Beach in February

We left Yachats and headed toward Netarts Bay for a few days.  Since we weren't in a hurry we left Hwy 101 and drove to the coast to have lunch at one of my favorite brew pubs, Pelican Brewery. 

As soon as we had ordered Ian went to find the restroom.  He said it was the most unusual one he'd every come across in a public setting.  He didn't notice the "All Gender" sign so was taken unawares that there are a dozen private stalls and a long trough for handwashing.  Later I took my turn and was pretty tickled that the men seemed to have such a difficult time understanding the facilities.  I hope we see more of this in time to come so men can stand in line for their turn, just like we women have done all our lives.

We took a drive up the coast to see the Cape Meares lighthouse, the only one we haven't seen yet.  In spite of the pouring rain, there was no shortage of tourists, ehecking it out.

It's a stubby lighthouse and was working until 1962, then when decommissioned, the first order Fresnel lenses were left in place for people like us to enjoy.

Well worth the trip!

We were staying at Netarts on the three-day holiday of Presidents Day.  There was no shortage of clammers during low tide.  I'd like to try it myself another time but we were just sightseeing.  I'm still laughing at this, the Tsunami Evacuation Shuttle.  There are warning signs everywhere so this little bit of levity was most welcome.

Part of the reason for this trip was for my cousin and I to get together for the first time in 52 years.  I last saw her at her father's funeral.  Christina had just been born and a few months after that, she and I flew to the Philippines where we lived for the next two years.  Our mothers weren't friends and none of us saw each other again until this trip.  The man who is researching our grandfather's history is the one who put us in touch.  She and her husband have run the Wheeler Marina for 42 years.  We had a great visit and there will be more.

The marina is breathtakingly beautiful.

Do you see the Wheeler alligator?

The plan was to drive back to Bend after we left Wheeler but that didn't happen. We stopped off at Newport for lunch at the Clear Water restaurant on our way back to Yachats and our B&B.  We ended up staying two extra days because a sneaker snow storm made the Cascades almost impassible.  After a month of near spring conditions we got caught by freak weather.  The drive home was miserable.  There's no place like home, there's no place like home!!

Newport Harbor Seals.

 

Yachats (pronounced YawHots)

We are at the beach!  Some days it's stormy and somedays it's not.  Some days we eat seafood and somedays we don't.

This is the mouth of the Yachats River on an almost sunny afternoon.

Just one of many seagulls.

We walked down last evening to say goodnight to the ocean.

We also said goodnight to an awful lot of seagulls.

We came across a guy serenading the ocean on our walk this morning.

Good night from Yachats.

And it gets worse

I'm sure it hasn't escaped your notice that the West Coast is on fire.  We have been blessedly free of wildfires in our immediate area and until today, we have also been free of smoke.  It's the "wind event" blowing from east to west coupled with low humidity and dry conditions that have caused these fires to blow up.  Downed trees pulling down power lines have contributed to the explosive situation.  Fully 10% of our citizens are under evacuation orders, and as I type this, Estacada, a suburb of Portland, is being evacuated.  Many towns have been erased and the death toll is mounting.  

Because personnel have been occupied with public safety and marshalling effective evacuations, most of the fires are at zero containment.  According to the state fire marshall, they would be able to finally fight fires today.  Ashland, home of the Shakespeare Festival, has 2,000 residents without homes tonight and the nearby towns of Talent and Phoenix are gone.  Parts of Lincoln City on the coast have burned.  It's sickening.  Our leaders didn't take global warming seriously and it's serious business. 

 I took this photo from our back door this morning.  The winds have shifted to the normal west to east pattern, sending us choking smoke and bringing in some marine air and increased humidity which should help fire crews.  Our AQI this afternoon is 515 and we're not going outside unless we have to.  Fire storm?  You better believe it.

I don't get a lot of anything done on the days we have the baby but now that she can occupy herself better, I am able to knit enough to finish some projects, like this one, another cotton sweater from a Heidi Kerrmaier pattern called Purl Strings.

This cotton sweater from a Churchmouse pattern was a project last spring and it finally fits.

Grandpa and Delaney are watching the Muppet Show as a step in winding down before a nap.  She's at one nap a day and it's usually around 2:00.  I had planned to take her to the park today but we didn't even go outside to the patio.  Visibility is still very low this evening and I am very sad.

 

Summer in June

I drove up to Prineville on Wednesday afternoon for my first meeting with our guild's spin/study group.  The GPS said it would take 51 minutes and that's exactly what it took.  I even stopped to take a couple of pictures.  It's almost Big Sky Country in the big beautiful agricultural valleys.  This is the field across from Catherine's ranch.

I drove a couple hundred yards and stopped again for a photo of a gorgeous blue heron.  He took flight before I could capture him.  Click for big to see his wing span.  That's the best I could do.



Last spring the conference colors were announced for the 2021 ANWG (Association of Northwest Weavers' Guilds) event.  I haven't spun in a couple of years and decided to buy two ounces of each color to see if it wouldn't get me going again.  I paid for the merino roving and forgot about it.  Until a couple of weeks ago when one of the guild members emailed me wondering if I had forgotten to pick up my roving from her.  Why, yes I had.  So I am once again spinning in the morning with my coffee and wondering what took me so long.  I have finished two of the five colors, which in the end will be ten ounces of yarn.  The same colors are available in Brassard cotton in the event I want to weave with them.

I've been keeping my eye on this odd outcropping in our front yard.  I've learned that it's called Pine Drops and is a fungi, not unlike Snow Flowers.  It's already over a foot tall.  I have no idea what to expect.  Interesting, no?


A couple of years ago when our friend Petey was visiting, he brought six iris bulbs from Dan, his cousin's husband, who raises iris for show.  This is the first year these two have bloomed and they're called Golden Panther.  I made a map of how I planted them so I know what each one is called.  Dan had written their names on the dried flags.  I am very impressed.


I don't know how any of our flowers are blooming.  This is what summer has looked like, pretty much every day.  We've also gotten quite a bit of rain and I remind myself that Portland doesn't see much sun and is very green.  I like taking my morning walks along the irrigation canal.


This is where my sunshine comes from.  Poor baby.  She misjudged her step and fell into some rocks, cutting her lip, requiring two stitches.  They would only allow one parent in the treatment room and since no one is allowed to hang around, Julia had to go home.  She said it's the hardest thing she's had to do yet.  The stitches will absorb in about five days so be all gone by the time she comes next week.

I bought these toys yesterday at a garage sale two doors down.  They'll be waiting for her.

Field Trip Part 2

We drove for an hour after lunch to Warner Valley which is east of Lakeview.  The road meanders along Camas Creek through that notch behind the Post Office and is the same Hwy 140 that goes through Klamath Falls, hard to believe.

We gassed up at the Adel Store established 1898 and bought snacks.  A cowboy saundered over to our group and asked if we were interested in taking a look at the BLM Mustang facility about a mile away.

Why not?!  We were already a couple hours off schedule.  This is Beaty Butte Wild Horse  - click on the link for more information on their rehabilitation and adoption of mustangs to keep them out of slaughterhouses.  It was well worth the time we took.

Ian was taking a picture of Joanie and me when we realized we were standing in horse manure.

This is our friends Joanie and David with Ian.  It's a good thing we met them because they invite us to do fun stuff all the time, like this trip!

It turns out that the cowboy who is invited us to visit this rescue operation is Ken Kestner, Lake County Commissioner.  He told us that the county, the largest in Oregon, has a population of about 8,000 and he is one of three commissioners though there are supposed to be four. That means the safety of petroglyphs as well as the Summer Lake Wildlife Area, which has been in the news lately for their work in bringing trumpeter swans back from near extinction - all are in his territory. 

He explained the process in rehabilitating the horses, something he is clearly passionate about.  Andries gave him his card and told him to shoot him an email next time they have an adoption and he'll help publicize it.

The Greaser Petroglyph was our last stop of the day.

The separate piece on the right with the fat lizard was vandalized, then later recovered and placed approximately in the sport where it had been removed from.  These were the best yet, and there are many more sites if we decide on another trip.  Al was making a list for "next time" as we drove back.

It would probably have been 30 minutes shorter had we just gone back the way we came but we voted to go north along Lake Abert, an inland sea remnant, and through Christmas Valley and Fort Rock, home to the largest homesteader museum.  None of us had been there before and I knew Ian and I wouldn't go there on our own. We had left at 8:00 and didn't get back until after 9:00, and though we were exhausted, we were exhilarated. 

Field Trip Part 1

Yesterday Ian and I and four other couples took a field trip into Central Oregon to look at petroglyphs.  The trip was offered through the High Desert Museum and our guild and driver was Andries Fourie, curator of Art at HDM.  We met out in front at 7:30 and were underway shortly after 8:00.

Fort Rock was our first point of interest.  Andries explained that once upon a time this area was an inland sea called Lake Chewaucan and this rock would have risen above the surface as an island.  A similar rock to the left is where sandals were found, dated between 9,000-13,000 years ago. The native peoples lived along the shore of the lake and hunted water fowl so the perimeter of the dried lake bed is a favorite of arrow hunters.

Table Rock is another remnant from the volcanic past.  It's owned by the BLM and you can drive to the top on a dirt road that spirals up around it, although Andries says spots are white knuckle - no thanks.

This is what the lake would have looked like before the Cascades rose up and the climate got drier.  I found an interesting blog post of a father/son trip to the region which goes into more detail which you can read here.

This is the crossing from Silver Lake into Summer Lake and the point of our first petroglyphs.  This is basin and range country so this is the uplifted range between the two basins.

We parked the van and hiked to this spot which is just one rock of many in this area.  No wonder the road sign says Picture Rock Pass, elevation 4,380' and there's no way I would have found this without being led to it.

I worked on the research for petroglyphs of Nevada that were used as part of the interior design of the Spanish Springs Library opened in 2005 and that I retired from in 2009.  I was very surprised at how similar these were to those.  Andries said that actually these primitive drawings are similar all over the world, including South Africa where he is from, and also France.

The figure center right looks like a horse and rider but the dating of all of these figures has been established at around 7.000 years ago.  Horses weren't present in the Americas until after the Spaniards introduced them and the rider was added and dated as later.  Andries showed up how rocks were tapped onto the surface to creating these "etchings."

This is known as the Ana Boulder and is on the shore of Summer Lake, or what once upon a time was Summer Lake.  It like many of these remnants of Lake Chewaucan are dried up alkaline lakes now.  This originally was a large rock, however, in 1980 in straightening a road the county blasted several boulders which had been deep grooved petroglyphs.  Six fragments of these boulders remain.  This was the oldest of our trip.

Our trip was a special arrangement made with Andries by one of our group who is a generous supporter of the museum.  The original trip offered and filled within the same day so Andries agreed to do this as a shake-down cruise.  We were running late by the time we arrived for lunch in Paisley, home of the Mosquito Festival.  The first order of fine-tuning for the next group is to make lunch brown bag.  The rest to follow.....

Spring is slow coming

I've posted pictures periodically from the dirt work going on in the subdivision next to us, getting ready for their final stage of construction.  They've gone from a rocky uneven area to flat land with parcels demarcated, ready for homes.  What captures my attention is their ability to dramatically change the landscape.  This is the end of the line of development for the time being.

The field where we enjoy our walks is slated for development but I'm enjoying it for now.  I startled this couple who were scurrying to get away from me.

The road runs along the irrigation ditch and that's where they went to escape me.

And off they went.  I enjoyed having their company and I'm sure the feeling wasn't mutual.

I still have to put my packing paper in a sling at the back of my loom because Maddie is still in love with tearing it to shreds.  I can't remember who suggested this hack for I am grateful for it nevertheless.

I was still pulling this off from the cloth beam and was surprised when I stepped back and realized that she had already fallen asleep on it.  She loves to help me weave.

That warp was for a commissioned table runner but I liked it so much that I made a short one for us - the colors of spring.

Our yard is slowly showing signs of spring but it's not fast enough for me.  I bought this hanging basket at Costco even though it'll be another month before we can start hanging them outside.  We're hanging it outside on days that are warm enough and otherwise it's in the house.  Their happy faces make me happy.

Today was International Tai Chi Day so our school held the Saturday morning classes in the park.  It was pretty blustery and cool when we first started but we started shedding layers after the first hour.  I've always wanted to do Tai Chi in a park.