Last week in Salem

It's Friday and, all of a sudden, the weather has changed from being warm and sunny to cool and cloudy - and apparently tomorrow even more so. It appears that Fall is arriving. We head down to Southern California on Monday with Lucy, Audrey, Kendall & Kennedy - it's been 95 F there this week, which is hot for the coast, but is apparently dropping for the first couple of days of our stay.

Fyi, Salem is on the 45th parallel - i.e. halfway between the equator and the North Pole. It's on a line of latitude with Bordeaux and similar to Toronto.

On Monday, Lucy was off work - she's doing Tue-Fri this week while Scott has worked Mon-Thu. Lucy wanted to use her work's gym so Jo and I went with her and we did a stroll around Bush's Pasture Park:

We then drove over to Willamette Valley Pie Company - very tasty.

On Tuesday, Jo and I drove downtown to the State Capitol. This particular building is very art deco as it was built in the 1930's after the previous two had burnt down. The golden man that sits on top of the building represents an early pioneer:

Jo in entrance hall

On Wednesday we made a return visit to the Germanic town of Mt. Angel where there was a huge Oktoberfest a couple of weeks ago. We spent most of the time at the nearby Benedictene Abbey, which looks surprisingly modern - although the original tiny chapel is still standing:

Our decision for lunch was to drive over to the larger nearby town of Silverton which has a trail of all the murals painted on the buildings:

Lunch at Mac's Place was German sausage - shared of course - and we had a lovely high table looking over the creek below:

Driving between the two towns we had witnessed a little bit of the hazelnut harvest (pity we just missed the huge hop harvest). This area supplies 99% of the US market for hazelnuts - there are trees growing them everywhere. Unlike hops, grapes etc, hazelnuts are not picked - they wait until this time of year when they fall. The fallen nuts are then swept out from under the trees in to long lines between the trees where a mechanical device comes along and scoops them all up and deposits them in wooden crates:

Yesterday (Thursday) we took a drive north up the I-5 to Bridgeport Village mall, which, unlike the multitude of other shopping malls, is laid out - as its name suggests - like a pretty little village. We spent hours in the huge, 2-storey Barnes & Noble, topping up our reading material. Lucy had also recommended ice creams at Salt & Straw - and they were excellent. I was trying to set up the timer for a snap of the two of us when a young girl/woman, spotting my difficulty, offered to take our photo:

Rather than return on the I-5 we decided to take the slightly quieter country roads and divert via McMinnville where we stopped over with Scott and Lucy some years ago. On that occasion we had stayed at one of McMenamin's Historic Hotels - Hotel Oregon by name - and it was easy enough to find it this time:

On our walk around the town we came across a bench with (apparently) Benjamin Franklin:

We found a brewpub - Grain Station - not one we'd been at before - and, although I was driving, we had one of the growlers in the back of Lucy's Jeep and Jo agreed to be guinea pig and do the flight on her own to help us select the beer we would fill the growler with:

The stout was chosen and we jumped back in the Jeep:

We headed back to Salem with Google leading the way. Along the route, it announced that there was an alternative route back that was 11 minutes shorter so we said yes. Little did we - nor apparently Google - recognise that this road involved a small ferry to cross the mighty Willamette river! The ferry only took 9 cars so we didn't make it on the first crossing, so, at the end of the day, our "saved" 11 minutes was wiped out by the 20 minutes we had to wait to make the crossing!:

That's all, folks!

October in Northern Oregon

Can't believe it's 4 weeks today that we arrived in USA. Just over a couple of weeks left in our holiday.

Scott and Lucy have completed their first week in their new jobs - it was all introductory stuff with a lot of computer modules. They can't wait to get some proper patient care done. They normally work 4 day weeks - 9 hours per day with the week lengths varying. Tomorrow (Monday), Scott's at work but Lucy has a day off - she'll be child minding for part of it.

I can't quite recall everything we've done over the last week - if I don't take photos, I don't have any record to fall back on - but I do know that on Wednesday we took a drive downtown to hunt down a particular type of collagen that Jo wanted. We took Lucy's recommendation and paid a visit to Gerry Frank's "Konditorei" - a cake cafe basically - https://gerryfrankskonditorei.com/.

You'd think that by now we'd have wised up to US-sized portions, but, no - we both had a cake each:

Jo's carrot cake in particular was a real killer. We must remember to order only one of any food and share it.

I had checked the weather forecast earlier in the week to see when it would be best to take a trip to the coast and Thursday looked like the best day. The Pacific coastal climate is completely different from inland Oregon - and, incidentally, I've noticed that Salem is a fair bit cooler than Grants Pass. I've been monitoring the relative daily temperatures over the last month and I reckon Southern Oregon - the Applegate Valley - is easily 8 or 9 degrees F (5 C) warmer than this part of Northern Oregon at this time of year. That's not to say that it's cold here - far from it - it's 80 F (27 C) this weekend. The coast, however, is 20 F (7 C) cooler just now.

Anyway, Thursday it was for our coastal trip - first stop Lincoln City, which had a slightly run-down, end of season look about it, but we found a nice bakery, book shop and record store - and a lovely, huge beach:

Heading south towards Newport we made a couple of pit stops to take in the views at Rocky Creek and the Devil's Punchbowl (https://stateparks.oregon.gov/index.cfm?do=park.profile&parkId=156). Here I am at the former and a beach view from the latter:

 

Newport, a town we last visited 10 years ago, also has huge beaches - I posted a few photos on Facebook. When we decided to loop back home we came across a problem with some extensive roadworks which Apple Maps didn't seem to know about - thankfully, Google Maps was more clued up and we made it back to NE Salem via an alternative route.

Scott and Lucy were both off on Friday and they took us to Independence for a spot of lunch in the local brewpub, quaintly called Gilgamesh. The menu explained where the name came from:

 Here we all are:

After lunch we took a stroll round the local park, leading down to the Willamette river. We had just missed the local Fresh Hop Festival which celebrates the harvest.

Yesterday (Saturday), Jo and I took a short drive to Willamette Mission State Park (https://stateparks.oregon.gov/index.cfm?do=park.profile&parkId=99). We took a walk round one of the trails which, at one point, allowed us access in to one of the hop fields (which are numerous round here). As mentioned above we had just missed the harvest so all the tall bines were gone, leaving just their support frames:

We did find a random hop on the ground:

Here we are a bit later at the water's edge:

After leaving the park we drove over to Keizer Station mall and had a late lunch at Hops 'n' Drops:

Scott was on the barbecue again that evening - huge steaks - and they were delicious.

Today (Sunday) is a go-slow day for us - book reading, blogging, crocheting.