Oregon Road Trip

Not long after the Lesinas left for their annual Ballard camp on Thursday morning, Jo and I headed off on our Oregon road trip - not as massive as last year's drive down to Southern California and back, via Nevada, but still a decent ride.

Our initial drive was eastward and then north through the Umpqua Forest and up and down the Cascade mountain range. We stopped for refreshments at Beckie's Cafe, which was adjacent to the Rogue River Gorge. Delicious home-made apple (Jo) and cherry (me) pies - both served "a la mode" - we had no idea what this meant but when the waitress explained it was with ice cream, we were sold.

A short stroll to view the gorge was then in order:

Soon we were on the road again and there were some awesome sights:

Soon we arrived at Oakridge, a small community built on the logging industry but now trying to re-invent itself as a base for outdoor activities - hiking and biking in particular. We were booked in to the Oakridge Lodge and it transpired we were the only residents in this large guest house. Our host Gary gave us the lowdown on how it operates. Our room had a double bed and two bunks, but no wardrobe or en suite. The atrium outside our room had all 4 bedrooms leading off it, plus 4 bathrooms - but as we had the run of the place, we could have used any of them.

We went for a walk to take a look at our surroundings, but that didn't take long - downtown Oakridge was tiny and virtually everything was shut - all except the most important one - the pub. Brewers Union 180 apparently has a reputation and people travel to it from all over - I guess we did as well. The owner/brewer spent time in the UK studying how real cask ale is produced and then replicated it in Oakridge. It's a rare real ale jewel in North America, with 5 cask ales on handpump. We had a few and ate there too before retiring to our room at nearby Oakridge Lodge.

The room was warm and, after waking at about 2 am to open the window, we were then parties to a wild argument from an adjacent house, where the woman, in particular, was having a right rant at her man - "a worthless low life" was one of the more polite phrases she used as she went on and on for 2-3 hours. We were both shattered when we finally got up for breakfast, which, by the way, was fabulous. Banana smoothies, granola, fruit, bacon and eggs - lovely.

Our journey over to the coast on Friday was a bit shorter, so we had plenty of time to stop off at various points and our first stop was just along the road at Westfir, when we stopped to view the Office covered bridge:

This type of bridge is featured throughout Oregon. This one is still in use and, as you can see on the left above, it even has a separate passenger walkway. Most of them are no longer in use and are protected as historic monuments. The original bridges were all constructed of wood and that was why they were covered - to provide protection against the elements and prolong their lives.

Stop 2 was also nearby - there was a short trail walk at Buckhead Nature Reserve so we thought we would try it out:

Driving on, we came across another of the "historic" (a well-used word here) covered bridge:

We bypassed the city of Eugene and drove over the coastal mountains, arriving at our hotel in Newport early afternoon. It's a spectacular setting with a huge high bridge over the water. There's a small walkway over the bridge, but there's lots of traffic flying past and it's a big drop - don't look down! Taking our courage in both hands, with Jo singing away to herself to keep her mind off the drop, we walked over to the main part of the town, passing the large Rogue brewery on the way. We got nice views of the marina below:

Back on dry land, Jo looked a lot more relaxed as we looked back at the bridge we had crossed:

We looked in to Yaquina Bay lighthouse:

After that, it was a stroll along the beach, quick coke refreshments then the walk back to our hotel. We had to do our Good Samaritan act when I spotted an old man falling over a ledge, banging his head against a wall. He was stuck - he couldn't get up so we lifted him in to a sitting position and checked that he was OK before heading off.

Back at our hotel, I went for a quick swim and jacuzzi, whilst Jo read her book - her knee is still leaking after her 3 recent falls on the bike. Then it was time for dinner. We walked round to the Rogue Brewery and got a nice table overlooking the marina. Nice food - not sure about the beer. On the way back, we took this photo at dusk under the bridge we'd walked over earlier on:

That's only one of the arches leading up to the main bridge, which is a good bit higher.

Saturday was to be our longest drive. We were heading south down the Pacific Coast to Coos Bay, where we planned to turn inland and head back to Grants Pass. Lots of stops were planned and some of the views were so terrific, we could have stopped every few minutes. Our first one was at the Captain Cook Trail, where there is a Spouting Horn - unfortunately not on show today as I guess you need heavier seas to force the water up the spout, but we spent a few minutes on the trail taking some photos:

Heading on, the road was twisting and climbing until suddenly everything flattened out and there were miles and miles of sandy beaches:

Eventually, we got to Coos Bay and stopped for some lunch at a German restaurant, which also gave us time to plan ahead. We decided it would be nice to head down the coast a bit further to Bandon before going inland again. That was a good move - Bandon is a beautiful little spot and we spent some time walking the beach there:

The drive home was over the hills again to pick up the I-5 at Roseburg and head back to Grants Pass from there. Nice trip.

Two falls and a submission

It's Wednesday evening. The Lesinas are packing for their annual camp at Ballard. This year, they're not taking the trailer - we're sleeping in it just now and it would probably have been too much bother to get it ready for them for a few days and then back to us on Sunday/Monday, so they're taking tents for the first time - although Karen and Bill have their trailer there with room for at least 2 others, so we'll see who lasts the course in the tents.

We've not long returned from Ashland, picking up Cade from his last day at football camp. We watched him for a while, but then Jo and I took off on bikes along the Bear Creek Greenway. We had to get to the trail first, however, from Southern Oregon University. T'internet told me it was a mere 9 minute ride, but guess how long it took us? Exactly one hour! Sure, there was a bit of traffic and Jo wasn't keen to ride in it, but the principal problem was that she couldn't engage the brakes on Braeden's bike for some reason. As a result, she insisted on walking all downhill stretches.

I confess I couldn't understand the problem the first time I looked at it, but I burst out laughing when I finally sussed it the second time I stopped to see what the problem was. Jo was riding the bike with the front wheel round the wrong way! She'd spun the handlebars round somehow and it was now impossible for her to reach the brake levers. Anyway, that was a relief and from there on, progress was a little better - that is, until two separate falls, neither of which I witnessed. Her knees were just recovering from her fall 10 days ago when we cycled up to Judy's blueberry farm, but they're now an even bigger mess. The dogs enjoy licking the blood spots, however.

Here's Jo, riding across a bridge between two parts of the trail, just after her second fall today:

To give you an idea of what Cade's football camp final day looked like:

While the Lesinas are away, Jo and I are going to take another epic circular road trip round bits of Oregon we've never been to before. Just 2 nights away but about 12 hours of driving.

Monday and Tuesday were really quiet. A few of us were feeling a bit down - not bad enough to lie in bed, but just enough to take the edge off our appetites and desire to exercise or do anything productive. About all I managed to do was do a bit of car transporting for Lucy's cars.

Sunday evening post

Three days on from my last post - if I don't keep the gaps between posts relatively short and/or take sufficient photos, then there's going to be gaps in this blog diary.

I've been watching a bit of the Euro championships from France. The 2 pm ko's in Europe mean a 6 am start here - I've seen a few but the best times for me have been when the ko has been 4 pm Euro time so I can watch them after breakfast. The evening matches are at noon here and we're often up to something by then, so that doesn't suit quite as well.

I was watching a match the other day when the broadcast was rudely interrupted for several minutes and this appeared on the screen:

Apparently a number of the cable companies have got together and devised this system which alerts the public to a situation of national emergency. This was just a test, but there's nothing you can do to stop it - the TV and the cable box are effectively frozen, and it applied to a large number of the states in USA.

That was probably the most exciting part of Thursday, which was also the first full day of the summer vacation for all the schools here. There was a weather front passing through and it brought unseasonably low temperatures and some rainfall, so our usual dining outdoors was curtailed for a few days. The upside was that it was a good time for me to go on a longer bike ride on Friday morning - almost 50 kms - quite a stretch. I went out to Robertson Bridge and back down to Grants Pass via Wildlife Images, where we've been a couple of times:

In Grants Pass, I cycled through Tussing Park:

That was a prelude to the Eric Burdon gig at Britt Fest, Jacksonville on Friday night. I've been there virtually every year since Scott and Lucy moved to Oregon, but I've never had to worry about the weather in the past. This time, however, was different. We were amongst the early arrivals, queuing up for our tickets and a good spot on the lawn. We had just got settled when the heavens opened. We had been partially prepared for some rain, but this was something else, so we hurriedly bought a couple of ponchos. Fortunately, the rain relented before the bands started playing, but, by then, Jo was pretty wet. I had managed to keep myself fairly dry somehow and I think, as a result, I enjoyed it a bit more than Jo did. Here's a brief dry moment before the start:

You can read more about the gig at http://banchoryheadbangers.blogspot.com/

Saturday was fairly uneventful apart from a minor injury I incurred. Jo put her half full coffee cup down on the table in the trailer, right next to my laptop. I said "risk assessment - don't do that" and leaned forward to pick up the cup, but cracked my head on the corner of one of the overhead cupboards, resulting in a fairly deep gash in my head:

We were about to leave for Medford to pick up Cade's meds before he went to football camp, so Lucy quickly got a freezer pack out and I held it to my head in the car on the way down to keep the swelling down.

When we returned, Scott showed off this display in the "shop":

Sunday morning was Father's Day and Lucy made Scott and I egg bake for breakfast - and I got this gift as well:

Braeden went off with his pal and the rest of us drove down to Ashland to drop off Cade - and all his gear - at his football camp at Southern Oregon University. Whilst they registered, Jo and I sat in the car park and waited for a while before moving nearer the dorms:

After taking Cade for a sushi lunch, the 4 of us wandered round lovely little Ashland, browsing book stores etc. I had finished the second in the Lewis trilogies in the car on the way down and spotted the third one in a bookshop and acquired it to complete the set. After that, we went from brewery to brewery - Standing Stones first, then Swing Tree, followed by Caldera. Nice afternoon.

USA 2016 - post no. 3

There's a front passing through the West Coast just now and the temperature has dropped considerably - we had a bit of rain yesterday morning (Wednesday), but this was just a prelude to the main event later that evening when Cade was in the middle of his final school day's mini football tournament, when we had a torrential downpour, complete with hail stones. It's due to heat up again by the weekend - hope it does so by Friday night as we've booked tickets to go and see Eric Burdon and the Animals at Britt Fest. Normally when we go there, we're sitting on the lawn baking in the sun, but it may be a little different this year - we'll go prepared anyway.

So you want to know what we've been up to since my last post? It's a good question - now, can I remember? I do recall going for a bike ride on Friday morning - although I only know that because I've posted it on my cycling blog. What else happened that day I do not recall now - I obviously didn't take any photos to remind me.

Saturday was different - I managed to persuade Jo to try riding a bike and she, Lucy and I rode to nearby work colleague Judy's place to pick blueberries. It was lovely, but, when we came to leave, heading down the gravelly slope that leads to the small farm, Jo panicked a bit and slammed on the anchors, thinking she was going too fast down the hill. The inevitable happened - skidoo - with the following result:

Lucy happened across an article in the local paper - which was also mentioned on the morning TV - about a Craft Beer Festival in Medford, so she drove us down there and Jo and I spent a very pleasant couple of hours there before heading back to Grants Pass, where Scott was busying himself in the vegetable patch:

Sunday was a bit of a blur too, but I got out on my bike again on Monday morning - and again on Wednesday - discovering some nice new mountain trails at the end of Elk Lane. Check out my cycling blog for details, including a link to a short video of some scary jumps - http://bvetscycling.blogspot.com/2016/06/euro-interruptus.html. The trails here are deserted and it would be quite easy to get disoriented and get lost. Lucy's also warned me about the possibility of coming across bears and cougars in these areas. The only slight disappointment is that there are no clear views from the top as there is too much vegetation to see all the surrounding area:

Scott and I have been going along to Cade's school after Scott finishes work to watch Cade in football practice. The facilities there are excellent and there's a bunch of kids who take part, as witnessed by this photo:

Yes, Cade is in there somewhere!

In my last posting to this blog, I showed Cade's fancy pair of shoes, but I didn't realise what a shoe fetishist he is. Would you believe it, he has 14 pairs of hardly used shoes - here's some of them, which he lined up the other night to show us:

At prices normally between $100 and $200 per pair, that's quite a wardrobe! I just hope his feet don't take a spurt now!

Lucy hadn't managed to get Jo's birthday present over to her back in March, so we had a (very) belated birthday tea for her the other night:

Still on the subject of shoes, I've been out bargain hunting in Ross' stores and managed to pick up a couple of pairs for very reasonable prices - summer golf shoes and some casual walking shoes.

I also finished my second book of the holiday in double quick time - Peter May's The Black House, the first in a trilogy of books based on the Hebridean island of Lewis. We paid a visit to Medford on Tuesday and went to our favourite book store - Barnes and Noble - where we spotted the second in the trilogy - The Lewis Man - so I'm now working my way through that. While we were in Medford, we went for a short walk along a bit of Bear Creek Greenway, a 20 mile stretch of off road walking and cycling track (http://www.bearcreekgreenway.com/). Apparently, the longer term intention is to have it running all the way from Grants Pass to Ashland, which would be amazing. It's certainly something I miss as most of my cycling here has to be done on roads shared with traffic. Jo was sufficiently encouraged by her short cycle on Sunday and the flat tarmac'd surface of this trail that she feels she would like to do a bit of it with me. Next week might be a good time for us, as the Lesinas go on their annual long weekend camping trip with Scott's family.

Last night, we booked a couple of rooms in Seaside, Monterey Bay, California. We'll break our July journey down to Newport Coast and also see the July 4th celebrations there. We're having trouble, however, in booking rooms in San Francisco for the night before we fly home. Lucy has booked tickets for us all to go to Alcatraz, but accommodation in the city is so expensive and even that out at the airport is hard to find. More work needs to be done here.

Thursday news

We'd had more than enough down time by now, so Jo and I thought we would take advantage of the cooler temperatures and go for a short-ish walk, so we headed down to Fish Hatchery Park and did the Nature Trail there - just over 5 kms. We never saw another soul on the walk:

Jo's first attempt to throw a stone in to the Applegate river was a bit pathetic. This is her trying to improve her technique. She didn't like it when I said it was still very girly-ish!

What's that between Jo and I? Best ask Luca

Tonight was a non-BBQ night. Scott and Cade were going to help a friend move house, so we just had bought-in pizzas.

I noticed Cade's dazzling new shoes. You wouldn't think it but they are a pair apparently - lots of subtle messages in the colours, design and tabs in these Nike LeBron special edition shoes:

So I finished my first book of the holiday - the follow-up to Stieg Larsson's Millennium series (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo etc), written by a different author, but very definitely in the original now deceased author's style. Now I've started Peter May's The Black House, set on Lewis.

First week of vacation

It's a week since we left Banchory and headed across the pond. The flights went well and there was no pain at all in downgrading our flights this year to World Traveller Plus.

We arrived at Vancouver airport early evening Canadian time and got through Customs etc fairly quickly and picked up a cab to take us to our hotel downtown. Nice room - junior suite. The hotel's bar was closed so we walked round the corner to a little tapas bar for a quick bite and a couple of beers before heading for bed. After all, it was now well past 5 am body clock time.

Our time in Vancouver was fairly limited so we thought the best thing for us to do was to go on one of the hop-on, hop-off tourist buses. We got off in Stanley Park, which is Vancouver's green lung - larger even than Central Park, NYC. We posed at the totem poles:

We walked for a bit, just to get our legs working again, and then picked up the bus back to Canada Place. By now it was lunchtime and we headed for a place that had been recommended to us. There's more detail of this - and all our other beer and food stops - on my Ale blog (http://iansaleadventures.blogspot.com/), so I'll try not to repeat myself on this blog - and I'll try to only use photos that haven't already appeared on any of my many other blogs - or Facebook.

Back on the bus in the afternoon, we headed for Granville Island where we went on an interesting walking tour. It's a former industrial site that has largely been converted in to a modern, funky, artistic centre all round the large public market - with one exception - the concrete factory is still there, but even it has undergone an artistic make-over:

We passed what they call float houses:

Apparently much sought after, their market value is in millions.

After completing the tour on the last bus, we had dinner with Fred. Who's he, you might ask? Well, listen very carefully. Jo's sister Mary is married to Brian, whose brother is David and he's married to Sherie, whose father is Fred, who lives in Vancouver. Got it?

Fred is now 85 but still very sprightly and we had a lovely evening with him. He took us to his favourite Chinese restaurant, did all the ordering and even paid the bill. Try as I might, he wouldn't let me pick up the tab. He ordered crab, prawns, scallops, chicken and noodles - tons of everything - and he eats like a sparrow! We made a valiant attempt to get through it, but I don't think Fred was too worried as he picked up the leftovers in a box. He even drove us back to our hotel.

We had only met Fred once before - he came to Scotland for Julie's wedding back in the early 90's, and he, Brian and David came up to Banchory for a game of golf. They all stayed at the Tor-na-Coille hotel and I remember on the Thursday evening, I took them to the folk club upstairs in the loft at Scott Skinner's. It's a very small room and this was in the days before smoking was banned in pubs in Scotland. It didn't take long for Fred to be literally smoked out - he couldn't take the choking atmosphere and went back to the hotel. We told him it's safe to come back to Scotland now!

On Friday, we initially planned to go back and do the interactive experience at Canada Place, then head for Vancouver Island in the afternoon, but, in the end, we just opted to catch an earlier bus/ferry. The journey was easy - once you get to the bus station and load your bags on, that's it - the bus takes you all the way to the ferry terminal (45 mins away) and straight on to the ferry and off the other end and in to the very pretty little city of Victoria, capital of British Columbia.

The weather was improving by the hour and the water was like a millpond for the ferry crossing, which passes through narrow channels between small islands - very pretty:

It was a good decision to catch an earlier ferry as we arrived at our hotel at the peak of the day. The hotel's location is stunning and there's a lovely coastal walk just outside - and, would you believe it, a lovely brewpub along the way (actually, the receptionist told us about it).

Our receptionist was hyper - so much so that we thought that we must have been on Candid Camera - everything was "awesome" in a high pitched voice. Jo was quietly giggling away, but I had to try and keep a straight face - at least until we got our keys.

The coastal trail was lovely and there was plenty of activity on the water - sea planes coming and going, little water taxis everywhere with a backdrop of snow-capped mountains and a cruise ship had just arrived:

After refreshments at the brewpub, we continued on the trail and came across this strange sculpture:

On Saturday, the plan was to catch the bus to Butchart Gardens and we spent a couple of hours walking round there - delightful place:

We took the bus back about lunchtime and walked back to our hotel from the drop-off point. We have to cross a strange-looking bridge to get over to the Delta Victoria Ocean Pointe:

The counterweight looks like a dog's head - note the eyes and ears.

We went to the spa and had a quick swim before dinner.

On Sunday morning we were awake early, so headed back down for a swim, sauna and hot-tub before breakfast and packing. Our 2 flights from Victoria to Medford went pretty well, although we skirted a thunderstorm as we approached Medford. The temperatures have been unseasonably high in Southern Oregon - 4 days in a row were, in old money, over 100 F, which hasn't happened here so early for half a century. Thankfully, it's cooled down a bit today (Wednesday) - mid 80's now - much more pleasant.

Lucy met us at the airport and drove us back to Grants Pass, where we met up with some strange-looking Lesinas - especially Cade, who has shot up and also lost a ton of weight - and, of course, he sounds different now! Scott, too, has lost some weight after his recent operations.

There's a new (to us) Jeep in the garage as well:

Meet the rest of the Lesinas:

Holly - not quite as lively as last year

Buster

Tina

 

Bugs

That's enough for now - got to go and pick up Braeden - I'm on the school runs this week - until they finish next Wednesday. Jo and I have just been chilling this week after a hectic few days in Canada - although I did manage a reasonable cycle this morning.