Abbey's Road

I got a late start from Cottage Grove on Saturday because I decided to get some cleaning done while I still had hookups. I also had to make a stop at Camping World and Trader Joe’s on my way past Eugene up to the mountains. Then I really got delayed when I got my second flat tire in 2 weeks. There was a patch of loose gravel in the road where they were doing some construction and I didn’t slow down fast enough. There was a pretty rough bump and it jarred one of the tires a bit too hard. It didn’t blow out, but the valve got knocked loose. I thought I was OK because it seemed to hold air when I hooked up the compressor, but just like last time it only held pressure to about 60 psi before it gave way again. Luckily, at the suggestion of my buddy Lurch from my last flat, I had bought a lug nut set and breaker bar at Harbor Freight Tools in Eugene. So, I was able to loosen the lug nuts this time. But….I ran into another problem. I turned the release valve on the jack (Lurch had left it open) the wrong way and out popped oil, and unbeknownst to me, a little steel ball that is critical to the operation of the jack. So I drove back 25 miles, very slowly I might add, to the nearest town, bought some oil and filled the jack back up. Of course, without that little steel ball the jack still didn’t work. After reading the instructions (should’ve thought of that before I started) I figured out I was missing that little steel ball. So I gave in once again and called the emergency road service. The only problem was that it was Saturday on a holiday weekend so they had a hard time finding someone to come out. Finally about 9:00 the guy showed up and put the spare on. By this time I was pretty tired and too hungry to cook so I grabbed something at an A&W drive-in, only I had to walk up. I don’t think I’ve been to an A&W for about 30 years. I remember we used to go to them in Massachusetts when we were kids. Anyways, I drove back up the mountain and found that little steel ball sitting in the middle of the oil slick I had left when the oil leaked out of the jack. Sure enough, when I stuck it back in the jack the next day, the jack worked fine.

Being the Fourth of July weekend and it was now close to 11pm, I had a little trouble finding a campground with open space so I ended up parking off of a forest service road in a snow park area. At least it was free. After a hike in the morning we found a much nicer campground on Clear Lake. I had thoughts of joining Abbey for a swim in the lake but quickly changed my mind. A few minutes standing in the water and my toes went numb. Which was probably a good thing because Abbey mistook them for something else in the water and she bit them. The thanks I get. Unfortunately, it’s mosquito season up here and they have been out in full force most places we’ve been, especially on our hikes. Yesterday we started out on what was going to be a lake bonanza for Abbey – 5 or 6 lakes in 6 miles. We stopped at Big Lake first so she could get cooled off before having to hike a mile or more to the next set of lakes. The mosquitoes would eat me alive if I stopped so I just kept moving until we reached the next lake. After tolerating all I could we moved on to one of the bigger lakes which Abbey really seemed to enjoy. Luckily, the bugs weren’t quite as bad there so I just hung out and watched her. Then a group of 4 women rode up on horseback and stopped to water their horses and eat lunch. They got a big kick out of watching Abbey. Then the fun began. I heard some rumblings in the distance and at first Abbey didn’t seem to notice. That was until there was a loud crack of thunder much closer to us. So much for swimming. She went into the bushes though and didn’t want to leave. I knew it was only going to get worse so I forced her to go. One of the ladies wondered if she was the same dog that was in the water because she didn’t look so happy anymore. Soon after, the rain came. And then, the hail. When it finally stopped raining after 15 minutes or so, I wished it hadn’t. The mosquitoes went on a rampage once the sun came out, not to mention the river of mud that the path had become. I knew I should have gotten gore-tex hiking shoes! At least Abbey kept moving most of the time. I didn’t dare stop for fear that she wouldn’t start up again or there would be nothing left of our bodies after the mosquitoes got done with them.

This morning I wasn’t surprised when I couldn’t get Abbey out of the RV for another hike, so I just went myself. Her day wasn’t so great today and now we are camped in a park listening to the fireworks going off all around us. Not in the park since it’s not allowed, but I think everyone is lined up right outside the park firing away. I’ve got Kenny G blasting on the stereo to try to block out the noise but it’s not really working. She’ll be a wreck by the time this is through. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us tomorrow so at least she can catch up on her sleep.

BearGrass - this stuff is everywhere up here

Posted by Ed at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On the 18th of June I arrived at the Village Green RV Park in Cottage Grove, which is about 20 miles south of Eugene, OR. Less than a week earlier I had received a call from the RV Care-A-Vanner desk asking if I could take the place of someone who cancelled. After checking my busy schedule, I decided that I could squeeze it in. I’m real happy I did. The RV Care-A-Vanner program of Habitat for Humanity sponsors builds with local affiliates across the US where the volunteers are all RVers who stay in their own RVs near the jobsite for 2 weeks while working on a house. As you may guess the people are usually retirees so I was the youngster of the group. But they were more than happy to have me there since this was a two story house and I don’t mind climbing up high on ladders or scaffolding. The first night we had an introductory meeting and I jumped up on a railing to help hang a sign up. A little while later during the meeting when the construction supervisor, Lee, said we would need some people to work up on the scaffolding a lot they all looked at me. Well, it wasn’t rock climbing, but it helped satisfy my penchant for climbing nonetheless. Someday I’ll take that rock climbing course. Since we only had a limited amount of scaffolding it also meant it had to be torn down and rebuilt a lot. You never know when “scaffold building” will come in handy on my resume. Plus, I made the front page of the Cottage Grove Sentinel. So what if you can’t tell from the picture that it’s me. They even mentioned my name, but when we made the local news out of Eugene I didn’t get on TV. Several of us did and it was good publicity for the habitat affiliate.

The house was not your typical Habitat house which presented a lot of “challenges” as they used to say in IBM. I have a new appreciation for what builders and contractors go through, but I enjoyed this more than having my own house built. On this house, I didn’t have to make any decisions. I just did what I was told, or tried to anyways. And, for us volunteers at least, after 2 weeks we got to move on whether the house was done or not. Unfortunately for the local affiliate and the volunteers, this house has been dragging on for nearly a year. It has gone much better since they hired Lee to be the construction supervisor a few months ago. He is working on a degree in construction management and this counts towards his credits. Lee was great to work with. Anyone who can supervise a bunch of volunteers, not to mention senior citizens (sorry guys!), with not a whole lot of experience has got to have a lot of patience. And he did. He soon learned that half the time we were yanking his chain with crazy suggestions so after a while I think he learned not to ask us what we thought. But he was real easy going and stayed on top of things, and he actually did listen to us.

There were five couples besides me on the build and all were retired except for one woman. The first couple of days they kept asking me what it felt like to work with a bunch of seniors. They were a lot of fun though, and every night we would have happy hour back at the park. Two couples really enjoyed their wine with one of them even bringing some of their own homemade stock, which was quite good. One couple has the same kind of RV as I do, only bigger, so it was great getting tips and ideas from them. The winemaking couple also does a lot of boondocking so I tried to pick their brains as well. Believe it or not two of the ladies, not the men mind you, had tool fetishes. They would drool over the power tools that they didn’t have one of themselves and show off their favorites that they brought along. I was quite amazed. I don’t think I ever met any women with a tool fetish before.

They would all help me look after Abbey, especially when she started to wander off. At times I felt like I had a few sets of my parents around, but in a good way. Abbey didn’t have much excitement during the day, however. She would be locked in the RV from 8-3 except when I let her out for our morning and lunch breaks. I tried to keep her from begging too much but everyone was good about telling her “No” when she started to beg. They got a kick out of her eating peanut shells. I figured they couldn’t hurt her and it kept her occupied instead of eating other worse things. It got very hot at the end of the first week so most days after work was done I took her to the lake for a swim. A few days it was so hot I went in myself. On the worst days the thermometer was pushing 100. That’s pretty brutal when you’re putting insulation up or when you’re working up against a white Tyvek wall with the sun bouncing off of it. Besides most of us weren’t use to manual labor 5 days a week so we got pretty tired. We did manage to have some fun, though. Saturday night we went out to dinner and then to a play. The play was written by women, performed by 2 actresses and was pretty much for women. But the guys went anyways and we had to admit that most of it was pretty funny even if it was a bit one-sided. Another night we went out to dinner at the King Estate, Oregon’s largest winery. They had a great new wine tasting room and restaurant and the views were beautiful. The food was excellent and the wine wasn’t too shabby either. On our days off Abbey and I found some trails that had creeks and waterfalls (seems like that’s been a theme lately) that weren’t too long since it was so hot. I also took her for a walk every morning (though they seemed to get shorter as the time wore on). Since we had a section of the RV park all to ourselves, I would let Abbey off the leash most of the time so she could roam a little. I tried to make up for all the time she got locked inside while I was working.

All in all it was a great experience and I learned some useful construction skills. I’ve already signed up for another one in Jackson, WY at the end of September. I figure that even if the build isn’t too good, the location is great. I also found out, thanks to one of the couples, that Habitat does a Care-A-Vanner build every May in New Zealand. You work five days the first week on the South Island, get 2 weeks to travel up to the North Island, and then work five days the last week. They rent RVs over there for you. I’m planning on signing up but it would be better to have someone to double up with. Anyone want to join me?!! I just have to figure out something to do with Abbey for the month. New Zealand quarantines dogs for 6 months ‘cause they don’t have rabies down there and want to keep it that way.

We cleaned up pretty nice, eh?

Posted by Ed at 3:53 PM | Permalink

Well, Oregon has finally lived up to its reputation. Today was the 3rd day in a row of clouds and rain. However, I am now sitting in Hood River and the sun is shining so I can't complain too much. In the morning I did laundry since it wasn't too nice and then headed back west a bit to a place called Multnomah Falls. Despite the bad weather, everyone else was there as well. It is a pretty high waterfall and you can hike up to the top. I was surprised at how many people made it up to the top 'cause it was pretty steep and tiring. I guess not all Americans are fat and lazy, just a large percentage. Once we got beyond the overlook and headed further up, the people thinned out (in number) considerably. We made a loop around to another set of waterfalls and headed back down. Abbey was practically running down the hill and my legs were dying by the time we got back down. The whole time it felt like we were in a tropical rain forest. It was misting most of the time and everything was covered with moss. It was still pretty cloudy all along the gorge, but it made it look kind of eery so it wasn't a total loss - just no good gorge pictures. Now in Hood River the sun finally came out and we went down to check out the windsurfers and kite boarders. For those of you who don't know, the Columbia River Gorge is a windsurfing mecca. The kite boarders seem a bit crazy to me. You look up in the sky and see all these kites flying around and then you see down on the water these people attached to these kites riding on windsurfing boards. I was just waiting for 2 of the kites to get tangled up. I can't see how they don't with so many of them out there. I don't think that's a sport I'll try. Maybe windsurfing.
Mutlnomah Falls
Top of Multnomah Falls
Some Other Falls but I don't remember which one
Have you had enough falls yet?

Posted by Ed at 11:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After checking out the path around the lake that we camped next to, Abbey and I drove up to Santiam Pass. It's not all that high, but the trailhead for the trail I wanted to hike was there. The trail to Berley Lakes was described in a book I had bought and the trailhead I chose was recommended over the more crowded Pacific Crest Trail start of the hike. I soon found out why it wasn't so crowded. The sign had disappeared and there were a lot of fallen trees blocking the trail in the beginning. Undaunted by these minor annoyances we stuck with my original plan and it turned out pretty good. The trail wound through a previously burned forest so it was cool looking in a weird sort of way.
Most of the trees were charred except for small islands of trees here and there, but there were tons of wildflowers, especially something called Bear Grass. It seemed like everywhere I went I would see more Bear Grass then the previous place.

Anyway, the day was gorgeous compared to the previous day '? hardly any clouds at all '? which meant that it was hotter too. We finally made it to Lower Berley Lake which made Abbey real happy.

There was supposed to be a 'rough trail' to the other end of the lake. Well, it may have been rough a few years ago when the book was written, but now it was nearly non-existent in several spots. Abbey had an easy time since she could just walk in the water when she wanted, and when she decided to follow me for some stupid reason it was a lot easier for her to duck under the brush. After a bit of bushwhacking (mostly me getting the whacking), we made it to the other end of the lake and were treated to a great view of Three Fingered Jack. I never did find out why the mountain was named that, but I'm sure there's a good story behind it.

In any case, it was a nice spot to sit and have lunch. Abbey was having so much fun in the water that she almost forgot I was there. At one point she came out of some bushes and ran down the shore and I could tell she all of a sudden figured out that I wasn't there. I was hoping she wouldn't notice me up the hill a bit so I could eat my lunch in peace, but no such luck. She must have smelled the food.

There was another hike I wanted to do, but since the first one was 7 miles I didn't want to push my luck with Abbey's leg. So I did it by myself and went pretty quickly since it was also getting late and I still had to find a campground. (After that sentence you can tell I was an engineering major.) In this area it seems like it isn't a problem to find a spot during the week. After a long drive up a steep gravel road I finally found the trail head and took off alone despite Abbey's pleading. The hike was to the top of Triangulation Peak. It wasn't all that high (lucky for me), but it had great views of some nearby bigger mountains '? Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Washington and even Mt. Hood in the distance. I love to climb to the tops of mountains when the views are spectacular like in this case. It was worth it and Abbey forgot all about my transgression after I fed her. That's the great thing about dogs.
Mt. Jefferson
More wildflowers in the burnt forest

Posted by Ed at 10:57 PM | Permalink

I didn't exactly get an early start this morning, but since it was raining I decided not to do any more hikes around Mt. Hood and headed south back down towards the Bend area. But this time I went more up in the mountains to the Willamette National Forest. This area was primarily shaped by volcanic activity over the years. There are lava flows everywhere. It's pretty wild seeing piles and piles of dark volcanic rock and islands of trees that somehow escaped the lava's path.

It was still pretty cloudy but the rain had stopped. We went through a town called Sisters that looked nice, though a bit touristy, and it sure was packed with people. Luckily most of those people never make it passed the shops to go up into the mountains. Abbey and I stopped at a trailhead near a lake to try and take a short hike. Abbey was real anxious to get out of the RV after the ride. I left the door open for less than a minute and there must have been a dozen mosquitoes that came in. I should've decided to blow off that hike right then, but I ignored the warning and headed off down the path. 5 minutes later I gave up and we headed back to get away from the damn things. The next trail we stopped at had no mosquitoes and it was a short hike to a couple of waterfalls '? Lower and Upper Proxy Falls. When I was in Glacier NP last summer and it rained everyday, one thing I learned was that no matter how cloudy it is you can usually see waterfalls and the pictures don't come out too bad either.

So after that short hike we went for another that passed a couple of much bigger waterfalls '? Sahalie and Koosah Falls. It was a loop trail so we got to see each of them twice.


We found another nice campground this time on a lake. For dinner I attempted my first pizza in the RV. In San Jose I had picked up a few ready-made pizza doughs from Trader Joe's. I made one of my favorites '? eggplant with goat cheese, roasted red peppers and garlic. I also tried putting some dried basil on for something different and it worked out OK. I baked it in the oven and it actually turned out pretty good despite the fact that I didn't have any flour or rolling pin to roll out the dough with. I'm not much on making my own dough especially when you can buy one real cheap that is already made. Same with pie crusts. Here's the recipe for the pizza if anyone is interested. Almost forgot to mention that the pizza went great with some Moose Drool Brown Ale from Montana.

Pizza with Eggplant, Goat Cheese and Garlic

1 pre-made pizza dough (many grocery stores carry them now)
1 small eggplant (can use baby eggplant)
1 clove garlic (minced)
8 oz. shredded mozzarella (more if using larger pan)
3-4 oz. goat cheese
Toasted pine nuts
Roasted red peppers (drained and sliced)
Dried basil

Roll out the dough on a floured work surface. Oil a 12 to 16 inch pizza pan, or put a little corn meal on a pizza stone. Most pre-made crusts fit on a 16' pan, but it depends on how thin you like the crust. The Trader Joe's dough actually worked pretty well on a 12' pan, though it was a little thicker than I usually make it. Put the rolled out dough on the pizza pan. Cover with mozzarella. Peel and thinly slice eggplant. Place eggplant on top of the mozzarella, and then slice goat cheese and put on top of eggplant slices. Add pine nuts, roasted red peppers, garlic, basil (if desired), and black pepper (if desired). Turn oven on to 500 degrees and put pizza in right away. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the crust is crisp and everything is golden brown. Another way is to preheat the oven to 450 and put the pizza in once it reaches the temp.

More to come. I have a lot of pics but no words yet for 7/07.
Wildflowers near Lava Flow
Road through Lava Field

Posted by Ed at 6:08 PM | Permalink

Yesterday, after I dropped DeeAnne off, I took Abbey to a park to get her out of the RV for a while. Their was a band that started playing after we had been there a little while, so I was going to get my laptop and sit down for a while. It sounds pretty sad I know, but I had some blogging to catch up on. Anyways, while I was on my way back to the RV to get my laptop some kids lit off a bunch of fireworks which scared the crap out of Abbey. Needless to say, we didn't stay at that park. So I found a Barnes & Noble and finished up my blogging work. Then we drove to Mt. Hood and found a nice campground with a creek running through it just in time before it got dark.

Today, after sleeping in and stopping at the ranger station, we headed up the flanks of Mt. Hood. I somehow managed to squeeze the RV in at the trailhead and we started off on what turned out to be a really nice hike on the Timberline trail around Mt. Hood. When we reached a trail junction there were a couple of old timers in their 70's who could easily tell that I had never been there before. If I can still hike when I'm their age I'll be ecstatic. When I told them I grew up in Delaware one of the guys proceeded to tell me that the only memory he has of Delaware was landing at Rehoboth Beach when he was in the Coast Guard and being overwhelmed with all the bikini-clad young women on the beach. At least he saw Delaware at its best.

The hike was in the trees for a good part of the time, but there still were some amazing views of Mt. Hood. The lady at the ranger station said that I should do this hike because there aren't many days where the sun shines and the snow isn't too deep to hike. I guess I was pretty lucky because the day was gorgeous and so were all of the wildflowers. I was in heaven. Unfortunately, Abbey wasn't. I think she was still on edge because of the fireworks she heard the previous day. We were both pretty exhausted when we got back and we found a nice spot to boondock next to a stream on the way back to town. I had picked up some wild salmon the night before at the grocery store so I grilled it topped with some of my pesto. And to round things out, I just happened to have some wine that needed finishing off. Not a bad way to end the day.
Mt. Hood
Wildflowers
Another view
Abbey in Avalanche Lilies

Posted by Ed at 5:52 PM | Permalink

In the morning we headed out of Crater Lake NP and up to Bend, OR. I've wanted to go here for some time and DeeAnne has good family friends there '? Phil and Iris. At first glance we weren't that impressed with the town, but as we drove around it more later it started to grow on us. Unfortunately, the town itself has grown exponentially lately, and, according to DeeAnne's friends, the downtown is no longer the same. It seems to be much more touristy now. In any case, there is so much to do here for outdoor adventure lovers. We went up north of Bend to a place called Smith Rock State Park. It wasn't a huge place, and it was a bit crowded, but we had a nice hike along a river and then up the side of this huge rock formation named Monkey Face. Luckily we were mostly in the shade for the climb up and there was a great view from the top. It was also very popular with rock climbers so it was fun to watch some of them scale the cliffs. It made me want to do some more climbing, but DeeAnne wasn't quite so enthusiastic about it.

We had a nice steak dinner at DeeAnne's friends' and 'camped' in the street in front of their house. Not exactly a wilderness experience, but the ice cream for dessert and the hot showers in a bathroom bigger than a closet, not to mention the enjoyable company, made up for the less-than-wild setting.

The next morning, after a big breakfast, we went to visit the daughter of Phil and Iris, Susan. She and her husband have a cabin on national forest land on Odell Lake about 75 miles south of Bend. It was a beautiful, quiet lake and they had a real nice, rustic cabin tucked in the trees. The drive into the cabin was pretty tight and I probably scraped the top up a bit, but it was worth it. This time, even though we were parked in their 'yard' it was definitely a wilderness setting. Susan's 14 yr. old daughter had 4 other friends staying for the weekend, and I found out the next morning that it was better that we slept in the RV. As typical for girls, they were up half the night talking.

On the 4th we headed up to Portland to drop DeeAnne off at the airport. I'm heading towards Mt. Hood tonight and then probably back down south a bit to spend a few more days in the Bend area, but higher up in the mountains this time.
Smith Rock State Park
Can you find Snoopy?

Posted by Ed at 9:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The next morning we headed out for Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon. We went through Klamath Falls on the way, but that was a bit of a disappointment '? not much exciting happens around there. The drive up to Crater Lake was beautiful, though, and the lake itself was spectacular. We decided to camp in the park at one of the nicer NP campgrounds I've been to with the added bonus of a free dump station '? always a plus. There's a 33-mile loop around the top of the lake with dozens of pullouts, all with great views of the lake. Being a national park where dogs aren't allowed on the trails, we stuck to driving around the lake and making a lot of stops. Luckily for Abbey there was still a lot of snow so at least she got to enjoy herself a little. The lake itself is an unbelievable blue color. The pictures just don't do it justice. The average depth of the lake is over 1100 ft. with the deepest part being over 1900 ft. As the name suggests, it was formed in the crater left behind by an old volcano. I would highly recommend the place to anyone traveling in this area. The views of the lake are incredible.

Thanks to Mimi and Steve, who were headed out on vacation and needed to unload some food before it went bad, we enjoyed some bruschetta that night made with Trader Joe's Sun-dried Tomato Pesto and goat cheese on toasted baguette slices. Just because I'm living in an RV doesn't mean I'm going to rough it. There's not really a recipe for it. I just sliced up the baguette, toasted the slices in the oven and then spread the goat cheese followed by the sun-dried tomato pesto. You could add toasted pine nuts on top, but I didn't feel like toasting the pine nuts. I was too hungry.
Crater Lake
Another view
Phantom Ship
Wizard Island

Posted by Ed at 9:20 PM | Permalink