Checking In

Hello, there! It's been an absurdly long time since my last post - life has been busy! Things have happened! For example:
  
I moved out of the shoebox apartment where I spent a great 2.5 years, and joined forces with Bill at the house he has lived at since before I met him.

We share the house with two roommates and a cat, have a small but lovely garden, and the spare bedroom became "my room," where all of my stuff lives and I have a sewing table and a futon for guests.

Life is so much easier without our constant going back and forth between each other's homes, although there are the small irritations of living with housemates (lack of space in the fridge being a primary one for me), although the housemates themselves are excellent people. Most of my kitchen gear is in storage in the basement since the house was well furnished already, so it will be fun unpacking it all someday.

It's been an unnervingly hot and dry summer in the northwest, but we've made the most of it. Sail camping, a fantastic backpacking trip in the North Cascades, a family reunion in Port Townsend, and my birthday at a cousin's new farm - this summer has been one of the best.

 

Day four of five in the North Cascades

Point Wilson lighthouse and Admiralty Inlet

How I spent my 31st birthday

 A summer ritual

It's been summer since April, with weeks of temperatures over 95 F, and even if the entire American West wasn't burning right now, I'd be ready for fall. But now we're praying for rain and here, at the edge of September, I am absolutely looking forward to cooler nights, wool socks, red leaves and baked squash. I've got some new autumn-y projects to work on which I will share here, as once again I try to revive my writing a bit. I hope you're all well, and I look forward to spending more time here in the coming weeks.

In the Snowy Woods

Bill and I spent Saturday at the property of some family friends of his, in the northern Coast Range. Folks were gathering to "welcome back the Coho," the salmon that swim up the stream there to spawn. The property was beautiful, made even more so by the few inches of new powder snow. We've had very very wintery weather lately, highly unusual for Portland, and had a string of several days where the temperature didn't get over 25 F. When there's moisture in the air and 20 mph winds, that's really chilly! It wasn't windy in the mountains, and the sky was perfectly clear and sunny, but although I was wearing two pairs of wool socks, thermal long underwear, and four layers of long sleeves under my big wool coat, it was still uncomfortably cold when we weren't hiking around or gathered by the fire. We were told later by our host that an hour before we showed up, they measured the air temperature there at 8 F. Even so, six hours spent in the gorgeous wintery woods with a group of excellent people and amazing scenery made for an fantastic day.

The cabin was toasty warm, with big pots of soup and chili and hot cider on the wood stove. All three totally hit the spot after hiking around in the snow for two hours.

We saw three salmon, and other folks saw a couple more- more than the property owners had seen in a few years! They were enormous, for so small a creek. This one was about 2.5 feet long. 

We crossed the creek on this somewhat dodgy cable crossing, which had my feet about a foot off the very very cold rushing water. For some reason I couldn't stop giggling the whole time I was pulling myself across.

Bundled up Bill scanning the creek for salmon.

We thought we would be miserable being outside all day on such a cold day. Instead, we had an absolute blast. 

Oregon: South

The culminating big trip of the summer was five nights camping in Southern Oregon with Provo (we grew up together; our parents were friends before either of us was born), her partner Jeremy, and canine companion Griffin. Despite being an Oregonian for ten years, I had never explored the southern reaches of the state. We only saw a fraction of it, of course, but it was pretty incredible. Inland, to Crater Lake and the Rogue River, with incredible warm clear nights and unbelievable stargazing. Coastal, to Coos Bay and lighthouses and beaches and sea lions (and lots of fog. This is Oregon, after all). In good company, excellent weather, and a most excellent lack of mosquitoes, here are a few things 1,000 miles of driving led us to.

The Rogue River...wild and scenic, indeed.

Camping on Lost Creek Lake, a reservoir of the Rogue

The Rogue squeezing through an impossibly narrow gorge

The jaw-dropping blue and perfect reflections of Crater Lake

Two nights of potatoes, onions and carrots cooked in foil in the fire...

...and the detritus of one of our many meals of fresh seafood

Puppy dog eyes, truly.

A perfect beach seat

The jawbone of a humpback whale.

We found an unexpected and beautiful botanic garden overlooking the ocean

Longing for a zoom lens at Simpson Reef...those are hundreds of sea lions (their barking made an incredible racket that we could hear from our campground two miles away), and the white dots on the near rocks are harbor seals.

The Umpqua River Light

A moment of sun in Winchester Bay

The coast from Heceta Head

Heceta Head Light

And the gorgeous keeper's house at Heceta Head...it's a B & B! Yes, please.

I'm off to Spokane this weekend for a wedding and to see my family, and then, with the days getting a bit shorter and a chill in the air, I'll be home for the foreseeable future, enjoying fall in Portland. But man, what an excellent summer this has been!

The Butchart Gardens

Holy wow. I walked through the whole thing twice and gaped the whole time. Sunken garden, rose garden, Japanese garden, Mediterranean garden, a huge bank of dahlias (mostly taller than me and many with blossoms bigger than my head) where I spent an inordinate amount of time...it was worth every penny. An easy journey by public transit, the Butchart Gardens are about 20 km north of Victoria, and it was nice to see other parts of the city and countryside on the way up the Saanich Peninsula. The story behind the gardens is that the wife of a local businessman started landscaping an old limestone quarry at their property to make it less unsightly, and the whole thing expanded from there. I'm so glad I went to see it. For me, my camera, and my love of flowers and gardening, it was a bit of a paradise. Here's a ridiculous number of photos, honed down from the 180 that I took while I was there:

It's been a heck of a trip, and this definitely felt like its crowning glory. So much beauty all packed into one place. Now I'm going to head off to find some dinner and take one last walk around the harbor and soak up the liveliness of this city all evening before I head home tomorrow.

Cheers, Victoria, you've been rad. 'Til next time, then.