That old Modest Mouse album title I used for the heading of this blog entry seems like a fitting description of our trip across the upper western tier of the United States this month. The wide-open spaces of north central Oregon and eastern Washington gave way to the busy little metropolis of Clarkston/Lewiston on the Washington and Idaho border, where the Clearwater River meets the Snake River and groceries cost more than anywhere else we’ve been. This map shows the route we’ve taken to Backus, Minnesota, where we are waiting for a weld on our camper to be fixed this week and--we hope--a new step to replace the one that got squashed a week into our adventure last fall. Not sure exactly how we’ll continue from here, but I will try to catch up on our trip from eastern Washington to north central Minnesota. A map of our trip back so far From Hell’s Gate State Park in Lewiston, Washington, we headed out on U.S. 12, the road through Idaho’s beautiful Bitterroot Mountains. It follows th...

After driving north through the desert for a few hours, we crossed the wide Columbia River at Biggs Junction, leaving Oregon and heading into Washington. Crossing the Columbia at Biggs Junction The first stop we made in Washington was at a point of interest I had discovered on a map—a full-size replica of Stonehenge. The monument was built by a man named Sam Hill. I can’t find any proof of it, but I like to think that when he was building it, people were so bewildered that they asked him what in Sam Hill he was doing. A replica of Stonehenge, in concrete, located high on a hill in Maryhill, Washington In truth, Sam Hill was a Quaker and one of the leading citizens of Klikitat County, Washington. He had traveled to England toward the end of World War I, and had seen the original Stonehenge, which his tour guides told him (incorrectly) that the place had been used for human sacrifice eons before. Sam Hill was a pacifist, and he decided that a place allegedly built for human sacrifice w...

We left Depoe Bay on Saturday morning and arrived in Salem in the early afternoon. My sister Amy quickly suggested that there were a number of estate sales in the area to investigate. I have mentioned before that estate sales seem to be very popular in Oregon, and sometimes they are even really estate sales, not just yard sales. We found several right in their neighborhood, and Amy bought some egg cups, while I procured a set of sturdy sawhorses for Cy, who had mentioned he needed them, for a bargain price. How they will get to Depoe Bay I am not sure, but Cy and Amanda do run over to Salem frequently, since there is no Home Depot or Lowes on the coast, so they will probably pick them up on a jaunt over there (although my brother-in-law Rob was plotting a possible visit to the coast for him and my nephew Duncan). In any event, the estate sales were fruitful. Estate sales turn up many interesting items in Oregon, including these sawhorses The sawhorses reminded me of a project that was ...

  Cy is playing on a men’s league soccer team in Newport, so after the Kerbys left on Sunday to return to Salem, we got a few things accomplished around the house, then in the early evening we went down to the middle school to watch his game. They played against a team of kids who are on the high school soccer team, and as kids they can play like nothing will hurt the next day. The older guys on Cy’s team are a bit more cautious, but it was still fun to watch, and Cy scored his team’s only goal, heading it in for a score. We went to his game the following Sunday, too, and wound up shagging balls when they were kicked way out of the pitch. And I learned some new words in Spanish from the referee, who made all the calls in Spanish. Cambio! Portero! Tarjeta Amarilla! Sunday evening soccer Back at the ranch, it was time to take down a tree that was leaning precariously behind the house. This is a task Cy was trained for, so it went quickly and well. Cy tied off ropes to the top of th...

We had no trouble keeping busy in Depoe Bay at the end of July. There are still lots of ongoing projects around the house, but we took time out for some recreation, too. Sometimes we can take a break right in the side yard, with the cornhole boards Cy built (and then built better) and the beanbags I made to go with it. I found bulk beans at Winco, which is a great grocery store out this way. There’s not a Winco on the coast, but we stopped by while we were in Corvallis in the valley on a supply run and got the beans we needed. New cornhole set for the new house Crabbing at Siletz Bay One evening Cy decided it was a good time to go crabbing. The weather was warm-ish, he had some new traps he got at a yard sale, and it was heading toward slack tide (about an hour after low tide), the best time, I learned, for west coast crabbing. My experience with crabbing is on the Atlantic, where we would throw out a string with a chicken neck on the end and haul in crabs. There’s a bit more involve...

We’ve been doing a lot around the house in Depoe Bay, and Cy and Amanda have been doing a WHOLE lot, so around mid-July we all took a break. Amanda and Cy headed to Redmond for a friend’s wedding, and we went to an Oregon state park east of Salem that folks said was really something to see. Oregon grapes near the entrance to Silver Falls Park It’s called Silver Falls, and though it’s not a huge park, there are 10 different waterfalls within its boundaries. We came in from the south and the south entrance to the Ten Falls Trail is, to say the least, a little busy. Far busier than we expected on a Monday morning. The parking lot was close to full and there were people everywhere. It wasn’t terrible weather, but it was gray and cool, but that didn’t stop the visitors, I guess. We had a picnic lunch—surprisingly, we found an empty picnic table—and then we headed down the Canyon Trail which leads to the Ten Falls Trail. It was kind of crazy—more like a line into a New York subway station ...

Fourth of July fell on a Friday this year, so a lot of people were enjoying a long weekend, but since Mike and I are enjoying a year-long weekend, we were willing to get back to work on July 5. Lots to do around the house in Depoe Bay. In fact, I’ve been busy enough that I’m not getting around to writing about our adventures every week—I’m writing this about three weeks out. One of the first tasks Cy took on since we arrived was clearing out, fixing up, and organizing the shed. A big job, but he tackles projects with a vengeance, and before long he had it emptied, clad inside in plywood, and with vinyl flooring laid down. Then it was time to start getting tools and other things arranged to make the rest of the projects go a little more smoothly. One thing he realized was that the shed was not big enough for all his tools and workbenches plus fishing gear, crabbing equipment, and garden tools, so there are also plans for another shed of some type on the other side of the house. Cy fix...