Oregon Country Fair 2013

Seven under seven!  That's a lot of little ones to have camping behind the button booth.  As always, the Fair was a lot of fun for all of us, young and old.



 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guemes Island Cabin

Conan and I just returned from a week's stay with my parents at the Westenhaver family cabin on Guemes Island. We had a great time fishing, walking the beaches, and just generally hanging around by the seashore. The weather was surprisingly good for late October on the northwest coast, only raining hard on one day; otherwise being generally clear with light breezes in the afternoon after the morning fogs burned away. Conan was thrilled to catch a "Peanut-Butter Fish" (the logical counterpart to the small jellyfish common in the water here), then watched, fascinated, as Poppy filleted it for dinner. We also had fun flying our fish kite (which Conan named "Potluck") off the breakwater in front of the cabin. It really was a wonderful vacation for all of us, and such a treat to be allowed to use the cabin!

Deception Pass Camping Trip

We just got home from camping at Deception Pass. Whew! Much needed laundry and naps are in progress, and I'm enjoying a hot cup of tea and looking over the pictures. (Life is good.)


We had planned this trip for a while. We met up with the Ericsons, Taylors, all the Davis-es (Grandpa Will even made a surprise appearance), and Mark & Elna. We managed to fit everyone into two adjoining campsites, which was a lot of fun. Each family had chosen a meal to prepare for the group, and we ate WELL! Fiday night the kids ran around in circles playing until bedtime, and then the adults sat around the fire talking, making s'mores, drinking and telling stories late into the night.

During the morning Saturday we explored the Bowman Bay area of the park, playing on the playground equipment and on the beach. Little plastic shovels and buckets were a big hit with the kids. A washed-up piece of giant kelp on the beach also proved fascinating. We cut it open to show the kids the air pocket inside that would make it float - Moira was especially interested.

After lunch while the kids were napping some of us went out to Rosario Beach, where Gabe & Cynthia went for a short SCUBA dive, testing out their equipment and learning in the process that Gabe's drysuit has a leak. He came out of the water with his suit absolutely filled with water - I expect (nay, demand!) some video of it to appear on his site shortly.

The weather was pretty good, although it finished up a bit on the soggy side. We had beautiful weather all day Saturday, but at dusk it began to sprinkle and by the time we broke camp Sunday morning it was raining steadily. But hey, that's camping in Washington in September. The kids took refuge in the minivan, playing "drive" until the grown-ups could get all the soggy tents and stuff into the cars and then we came home to hot showers and our warm dry house.

Saturna Island Wedding

On Saturday, July 17th my cousin Fergus married his longtime sweetheart Svea in a lovely beach-side ceremony on his "hometown" island of Saturna, BC. We traveled up to the island on Thursday beforehand, so we were able to help out quite a bit with the preparations as well as visit with the rest of our family and Svea's. Essentially, we had a three-day celebration of family, with lots of good food, beautiful scenery, and wonderful weather.
Conan had a lot of fun, first with riding the ferry over to the island and then with seeing all the people and reading books with Great Grandma Joy, Mammie (aka Grandma Debbie), Poppy (aka Grandpa Dennis), and anyone else he could get to sit and read to him. He learned the names Mammie and Poppy from his cousin Chloe, they are her names for my Mom and Dad. Conan and Chloe were very cute together, and she learned to say his name almost immediately. "Conawn? Conawn?" she asked, whenever she saw me without him.

The wedding preparations were intensive, as we had to turn the island rec center basketball court into a banquet hall, complete with a tulle canopy and hanging globe lanterns, flower arrangements both large and small, and of course keep everyone on the crew fed and watered throughout the whole process. It all came together seamlessly, a great testament to how much a motivated group of people can accomplish! It was neat to get to know Svea's family from Nunavut by working alongside them to prepare for the formal bonding between our two families. I really only had a vague idea about Nunavut beforehand, so I was fascinated by all their stories of life in the remote arctic.

Conan & Chloe of course didn't do much in the way of wedding preparations, but they kept busy going on walks an exploring the beaches, and cooling off in the afternoons playing in buckets of water on the deck. Cousin Odessa joined them for some play time as well, delighting in soap bubbles and romps through my Aunt Pam's amazing flower garden. I showed them how to roll down the small hill in the yard, which was entertaining for babies and grown ups alike.

After the wedding ceremony, there was a splendid reception, complete with a catered banquet featuring an 85 lb beef hip roasted to perfection, a delicious 3-tier cake, toasting and roasting the bride & groom, an open bar, and finally dancing into the wee hours with a fabulous 9-piece live band. It really was a night to remember! I found myself marveling at the wonder of it all: here I was, dancing in a community gymnasium on a small Canadian island to a rousing rendition of Disco Inferno with family and friends from Japan, the US, France, and all across Canada, including some really remote parts of Nunavut. And all of that while my baby slept in his stroller in the beer garden! Life is pretty amazing, when you stop to think about it.

Guemes Island Weekend

We spent the weekend at Melissa Whitman's family cabin on Guemes Island. Melissa gave us a weekend stay as a wedding present, and what a wonderful gift it turned out to be! We shared the weekend with my brother Jon, his wife Nadege, her sister Vasilia and her husband Patrice, who were visiting from France. James Wiley and his dog He-Man also joined us Saturday afternoon. He-Man is a 12 year old Golden Retreiver, old and slow on land but he's still a puppy when he gets into the water, it's really cute to watch him rediscover his youth! Patrice and Vasilia had never been to the US before, and really enjoyed seeing the Pacific Northwest and doing island things like going crabbing and digging clams.

We had a wonderful time. The cabin is situated on a small cliff above a cove, there's a trail down to the rocky beach where the rowboats were stored. From the cabin and the deck we had a great view out over Guemes channel towards Anacortes. A surprise bonus was that the Lady Washington and the Hawaiian Cheiftan, two beautiful replicas of 18th century tall sailing ships, were in Anacortes, and on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon they came out and staged cannon battles right in front of us! We could not have had a better vantage point from which to watch them, at least not from shore. They are such beautiful ships. You may recognize the Lady Washinton from the Pirates of the Carribean movies, she played the royal navy ship HMS Interceptor. Unfortunately my camera batteries had died by Sunday afternoon, which was beautiful and sunny, so all my pictures of the ships are from rainy saturday instead. Oh well.

We caught 4 "keeper" Red Rock crabs on Saturday, so we had a nice crab dinner. Sunday morning Jon, Vasilia and Patrice got up at 6 am to catch the low tide and drove to the north end of the island and dug clams in the rain. It was a neap tide, so the evening "low" tide was only a little below the high tide, no good for clamming or beachcombing. We didn't catch any more crabs on Sunday (our pots all came up empty!) but we cooked up the clams and had them with a fresh tomato & eggplant sauce over fresh pasta, Yum!

Really, a wonderful weekend. I'm so glad we were able to share it with our French visitors, I can't help but think that it was a real highlight in their visit. We certainly enjoyed hosting them, it's always neat to see familiar surroundings and activities through new eyes. :)

Oregon Country Fair 2008

Good times. Lots of fun. Nice to be home again, though. :)

The most impressive thing I saw this year was a performance by a group called Nanda, whom I can only describe as Ninja Acrobat Juggler Mime Rock Stars. With sound effects. Here's a video clip from their website, the sound quality is not great but you get the idea. I definitely reccomend seeing them, if you ever get the chance.

Honeymoon Slide Show

Click to embiggen!

Back in Bham

It sure feels good to be home! The house grew while we were gone - I swear it doubled (maybe tripled) in size - it's absolutley ginormous now (at least compared to the camper). Our bed is an acre across and you can not only sit up straight, you can stand on it and still not hit your head on the ceiling. Also: bathrooms are wonderful. :)

So, where did I leave off? Oh yes, in Monterey. Well, after leaving Monterey we backtracked a little to visit Pinnacles National Monument, about 100 miles to the south. The namesake pinnacles are actually the remains of a huge (8000 ft high, 13 miles across) ancient (23 million years ago) volcano that was located almost 200 miles to the south. The San Andreas fault split the volcano in half and this part of it has moved 2 or 3 centimeters north every year to get to where it is now. The rock towers, gorges and cliffs are stunning.

Pinnacles is also one of the places that california condors have been released back into the wild. Thirteen condors currently live in the park. We saw 5 or 6 of them circling lazily around the highest pinnacle - really neat! They are enormous birds.

The other wildlife that really made an impression on us at Pinnacles was the feral pigs. Apparently someone imported russian boars for hunting, which then bred with escaped domestic pigs and now their offspring are running rampant through the mountains and the campground rooting up the native plants and/or camper's garbage. Its a pretty wierd sight to see a herd of feral pigs go darting across the road into the brush... Pinnacles also has caves that you can hike through, but we were not able to do so because of high water. It rained harder on us the night we camped there than it did anywhere else, truly torrential - all the streams and ditches were overflowing. We'll have to go back someday!

After Pinnacles, we went north again, stopping in San Jose to tour the Winchester House. It's a crazy place, built by a crazy lady who had plenty of money. She was the heir to the Winchester (as in rifles) fortune, but she beleived she was being haunted by the ghosts of everyone killed by Winchester rifles. After her husband and baby daughter died, a medium told her that she would be safe as long as she lived in a house that was under construction and never finished. So, starting in 1884, she built, and built, and built, as you can see from this view of (one section of) the roof.

She had no architect, no designer, no plans. She had a seance room in the center of the house, and the story is that she received instructions from the spirits for building the house. It is a matter of reccord that she allowed no objections or dissent from her carpenters or servents about the design of the house. She paid double the going wages for every job, but she paid in cash daily so she could hire and fire at will. I imagine they all learned pretty quickly not to question the boss! She had a crew of 8-10 carpenters at work 24-7 (or at least so the story goes) as well as gardeners and cooks and housekeepers and the like. She had a system of electric call buttons allowing her to summon her servants to any part of the house at any time of the day or night (apparently she slept very little). She was known to enjoy playing the organ in the wee hours of the morning.

Everything in the house was finely built and decorated with exquisite victorian furnishings - expense was never an issue. Many materials were imported, such as tiffany stained glass (the peices shown below were never installed), italian marble, and spanish tile. She (or maybe the spirits) changed the plans often, requiring beautifully constructed, ornate doorways and fireplaces built over or torn out, windows put into the floors, stairways that go straight into the ceiling, and a chiminey that rose 4 storeys only to stop a foot short of the roof (rendering all the fireplaces attached to it useless). When she died, work stopped immediately, leaving some areas of the house unfinished and a vast store of materials in the lurch, until eventually the house was opened as a museum/turist attraction. The tour was a bit pricey, and the gift shop was obnoxious, but the house itself was incredible.

Still heading north, we stopped for a night in northern california, and the next morning went to the Lake Shasta Caverns. They have an interesting three-part tour set up - first you take a boat across the lake, then a bus takes you up a steep road with magnificent views to the ridgetop where you enter the caves themselves. We were only inside the caves for about 40 minutes, but the rooms were spectacular. I wished we could have stayed longer or explored deeper off the path, but oh well. Still a fun stop and well worth it, if you are travelling through on I-5.

Despite all the snowy weather, we managed to get through the sourthern oregon/northern california mountains without any trouble before stopping for the night in central oregon. Even down out of the mountains there was snow on the ground - in fact, there was even snow in Portland where we stopped and enjoyed the hospitality offered by Marty & Josh. We spent a fun day with them in P-town, eating wonderful food (Por Que No Taqueria is the best ever!), browsing at Powells, and nibbling and drinking the finest chocolate I've ever had at Cacao. Seriously, folks, if you are ever in Portland, if you like chocolate at all, you must go to this store and try their "drinking chocolate". It is NOT hot cocoa!

After leaving Portland, we stopped and spent a couple of days socializing in Olympia (woo!) and then we cruised back home on Friday. Our kitties weren't sure at first if they were happy to see us or mad at us for having abandoned them, but after a full round of snuggling they got over it and now it's like we never left - except for the laundry, the memories, and the gear scattered all over the living room waiting to be put away...

Did I mention it's good to be home? :)

Still on the road...

Hello! We're currently in Monterey, California, where it is raining hard and very stormy. Being here on the seashore is quite a change from the last couple weeks of desert travel - it feels a little like home, actually! But let me back up a couple of weeks, and start from the beginning...

We drove pretty much straight to Chaco Canyon, in northwestern New Mexico, after leaving Washinton. It took us a few days to make the journey - it's a long way and the camper is no speedwagon. Chaco is at something like 6500 feet, so it is COLD this time of year. The first night we were there it got down to -2F, which would have been pretty miserable without the camper. Even with our little propane heater going all night, some pretty signifigant ice formed on the walls and windows inside the camper. The campground bathrooms were heated, and in fact one of our fellow campers abandoned his tent sometime in the night and slept in there.

The ruins and monuments at Chaco are incredible. I wont go too much into the archaeology here, but it was well worth the drive and the cold temps! There were some other visitors while we were there, but the area is large enough that it felt like we had the place to ourselves. The first morning we were lucky enough to see a bobcat sauntering through the scrub by the side of the road to disappear among some large rocks. We went through Pueblo Bonito (the largest ruin) with a great park ranger who was very generous with his time and knowledge. Then we hiked up onto the mesa above the ruins along an ancient trail that climbed up through an awesome fissure in the cliff face. We saw lots of bunnies.

The next day we did more hiking, an 8 mile round trip to an outlying ruin at Penasco Blanco, which was down the canyon a ways and then up on the mesa top. The views were spectacular, and there was rock art all along the trail. Hiking was pretty comfortable, as the daytime temperatures rose to slightly above freezing and the sun shone brilliantly all day. The stars at night were truly spectacular - I have never seen such clear, dark skies. It seemed like there were thousands more stars in the sky over Chaco than anywhere else.

Our third morning at Chaco we did a couple of short trails and went through the park museum before leaving and heading back towards Flagstaff in Arizona, where we resupplied. We stayed the night at Meteor Crater which is just outside Flagstaff, the site of an extremely well preserved (because it's in the desert) meteror crater, as well as a museum and campground. Pretty neat - I learned a lot about meteors!

The next day we headed south, to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which is on the AZ/Mexico border. Pretty much all of the Organ Pipe cactus' in the US is found there, as well as impressive saguaro forests. It was beautiful. We stayed there for two nights, and went hiking both days. It was considerably warmer, daytime temps were in the low 60s and nighttime was probably about 40F, but there was a strong wind which made it feel chilly at times. The wierd thing was that, being right on the border, there were border patrol agents and checkpoints along the roads, and certain trails were closed due to border patrol operations. It made me a little sad to see how militarized the border is.

After leaving Organ Pipe we headed to Joshua Tree in southern California. We came into the south part of the park, which I had not visited before, it is a very different ecosystem from the north (which is where the actual Joshua trees are). This is the wettest time of the year there, so many plants were growing and blooming, it was beautiful - almost lush! We hiked to a stunningly beautiful oasis, where there were actual pools and streams of flowing water with palms growing in the bottom of a hidden canyon.

We headed north out of Joshua Tree, and stopped overnight at a hot sping "resort" in Tecopa, just to the south of Death Valley national park. The next day we went into the park - what a spectacular landscape. Even in Death Valley, spring means wildflowers:It was the night of the full moon, so we camped at Stovepipe wells and night-hiked out into the sand dunes, which was amazing.
Then for our second night in Death valley we drove up to the extreme north end of the park (aprox 40 miles of gravel road, about 50% washboard!) to the Eureka dunes, which at 700 feet tall are the tallest sand dunes in CA, and definately some of the most remote.

The next morning we headed north over a couple of mountain ranges (again on the gravel roads) through snow-covered alpine joshua tree forests (very strange to see) until we came down out of the park in the upper owens valley. We drove from there all the way out to Monterey, where we are suddenly back in civilization attending an ecological farming conference for my work. Bit of an adjustment, to say the least!

Hopefully I'll get pictures up sometime soon (we've taken a couple) to accompany this narative, but that may have to wait until we get back home, which will be sometime next week. We continue north tomorrow...

Update: As you can see, I've added some pictures of Death Valley and beyond. Technical difficulties have delayed the posting of pictures from before DV - hopefully those will be resolved shortly! As a bonus, here's a picture of me from Ubehebe Crater, showing the sexy outfit I wore for most of my honeymoon: long undies (top & bottom), shirt, 2 sweaters, fleece jacket, jeans, and a hat. I'm not wearing my gloves and I dont have the coat zipped because I just got out of the truck.

The Camper

We're officially on vacation now! My parents have generously lent us their camper AND the truck to drive it around for our honeymoon road-trip to the southwest. Dad went over the whole thing and got it all cleaned up, primed and ready for us, which is just wonderful. We picked it up yesterday and drove it back over the pass to our house so we can load it up with everything we'll need for the next three weeks.
It's a sweet little travelling home for us, complete with a refrigerator, a three-burner stove, an oven, a sink with running water, and an amazing heater. The truck has four-wheel drive, new tires and shocks, so it makes for a pretty cushy ride. I guess we are getting old - a few years ago I wouldn't have dreamed of taking a camper road trip for our honeymoon, yet here we are - and I'm really looking forward to the luxury of having a heater & a bed instead of a tent! While it's small for an RV, its by far the largest and most top-heavy thing I've ever driven, which will take some getting used to! Appologies in advance to anyone who gets stuck behind us driving cautiously down some windey road in Nevada, Arizona or New Mexico - we're probably going as fast as we can without tipping!