey - there’s a stone with a hole in it. Oh, there’s another one!… Hm… What would Andy Goldsworthy do?

(Probably something much cooler than string them on a strand of seaweed. Oh, well.)

Here are the watercolor paintings we did:

I thought they looked cool all tiled together like this… They were actually done using my special trick: Make-your-own “Paint with Water” pictures. I have these watercolor markers, with a brush-style tip on one end and fine-point tip on the other. You draw a picture, as detailed or as random as you want, preferably using multiple colors of pen, and then you use a wet brush to blend the lines and “color in” your image. Two keys to success: use a bamboo brush; those things practically paint on their own - they can produce anything from a fine, sensitive line to broad strokes, and even both in one movement, since they hold water really well. (It’s no coincidence that those Asian brush paintings and calligraphy look so great!) The other easy trick to achieve watercolor excellence is leave strategic areas of white paper exposed. This creates a sparkling or glowing effect that’s a pleasure to the eye.