Good Times with Nana Linda & Papi Dave

Nana Linda was very happy to see her granddaughter!



So was Papi Dave...


We took a stroll through Mom's monster garden. The grapes are ripening exquisitely...

...so are the tomatoes.

The squash is a little out of control.

All in all it is a huge amount of food! Too bad we forgot to bring anything back with us....dang...next time.

Mom's new chicken coop!

Cute chickens...Inigo sure had fun with them!

MMMM for dinner we had grass fed organic free range beef from one of the midwives mom works with
& fresh veggies from mom's garden. Makes me long for some land & a place to grow food. Its good to be home.

Topher's 40th Birthday SURPRISE GIFT!

Topher's 40th Birthday is August 14th & I am having a surprise party for him on the 12th. I want to get TOY BOY his birthday wish above! But its way out of my price range...if you'd like to help contribute, go to: (cut & paste the link...i can't get it to paste in as a hot link for some reason...help...anyone?)


http://www.performancebike.com/bikes/Product_10052_10551_1035468_-1_400024_400007_400243

& purchase a gift card. You can bring it to the surprise party or mail it to me @
6018 N Kerby AVE Portland OR 97217


Be there for the surprise by 8:30PM!!!

Where: The Moon & Sixpence, 2014 NE 42nd Ave Portland, OR 97213 Phone: (503) 288.7802
When: Wednesday Aug 12th
What: Topher's 40th B-day & Trash Can Joe plays 8:30 - 11:30
Who: duh
Why: Because, well if you were turning 40 wouldn't you want as many friends as possible to comisserate/celebrate with?

Lake of the Woods & Medford bound

ok, so maybe we did torture our 2 month old a little bit, but we made it to Lake of the Woods. She didn't really start letting us know she was ready to be OUT of the carseat until we were about 5 miles away from the lake. Once we got to the campground, I wound up nursing her in the car while we drove around looking for a campsite. SHHHHHHH. Are we bad parents...? Don't answer that....

Any way, it was worth pushing the extra hour....Stella was amazed by the tall trees....


and the gorgeous sunset....



luckily there was a camping spot available right on sunset point! it took a little bit of sleuthing with the camp host to find a good one...but yippee! i remember camping here as a kid. Brought back lots of memories. It was funny to go from the extreme quiet of the Alvord Desert to this kid filled downright raucous campground. We weren't the only ones with a little screamer on our hands! Stella hung up the towel early compared to the little one across the street who wailed late into the night. I just keep reminding myself how truly lucky we are.



We went way overboard & had hot dogs & jiffy pop for breakfast. Hey! Don't judge! It was our last night camping & that's all we had left in our food bag & cooler! It was really good...until about 4 hours later...in the car on the way to Medford.


We enjoyed some beach time & a dip in the cool, crisp & clear alpine lake. I'd forgotten what a truly splendid swimming lake this is. One of the best, I think. Right up there with Teton Lake & Lake Powell.




Stella just looked at the trees the whole time...

& then it was back on the road to the parents' house in Medford.





Funny, just when we got the packing dialed in for camping in the Subaru with WAY too much gear, the camping part of the trip was over. I forget it takes about a week or so to dial in the accesiblity & functionality of a packing job & by the time we arrived in Medford, we just unloaded our beautifully organized lot of bags into a chaotic explosion in my parents' sitting room. SORRY MOM! Well, now I have a way better idea of what to bring & what not to bring & I know now I definitely brought way too many clothes. Not enough handywipes. Just the right amount of diapers & too much extra pumped breastmilk. Note to self: CHECK!


Here is the route we took around our amazingly diverse & wondrous state of Oregon (minus the last leg to medford & then back up to Portland...hadn't inked that in yet.) I feel like I got to know an old friend a little bit better on this journey, but that there are still many mysteries & treasures to be found. Here's to many more adventures together!

Lakeview Pitstop/Will we make it to Lake of the Woods or be found on the side of the road with frazzled dazzles & frayed spades?

We had the pleasure of driving through a “town” called Plush on our way out of the Hart Mountains, just past Poker Jim Ridge. Love the names of things out in the country. Poker Jim also had a hot spring & a road named after him. Must have schooled some folks with his gambling prowess back in the days when a game of poker meant life or death.



Then we crossed the Warner Mountains before entering the megalopolis of Lakeview. Stella’s timing is impeccable. She woke up from her nap just as we were entering Lakeview where we had planned on stopping & having some lunch. If you’ve ever been to Lakeview, there aren’t that many options. There’s the Mexican restaurant & the Burger Queen. That’s right, Queen, not King.




Good burgers too, better than her husband’s fast food chain burgers if you ask me.

Topher & I did the eating in shifts we’ve become so accustomed to. The: I wolf down my food because she’s hungry & she’s about to lose it so he soothes her & then I finish & go nurse her while he eats. Works pretty well. Que romantica, tambien.
She did take a monster nap on the drive from the Alvord to Lakeview so I knew she wouldn’t want to go back down right away for the drive to Lake of the Woods, past Klamath Falls. So, what better way to pass the time than a stroll through downtown Lakeview. All five blocks of it.

In Lakeview they have some interesting interpretations of architectural functionality. (Where the heck does that 2nd story door go to? Hmmmm....)



They also don’t want your dog off the leash on their courthouse lawn, nor do they want you skateboarding or bike riding on their sidewalks.



Can’t get any decent coffee anywhere either. BUT, they do have 19 churches you can attend, should you be so inclined, where you can repent for your sins of skateboarding, off leash dog walking & poor building design.



To their credit, they are friendly folks who stop for you at the crosswalk & say things like, “hi there, kid” & “oh, you do got a little ‘un”.

By the time we were on our way back to the car Stella was Zonked. She gets so schloopy that you think she’s gonna bend in half or something. Pretty cute.



We grabbed some Gatorade, mustard & gum at the local mart, stowed the babe & the dog & hit the road for our final night camping somewhere between here & Medford. Hopefully Lake of the Woods, but I’m not gonna put money on it. I’ve found that traveling with an infant is much easier if you don’t have any expectations or real solid goals. That way, you won’t be disappointed because there isn’t anything you are bummed about when you don’t make it to where you were planning to go.



Fire in the blue! Bob Ross would have loved this drive. This one's for you Bob, may you rest in peace.

We knew we were pushing it when Stella woke up an hour later in Klamath Falls. She was in her special happy place. The kid at the gas station said it was 45 minutes to Lake of the Woods. Topher was pushing for the La Quinta Inn because there's a good rib joint down the street....but the call of the forest & the beautiful lake won out, so we headed back on the road with our child in a borderline state of awake & pissed / awake & curious. We had been in the car since 11am & it was 6pm now....will we make it???? Should we try? Are we torturing our 2 month old?

Final soak in the hotness & where's the Antelope?

Good thing we tucked in pretty early, because the sun came peaking over the car & started eating up our shade around 7am.
We que’d up some pop tarts & EmergenC for breakfast & headed back down to the springs for a morning soak.



AHHHHHH…..



Keeping Stella out of the sun proved to be more of a challenge in the morning than in the evening, but Topher rigged up a sweet nursing station for me with the umbrelly




where I put the whammy on her & she’s sleeping soundly now for her afternoon nap. Hopefully we can put on 3 or 4 hours in the car & make it to at least Lakeview.



Thing is, there really isn’t a straight shot to Lakeview from the Alvord Desert. You can go south to Denio & cross into Nevada & then over, or you can go around the Steens & up to Frenchglen & then out into the Hart Mountains. The Denio route is longer, but is a paved road. The Hart Mountain route is an unimproved gravel road, but it is through a wildlife preserve & is a national scenic backway.

We had to get gas too, & Topher had heard rumors of killer milkshakes in Frenchglen, so we went that way. For no other reason more compelling than the killer milkshakes.

Frenchglen, however, proved to be a three fold downer. The giant mean lady with tinted coke bottle glasses at the “gas station” (which was literally two pumps in the ground & nothing else) said the milkshakes were in Fields, which we missed when we took the road to Frenchglen. She also wouldn’t let us keep the car running while we pumped so we could run the AC for the babe. She also didn’t take anything other than cash, so we only got as much gas as we had cash money for. Oh well, I guess if you had to sit on your ass all day, day in & day out, waiting for the 2 cars that came through to fill up & ask you why you only accept cash, you’d be a poopy pants too.

Frenchglen does have a cute little hotel though, & the surrounding area is green & lush & beautiful, at the base of the Jackass Mountains (no joke), so I guess it has that going for it.



We just crossed into the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge & we’ve seen 2 antelope. Trouble is, they were both on the outside of the Refuge. Don’t they know they’re supposed to be on this side of the invisible boundary!?? Silly antelope.
Oh wait, Topher just saw two antelope & there’s a black & white eagle hawk….& a horse.



All this land for two antelope, that’s a fat spread! In my next life, I’m coming back as an antelope. Especially if I can live here. Gorgeous. Big skies, lush country, Johnny cash on the stereo, takes me back to Simpler Times.





Oregon rules.

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

That was a fun side adventure! We headed back out onto the major road along the Steens Mountains & the Alvord Hot Springs, where we knew we’d get a nice soak. Little Stellita slept the whole way until we reached the springs, where we decided we better make some dinner.



I nursed her in the shade of the car while Topher got out the cooking aparati & Tasty Bites. The trusty little camping stove I bought in Joseph perfectly cooked up some grub & we headed out to the tin shack & Alvord Hot Springs for a nice evening soak while the sun set behind the mountains.




The spring comes out of the ground near the road & then trickles down where a series of pipes have been engineered to serve two separate pools, one hot, one REALLY hot. The cooler of the two pools was mostly enclosed with aluminum siding & there was a little changing area behind it for the more modest types. Although, in the entire hour or more that we were out there, we didn’t see a single soul on the road, or anywhere else, as far as the eye could see. Its kinda funny, hangin’ out on the side of the road wearing nothing but what you came into this world with, in a place so exposed, yet so isolated at the same time.
Multiple species of dragonflies bustled around us, hunting down their evening meal, some flies buzzed around occasionally, but other than that the loudest & most pronounced sound on the playa was the sound of silence. Its this sort of heavy pressing quiet all around you & the only thing you can really hear is how bad your ears ring from all those years playing in bands.
We went back and forth between the tubs while Stellita chilled in her carseat carrier. Topher figured out how to plug up the really hot one so it wasn’t quite so hot. If I had to guess I’d say it was probably in the high hundred & teens 116, 117 or so. The only other time I’ve been in a spring that hot was at Harbin Hot Springs, in the silent pool.



Really nice & relaxing.

We decided to take a drive up the road across from the springs & find a campsite overlooking the playa so we could soak again in the morning on the way out.

As the sun set, we came upon a nice little flat up the mountain a ways where Topher pitched the tent & I nursed our little girl into a deep sleep for the night.



The unrelenting quiet all around us coupled with the setting half moon on the horizon & the abundance of stars in the sky all made for quite a nice opportunity to do what else….surf the internet on our iPhones! Yes, that’s right, there was cell phone reception, & therefore internet access for the addicted iPhone user. Slow as it was, I did get to catch up on my good friends blog Malaysia Life: I missed a lot while we’ve been out of range! Sad but true, surfing the internet in such a beautiful place was pretty fun.

Nighty night!

Heat Wave? Let's go to the Alvord Desert!

Nothing like a good nights sleep on crisp sheets in a bed while your baby & your dog share the other bed, snoring soundly, to raise your spirits & ready your heart once again for adventure.
Late checkout, hotel breakfast, watched the weather channel to find out about our desert bound prospects & leisurely bathed & fed the babe.

News of the heatwave hitting the pacific northwest was all over the news, record temps, 107, 110 & higher in areas. We’re headed for the desert & what’s the weather like out there? Sunny & in the high 80’s, early 90’s, a nice breeze.


We’re rolling along the unimproved road stretching along the Steens Mountains right now & the lush green “desert” is before us, little puffy white clouds in the clear blue sky, and a cool breeze at our backs.



The irony.

Everyone back home is saying you’re headed for the desert in a heat wave? & we’re here in the desert in the coolest part of the state right now!

We spoke with my mom & she says not to come to Medford until Friday when it will cool down to 99…It’s 107 there today. They don’t have air conditioning either, so I think we’ll hang out here in the cool desert for a few days….our timing & luck….impeccable.

Once in the Alvord, we took a side road around into the Mickey Basin & the Mickey Hot Springs.




We didn’t know what kind of Hot Springs to expect, but we saw it on the map & we had plenty of gas & the kid was still sleeping, so what the heck?
After some trick road turn offs tried to lure us off the trail, we navigated the signless desert myriad of roads accurately & reached the Mickey Hot Springs. It was well signed & said “EXTREMELY HOT WATER ~ Sensitive Geological Area ~ Areas of ground where you may break through ~ keep pets on leash”. Yikes. We weren’t really looking to burn our legs off, but lets check it out anyway.

We got packed up to go adventuring & geared Stella up in her full body white desert garb. I had nursed her in the car while Topher scouted out the springs.

Topher carried her in cradled in his arm & within minutes she was passed out again. Cute. We came upon a large deep spring with crazy orange algae growing all around it. It was super deep & looked very hot. Testing it with your toe proved that theory. It looked like there might be a place where people had gotten in, but I don’t know how. You’d be boiled alive in that thing, not to mention how would you get out?

There was a littler tub up the stream that had a ledge where people obviously had sat. I put my toe in & was like, NO WAY! Topher got in, & sat on the ledge, I don’t know how.




As far as I could go was up to my knees. It was so hot that if you moved very much at all the water that had cooled down around your skin would move away & the scalding water around it would start burning you again. Not so fun. Topher seemed to like it though….crazy! After giving up on the idea that we’d be enjoying a soak, we hiked around this geological oddity & found some crazy natural features rivaling those in Yellowstone.