Projects

Most of our blogs have been about travel, but we also enjoy a great many projects when we're at home.

 When we bought our house, it had some beautiful views, but it lacked character.

 Here is what the area in the above photo looks like now.  Penny made the pillows on the sofa and Ted mounted the TV and the floating shelves.

 Penny made these curtains for the great room.

 The bedroom also had great views, but was very plain.

 Penny made these curtains and most of the pillows on the bed.

She also made the pillow on this chair and re-upholstered the foot stool beside it.  In the background are more curtains she made. 

 This was an unfinished "crawl space".  A door from the lower hallway led to an immediate five foot drop here.

 Ted turned it into a convenient storage room.

 This was another "crawl space".

 Ted had always wanted a wood shop, so he claimed the space and made his shop in it.  It is still very much a work in progress, but it is now quite functional.  Much of the wood used to build it was rescued from the trash pile that accumulated when the house next door was built.  It has a built in compressed air system and vacuum dust extractors connected to all of the tools.

 This is the beginnings of a wine cabinet.  The concrete slab and the concrete back wall are both below grade and maintain an excellent, steady temperature.  The top and sides are insulated with one layer of R-30 and one layer of R-19 insulation.  Still a long way to go here.  More play time for Ted.

 In the meantime, our daughter, Erin, bought her first house.  It is new construction and needed a lot of decoration, so Penny made a quilt for her wall.

Erin picked out the colors and selected this pattern, appropriately named Buzz Saw, and Penny made it.  Ted will hang it for Erin on her next day off.

Northwest Places

When you live in the Pacific Northwest, you really don't have to travel far to find scenes that take your breath away or to find interesting little side trips.

 One of the first trips we made this year was to one of our favorite RV parks, Pacific Shores in Newport, Oregon.  From our windshield we can see the Yaquina Head lighthouse at Cape Foulweather shown here.  You may remember seeing this scene in a previous blog.

 Another of our favorite areas is Olympic National Park.  Here, in late June, are some of the snow covered peaks in the Olympic Mountain Range.  We made this trip with friends, Jenny and Steve Hill

 In order to get to Hurricane Ridge, one of the high profile areas in Olympic National Park, we drove through low, heavy clouds.  From above, they obscure the Washington Coast.  The city you see across the way is Victoria, B.C.

 At Hurricane Ridge, there are always a few native black tail deer wandering about.  Here, three of them are framed by an alpine meadow and the magnificent peaks in the background.

 Down a trail from Hurricane Ridge was this den tree.  One had to wonder how many generations of the inhabitants had spent their lives here.

 Snow graffiti lined the trail.  If only all graffiti simply melted away like this.

 In the parking lot we saw this RV with a Swedish registration plate.  We wondered how much it had cost to transport it to North America.

 Another fun place is Astoria, named after John Jacob Astor.  Friends, Gail and Spiro Pappacostas, were our excuse for this trip.  This trolley ran along the Columbia River side of the waterfront.  Notice anything missing?

 That's right, there are no electric wires to feed the pantograph.  Not a problem if you tow your own generator.

Here, a ship crosses the Columbia Bar just outside Astoria.  Since there is no delta at the mouth of the Columbia, the full force of her 4-7 knot outbound current crashes directly into the predominantly incoming winds and currents of the Pacific Ocean.  Even under the best conditions there are deep standing waves along the bar.  There are six full-time bar pilots who board ships and guide them across the six miles of the bar, then pass eastbound ships on to Columbia River pilots, or surrender control back to the Captain of outbound ships. 

 

 Around 2,000 vessels have been lost in or around the bar.  Every year we hear of at least one.  Elite Coast Guard crews face demanding rescue conditions here such as this one, inspired by an actual event, and depicted in the Columbia River Maritime Museum.  As I was writing this, I heard on the nightly news that the Columbia River Bar is closed to all inbound and outbound traffic due to extremely hazardous conditions.

 A short trip from our house is Mt. St. Helens.  We've been there several times since moving here, and we see something new every time.  Ted took this photo looking into her crater from Johnston Ridge.  The dome you see wouldn't have been there when we first moved to the Pacific Northwest.  Right now, it is resting, but the crust over it is very thin and fragile, so new lava could start pushing up at any time.  Ted's cousin, Colleen Kafer, came from Bixby, OK to see this.  You may be asking why there are no photos of all these visitors.  Our friends and family are photogenic, but we don't seem to do them justice. 

This is Mt. Adams taken from Johnston Ridge.  She is supposedly the most extinct of all of the Pacific Northwest volcanoes.

 Only about forty miles from our house is another of our favorite places, the Columbia Riverfront RV park.  From our windshield we saw this heavily loaded grain ship outbound on the Columbia.  Because of the short routes to Asia, much grain is exported from ports along the lower Columbia River.

 Shortly after we saw the big grain ship, we looked out to see the Queen of the West glide serenely by.

Known as a hogline, these boats are fishing for salmon.  We saw several landed.  Ted kicked himself because he had not brought his fishing gear.  Still, there is an excellent Mexican restaurant not far from here, so he drowned his sorrows in a big bowl of menudo.  Brent loves this, too.  Look that recipe up and see if you would eat it. 

Napa and Sonoma

On our way back to the Pacific Northwest, we stopped by California Wine Country.

 Along much of the way, and especially in the Napa and Sonoma area, we were greeted by beautiful California Poppies.

 There were enough golf courses in the Napa/Sonoma area to satisfy even the most avid duffer.  The vineyard forms the rough?

 This, of course was the main attraction.  We got there a little before the vines leafed out, but the setting was still gorgeous.  This was the famous Stag's Leap district.

 One of the must go places is Gott's Roadside Burgers.  This is probably the only roadside burger place we've ever seen that had a wine list, and a pretty good one at that.  The burgers and shakes were excellent, but at a cost of $40 for two burgers and two shakes, a tad expensive.

 Across the road, these professional offices were faced by spectacular wisterias.

 We saw several of these water towers like this one to the right of the yellow house throughout the valley.

We loved the whimsey of this truck/sculpture outside the Calistoga Water bottling plant.

 Our favorite town in the area was Sonoma.  We spent quite a while wandering through her streets and looking at shops.

One of of the less publicized features of the area is the excellent cheeses that are available here.  This is the Cowgirl Creamery, one of our favorites.  Their Mt. Tam goat cheese is excellent.

These, I suppose, are some of the contented California cows, of TV commercial fame, from which they get the milk to make their outstanding cheeses.

Not too far from our campground in Vacaville (which, of course translates to cow town, a well deserved name) was the Jelly Belly factory.  Of course, we had to stop by and pick up some treats for grandkids.  The white spots in the foreground are the remains of sleet that had blanketed the area earlier.

This was a fun little stop, full of school bus loads of kids, there on field trips.  Penny speculated on what state standard would be met by this outing.

At Home

While we were on the road, we looked at each place we visited as a potential place to put down our roots.  Many places were very attractive and inviting.  Still, we finally decided that there was no place quite like the Pacific Northwest.  While we're nowhere near ready to come completely off the road, we've thoroughly enjoyed living a large part of our year here.  All of these photos were taken from our back deck.

 We always have a great view of the beautiful Columbia River.

 Mt. Hood, in her many moods never ceases to stir our souls.

 Here she is with an interesting lenticular cloud over her.

 We have many avian visitors like this kildeer.  Our resident pair raised at least two broods this year.

 Particularly during the fall, there are many ducks that visit the pond below us like these Northern Shovelers.

We have a resident Red Tailed Hawk who makes sure we don't have too large a rodent population.

While they do some damage to our plants in the winter, we still enjoy our small herd of Black Tailed Deer.  We've named this fellow "The Prince" after Bambi's father.

And, of course, here's Filene.

We also have lots of man-made attractions.  Here, the Queen of the West heads out into the Columbia Gorge. This cruise ship provides a luxury trip at luxury prices. 

A log raft heads downriver to the sawmill.

We awoke one morning to see the mighty 4449 Daylight steaming out with her vintage passenger cars.  For those of you who aren't train aficionados, a daylight engine is one that has decorative shrouding and a paint scheme similar to this one.

We had to go no further than our deck to see an excellent fireworks show put on by the port of Camas/Washougal.  Note all of the fireworks across the river in Oregon (where they're illegal).  The port is also the site of one of the landing points encampments of Lewis and Clark.

Even on the nights when there are no fireworks, we enjoy the lights of Gresham and Troutdale across the river.  These are small towns that are part of the greater Portland, OR area.

We always enjoy our travels and miss the road when we're at home, but when we're on the road, we always look forward to returning home.