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.