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In the Rain Forest

The Pacific Northwest has a reputation as a rainy place. I think it’s a fairly earned reputation. For about the past week, it has done nothing but rain, with temperatures in the high 50s or low 60s. Hardly seems like summer over here on the coast, although they have heat waves across the coastal mountains in the Willamette Valley. But for us, just a lot of cool moisture. My sister Amy and her husband Rob came over to visit for a couple of days, I guess they wanted to escape the heat in Salem, and that they did. We had a nice evening after they arrived, with dinner in and then a walk along the coast of Depoe Bay. Not too much of a sunset because of the cloud cover. After the hike we watched a movie in the theatre room. I’ve talked about that in the past, but it’s a great feature of their house, with recliners, bean bag chairs, and usually an assortment of movie theatre candy, too. Plus there are several stores in town where they sell caramel corn. So we were all set to enjoy a showing...
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Tidal Pools and Artist Night

We left Salem the day after Amanda’s parents got back home and headed back to Depoe Bay. It was a nice mid-morning mid-week trip, so not much traffic at all. We stopped at the casino in Grand Ronde, which is about the halfway point, but we only went to the gas station, not the casino. It seems like a nice place, the Spirit Mountain Casino, but we just aren’t that interested in what they have to offer. We pass another casino, the Chinook Winds, when we get to Lincoln City, but only went there once a few years ago to eat a delicious buffet lunch. Besides seafood and prime rib, they also have delicious fry bread, made while you wait. Anyway, we did stop at the same fruit stand I’ve been visiting every time we drive the Salem to Depoe Bay route, and I got corn and strawberries and blueberries. I don’t know where the corn comes from, but it is very good! We were back in Lincoln City before we knew it, and then it’s just a long drive through that long town and a short drive beyond it to De...
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Travelin’ Week

 After my far too adventurous drive back from Salem to Depoe Bay, there were a few lazy days that could have been warmer, but otherwise were restful and fun. Cy still had a couple of weeks of teaching to finish, plus he’s working at the harbor on Saturdays, and Amanda usually has afternoon or evening shifts working at Pelican Brew Pub, but there is still plenty of time to see the sights and do fun things together. Another lovely sunset over the Pacific Ocean at Depoe Bay Amanda and I went to Newport one day to pick up some things at Walmart, but first we decided to go on a gallery walk around Nye Beach, which is sort of an “old town” of shops and restaurants near the ocean beach (there’s also another area like it down on the bayfront). We visited the Yaquina Artists Association, and both of us found art to buy. I found a charming print that looked like Cy and Amanda’s dog Chloe teaching a bunch of sheep how to help her win the sheepdog trials. Yaquina Artists Association and For ...
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Portlandia

About a week after we arrived on the Oregon coast, I headed inland to Salem and the Willamette Valley, for a further adventure north in Portland with my sister Amy and my niece Jesse. We were picking up my brother-in-law Rob, who was returning from a stay in Cincinnati, but we all took the afternoon off and we wandered around the city before it was time to pick him up at PDX. Amy and Jesse in the big city We parked and went into a coffee shop nearby for hot beverages to sustain us (this is Portland, after all), and then we wandered to various shops and passed by Pioneer Square (which appeared to be under construction). It honors the pioneers who founded Stumptown, as Portland was originally named. Among the pioneers were Terwilliger, Lovejoy, Couch, and to my surprise, Flanders. I knew there was a Flanders Street in the city, but I did not know that Captain George Flanders was one of the early settlers. I’ll have to ask Mike’s cousin the genealogist to see if there is a connection to t...
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A Deep Deep Blue Lake in a Volcano Crater—and Then on to Depoe Bay

 We had been to see Crater Lake National Park some years ago, but it was late August when we were there, and the smoke hid most of the details. So we thought we’d give it another try since we weren’t too far away from the park. Deep blue Crater Lake We found a place to camp not far from the south entrance to the park—the only entrance that is open until the snow melts sometime in mid-June. I read that Crater Lake is one of the snowiest inhabited places on earth. They get feet of snow every year, and it sticks around. One of the buildings we saw had an entrance on the second floor, with a ladder next to it, for when the whole first floor was buried in snow. Crater Lake is a very snowy place, even in May The day we went this time was absolutely clear, with a deep blue sky above the deep, deep blue lake. The lake is more than 1,900 feet deep at its deepest point, and it has a small secondary volcano at the southwest part of the lake, Wizard Island. Despite the snow, there was a lot of...
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“Totin’ Our Pack Along the Dusty Winnemucca Road”

Johnny Cash said it, “I’ve been everywhere, man,” and wandering across the western deserts, I knew what he meant by “a road with so much dust and sand.” After leaving Capitol Reef National Park, we only made it as far as Delta, Utah, about 50 miles from the Nevada border, where we stopped for the evening at the Antelope RV Park. It was quiet and shady, but we waited 45 minutes for the manager to make an appearance after we called the number on the office door. Finally she called back and registered us over the phone. She was in an apartment upstairs from the office, but for some reason never came down. We had a nice dinner of stovetop chicken enchiladas, which have become a Scamp specialty, and caught up on our sleep again. I was amused that the folks in Delta know their Greek letters and made their sign a giant delta Delta is one of the few towns in Utah that was not founded by Mormons. It is hard to tell any more; every little town in Utah, at least around all the national parks, has...
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