summer – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

08-16-2018 Why do they call them Dog Days?

Current Location: Sunset House in Grants Pass at 75 degrees F at 9pm

I read my last post, just to take a moment to catch up with myself. I needed to remember what I had written and hopefully not repeat myself. Ahh, yes, I was raving about how incredibly gorgeous the summer had been thus far, blue skies, no fires, no smoke to mar the air. Tonight, as I write, I can count 30 consecutive days of smoke filled skies, with air quality ranging from a fabulous “Moderate” (once or twice) to a more normal Very Unhealthy or Hazardous. This has been the case every single day except one, last Sunday, when a breeze blew in from the west and for one fresh air filled day we had a taste of what summer could be like in our beautiful Southern Oregon.

This is not our house, it is across the street toward the east, and this is the side where the new fence will be located, about as high as the neighbors current chain link fence. Ours will be wood.

It is hard to maintain a sense of balance when it is like this. Not only is the world dimmed to a dull grayish brown and the sun to an angry red-orange, there are the horror stories on the news about the progress of the literally dozens of fires that surround us. Stories of evacuations and misery abound. It wears on one’s soul, deeply.

I went to the store this morning, and in the process noticed that I was very easily irritated, like my scratchy eyes, my spirit felt scratchy. I saw myself reacting quickly to the smallest inconveniences, angry at stupid people, frustrated with lack of supplies on the shelves. I realized that I was getting all gritchy on an average of every 30 seconds or so. What a waste of energy! Noticing did help a bit, I tried to slow down and pay attention to myself, to stop the constant nasty internal outbursts at slow old people, fast little people, stupid drivers, and the constant brown sky.

I am not always like this, in fact I am not really often like this. Sometimes, even in the midst of the nasty smoke, hot temperatures and ugly air, I can find true happiness. Toward the end of July, about 2 weeks into the fire smoke season, Mo and I drove through the verdant and lovely Applegate Valley on a Thursday afternoon. The Red Lily winery is among our favorites, and there we shared food truck goodies and a bottle of truly epic wine in big red chairs beside the river as we listened to the great music and watched all the happy people. The sun was orange-red on that day as well, and yet I somehow found joy.

If you read my facebook, you probably already saw this, or who knows, it might have scrolled right past you, but either way, I wanted to repeat it here because it made me happy, and I don’t want to lose that feeling that I had that evening sitting by the river.

“Joy. It comes at the strangest times. I can’t call it in, and have no clue what makes it come, but when it does, I am in awe. Tonight, watching the red sun through the smoke as we sat along the Applegate River at Red Lily Vineyards, I felt awash in Joy. Listening to great music, drinking truly great wine, watching families and friends having fun together, I felt it. Overwhelming joy. I forgot my camera, forgot my phone, just had to experience it in the moment. Wondering if the fact that I didn’t have any kind of way to record the moment made it even more precious. When I got home, I ran outside with the camera, capturing the red sun setting through the smoke of the Taylor Fire just west of Grants Pass. Still remembering those precious moments of inexplicable joy. Treasuring the clarity of fresh air beneath the smoke, the mountains in the distance opened up from some unknown wind.”

I have also learned in this last 30 days to look downward, to look up close at the world. Skip the sweeping vistas, they are invisible anyway, and just look at what is right in front of me. We haven’t done a lot in the last few weeks, other than hang around home, working in the yard in the mornings, avoiding the worst of the heat and smoke, walking the dog in the evenings after it settles down a bit.

All thoughts of local hikes and kayak trips evaporated with the fires that began with a wild thunderstorm that crossed most of Northern California and Southern Oregon on July 15. That very day Mo and I had driven south along the Applegate River to visit a beautiful lavender farm that opened up to the public for the 2018 Lavender Festival. We have the Applegate Wine Trail, and we also have the Applegate Lavender Trail, with 15 farms participating.

The small acreage was beautiful, abuzz with bees and lovely people walking around picking their lavender bundles. We ate lavender ice cream and listened to live music on the patio, and hid from the lightning strikes that we knew would bring sadness in the coming days, but at the time, it all seemed just so lovely.

That night there were more than 1,100 lightning strikes over the Rogue Valley and the Siskiyou Mountains, and the fires that started then are still raging all around us. The horrible Carr Fire in Redding started a bit later, with a flat tire causing sparks on the pavement that ignited an inferno that killed 7 people and destroyed over 1000 homes. Fire season has only just begun, and there is no end in sight. We have until October to wait for the rains to at last extinguish the fires, but until then, anything goes. Fire/smoke season in Oregon, in the entire West, is now a reality, and something that must be planned for always. If you travel here, don’t come during fire season. It has happened every single year now since 2012, and most years prior to that since the Biscuit Fire in 2002.

I wanted to write a blog, wanted to fill the empty space that is July and August in my memory banks, but as I write I can see how very much the fires and the smoke affect everything that I do. So with that out of the way, maybe now I can think and write about some of the sweetness.

Early in July, Merikay and Craig of Merikay’s Dream decided to visit while they were camped at Valley of the Rogue State Park just a few miles south. I cooked up a good supper, Merikay brought yummy cheesecake, and we showed them around Sunset House before settling in for dinner and a rousing game of that silly card game we learned last spring from John and Carol of “Our Trip Around the Sun”. We had such a good time neither of us remembered to take any photos! Merikay and Craig are cruising around the Pacific Northwest and John and Carol are living the lifetime dream of traveling through Alaska in their motorhome.

Mid July I drove back over the Cascades to Rocky Point to help out the quilt group with the annual Rocky Point BBQ, the major fund raiser for the local volunteer fire department. It was great seeing old friends, and I invited the entire group to Sunset House for a get together, maybe some quilting, and maybe some crafting.

None of this particular group of friends had been over the mountain to visit Sunset House, so I had fun showing them around, and they enjoyed seeing the real thing after all the photos I have shared of our house and the process of building it.

I actually baked a couple of epic quiches, one vegetarian and one traditional with all the bacon I could fit. We laughed and talked, and then managed to make a big mess of fun with shaving cream and water color paints making marbleized art pieces for handmade greeting cards. It was a silly thing, but we had fun doing it. Mo isn’t part of the quilt group, but all the women have been friends of hers long before I showed up on the Rocky Point scene. It was a good day.

I especially enjoyed showing off the fabulous quilting done by Janna from Restoration Cowboy Style on my One Block Wonder quilt. She did an amazing job and the quilt ladies were duly impressed, Janna! I have been doing a bit of quilting on hot days as well, working on a big blooming nine patch with brilliant fabrics. I hope to have Janna quilt it, but will probably have to wait until spring because I am not going to get it done in time. I never sewed so many little nine patches, ever!

For everyday entertainment, I have been working on small landscaping projects while Mo works on fixing up her workshop. Mo decided that a bit of help would be nice, and invited her brother Dan and his wife Chere down for a visit and a consultation on just how to construct the new porch overhang for the small building.

This photo of the old shed is from 2013. Fires then as well. Look closely at the skinny blue door on the right, that is the same door on the right of what is left of the building in the photo below.

I thought it might be fun to throw in a shot of the old outbuilding from the days when we first owned the property. Most of it is gone now except for the main part of the building

She has been working on it for some time now, caulking and trimming, getting all the old wood cleaned up and painted. Before winter there will be a new roof and a new porch overhang, a place for her to use her saws with some protection from the weather, but not inside the building with all that sawdust getting into everything.

It is always fun spending time with Dan and Chere, and having them here for a couple of days was wonderful. We ate good food both at home and at a great restaurant in Grants Pass we hadn’t tried before, Blondie’s Bistro. First thing I noticed was that the balsamic reduction on the salad was every bit as good as any I have had, including my own. Actually, sometimes I burn mine and it ends up like caramel, and once it even turned into a sticky candy mess. So I do really appreciate a good balsamic reduction.

My gardening projects have been small, mostly getting more shrubs planted, and adding mulch to the borders around the house. With our heat, mulch makes all the difference, keeping roots cool enough, and within days after putting down the mulch, the plants look happier. We don’t yet have an automatic sprinkler system, so my mornings are spent watering, lots of hand watering. It is a job I really love, contemplative and quiet, and it gives me a chance to visit with each plant and flower, and check in on them.

We took in bids for a new fence along street side of the house and with the company 8 weeks out, I may not see the fence before I leave for Italy in September. We also contracted to get a sun shade for the porch. We love the view, but the western sun at dinner time is a bit much to bear. Whenever we have company, we pull down the brown sheet that has served for shelter until the shade arrives. It’s the little things.

We took the MoHo to Guaranty of Junction City, Oregon for an all around check up and going through, making sure everything is in good order before we head off on a trip of several thousand miles. It is a 3 hour drive, but folks from all over the country know about the service for RV’s available in Junction City, so it is worth it.

The days just seem to be so full, and I can’t really figure out why. We are taking care of dental things, some physical therapy for Mo’s ankle and for my knee, doctor appointments to get caught up with the new doctor, going to the meat market for the Thursday sales, to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings for all that lovely produce coming in from the Applegate.

I water the flowers, walk the dog, clean the house, cook, do some quilting, watch some news and check out the smoky sunsets. I made applesauce with Mo’s help peeling the apples from our Gravenstein apple tree, have spent many hours working on reservations and plans for our winter trip to Florida, spent more hours working on final plans for the three week trip to Italy.

A couple of days ago my computer started acting weird, so I tried to be sure all was backed up, and sure enough, out she went. Probably the hard drive, and she is going to the computer doctor back in Klamath Falls when we go there this weekend. Oh yes, there is that as well. A tenant moved out and we spent a couple of days at the apartments cleaning up, and will spend a couple more days there this coming weekend painting for the new tenant. Always something, it seems.

At least I have the old laptop to fill in while the big girl gets fixed. And of course, I am soo soo tempted to buy a new laptop. This one is really so very old, and the plugin doesn’t work properly and it is slow, and and and…..How do you keep from buying something new and nice when you know better?

How can such little stuff keep me so busy? How can I think that all this little stuff is even worth writing about? How very few people will read to the end of this story. Ha! Reminds me of all those facebook memes rolling around that are really long, and at the end they say something like “you probably won’t read all of this, but if you do, copy and paste to your wall etc etc etc.” I never do even if I DO read it all. So don’t copy and paste, but if you made it this far, maybe you could comment. Ha!

Nickie (Out and About with Jimmy and Nicky) called me today to commiserate about all the smoke and heat and frustration about being house bound in summer and I think we both felt better after the phone call. She laughed about having nothing to blog about except the grandbaby and I don’t even have that. Still, for me, as always, it is about memory. I need to be sure than when I return to the blog there isn’t a giant hole where July and August reside.

07-05-2018 Playing Close to Home

Current Location: Grants Pass Oregon at 86 degrees F with strong breezes and mostly clear skies

It has been a precious summer so far. For the entire month of June I breathed in the blue skies and fresh air without a touch of smoke from wildfires to mar the loveliness. Sometimes during a simple quick run to the grocery store I would be completely awed by the technicolor blues and greens that made me wonder if I hadn’t perhaps ingested some sort of mind altering substance without knowing it.

The colors were almost psychedelic, cartoonish, so brilliant that I would just breathe and drive and gasp out loud all alone in the car. I know the fires will come eventually, the clear air will go gray and dingy when the smoke from the wildfires that are already beginning to dot the maps of the west finds our valley once again. Then again…could we really be lucky enough to skip the smoke this year? I haven’t lived here long enough to really know if that is a possibility. Smoke always seems to come when everything is at its most beautiful. Maybe not this year, I’ll wait and see.

This is our first summer actually living in Grants Pass full time. Mo and I are enjoying having more time to fiddle around with projects. Mo’s most recent creation was an arbor for the old front gate area, where she used two old doors that we saved from the cottage as side walls. Thank you, Pinterest, for the ideas! We loved the old doors in the cottage, built in 1926, and I think these doors were originals. Mo cut and sanded and painted, figuring out the puzzle of using the old existing gate posts as standards, and making the whole thing fit in, level and even.

I love the arbor, and the old gate that it surrounds. Somehow it feels like a portal to me, a portal from the outside world into a magical world of our own making. I love the feeling of memories of the old cottage contained in those old doors.

July 4th was quiet this year. Daughter Melody and her family had other plans. For years she has missed sharing time with her old theater friends from the days she lived in Albany, and now that she is in Eugene, just an hour away from Albany where those friends live, she was able to attend the annual Fourth of July party with the theater group. She told me a year ago that she would NOT be available this year for our traditional family time.

Instead she and Robert drove down from Eugene on Saturday to spend the weekend with us, and on Sunday daughter Deborah showed up for yummy brunch, family time, and the traditional game of Bocci Ball, which seems to show up every year on the 4th, no matter where we are.

On the actual 4th, Mo and I decided that we needed some sort of entertainment that was out of the ordinary house work, yard work, book work, and such, and decided to try out the trails in our nearby county and BLM park.

Cathedral Hills is a big park, with several miles of trails for mountain bikes, hiking, and horseback riding, no motorized vehicles allowed. Still, when hiking, a mountain biker barreling down those trails can seem quite fearsome, especially when getting off the trail involves negotiating the thick stands of poison oak and corralling Mattie!

This view from the Hogback Trail is facing east toward our house, which lies on that terrace at the base of the mountain to the right of the big pine tree.

Close friends know that Mo has been having some ankle trouble lately, and it has kept our hikes short and to a minimum. She has been seeing a physical therapist and felt good enough that she thought she could handle at least a couple of miles of walking.

We started early in the day, while it was still cool, and found our way to the main entrance to the park, farther west than the Walker trailhead that is just half a mile down the road from our house. I hiked the Walker trail a couple of years ago, and knew it was terrifically steep with tight switchbacks to the Hogback trail on the ridge.

There were quite a few people in the parking lot when we arrived, but the multiple trails were not the least bit crowded. In our entire 3.5 mile hike we passed just a few people, horses, and dogs. Mo’s ankle held up well, and she was only a little bit sore the next day. Both of us were encouraged, since for the past 16 years one of our major forms of entertainment has included hiking and walking. We surely don’t want to give that up!

My crazy hip did fine as well, with the buckets of Aleve that the doctor said I should take, insisting that my kidneys were strong.

After our hike, we came home and relaxed a bit, did some chores, had a early supper, and decided to brave the city crowds for the fireworks show at Reinhart All Sports Park in Grants Pass. Once a long time ago, when we first bought the property in Grants Pass, I discovered the pedestrian bridge, but hadn’t explored the park.

Official parking was less than a mile from the park grounds where the fireworks were going to be set, and the walk through the park and across the river was lovely. Mo’s ankle did start barking, and we decided that if we do this again, we will save the big hike for another day and save our steps for the park.

The music was loud, but in the distance, the crowds were pleasant, and not too thick, the police presence was there but not intrusive. We set up our chairs and waited, hoping we were in the right place. Many people around us hoped for the same thing since the city fireworks show hadn’t been in this location in the past. In fact, last year, Grants Pass didn’t even have a fireworks show.

The show itself was interesting, and quite different from any I had seen before. Gone were the big loud booms, with the wait, and then the bursting flower of color high in the sky. Instead, some sort of machine shot out many bursts at once, in all directions. They were lower in the sky, but very colorful and there were a LOT of them. We enjoyed the show, but I did miss the big ones. There were no fireworks allowed in the park, so the scary prospect of a firecracker set off underfoot by some crazy person wasn’t a problem.

The parking was handled exceptionally well, and we were surprised at how orderly and easy it was to exit the parking area and within minutes afterward we were back home. It wasn’t a typical July 4th celebration for us, and I did miss the family time on a lake somewhere, but it was still very nice. My kids know I get all silly about July 4th if I don’t have family around, but this time I was perfectly fine.

When Mo and I returned from our trip to South Beach, we left the kayaks on top the baby car, thinking that we would find a lake to kayak soon enough. On the last Wednesday in June, we traveled south through the Applegate Valley beyond Ruch and the wineries, to Applegate Lake. It is actually a reservoir, with only a little bit of shoreline showing and the water wasn’t terribly low as is the case in some of the other reservoirs in this area on the west side of the mountains.

I remember a couple of decades ago when Melody lived in Ruch, and saw Applegate Lake for the first time. I still lived in Idaho, and she called me in a panic saying, “What is wrong with this lake?? It has a huge bathtub ring?!!”. She had the luxury of being raised in the Northern Idaho Eastern Washington lake country, where every lake is real, and very few have dams that let out the water to levels that make for those ugly steep brown exposed shorelines. Here on the west side, every lake we have found is actually a reservoir, with associated levels that are affected by the spring rains, snowmelt, and irrigation. This year, with a drought officially claimed, those levels are going down fast.

Still, our day on the Applegate was perfect. The skies were again that technicolor blue, with only a light breeze. We first checked out the official campground and boat launch site, but it really didn’t have much to offer and was at the northern edge of the lake, without much to see on the shoreline. There was also a $7.00 fee to launch and the manager of the place was rather rude. I told him nicely we would look for another launch, and he said, “Your stuff won’t be safe there, why in the world would you want to be on that end of the lake?!” Duh, we are kayakers, not boaters, and we want complex shoreline, little coves, and no big fast boats getting in our way!

The Copper launch was just about perfect. Clear water, no silty mud, and nice long paved launch where we could take the car right to the water. Something I read on Wiki was fascinating. The boat ramp is the upper part of the road that once went to the town of Copper, buried forever when the lake was filled in 1980.

Once on the lake we traveled south, and found a beautiful little cove the meandered back into the forest, shrouded with shady firs, and huge rock cliffs. It was back here that we did see some birdlife, mostly geese, but with their little ones they were very entertaining.

There were a few more kayakers on the water, but they weren’t intrusive, and told us about another cove farther south past a place they called “The Orchard”. Sure enough, we continued south and found this inlet, along with a big open park that looked like a campground. Still planning to check if it is a day use area only or includes overnight camping.

We spent about 2 1/2 hours on the water, enjoying every single moment of crystal clear skies. clear clean water, and brilliant sunshine. I am sure we will return to this lake in the future, since it is the best place so far on this side of the mountains for kayaking. As I said before, the mighty Rogue River is a bit much for us, with a strong, fast current. It is a big river, with lots of rapids in between the quiet places, and neither of us is particularly interested in that kind of kayaking in our long lake boats.

I packed a picnic for us and we shared it on a real picnic table overlooking the lake. I have no clue what we did for the rest of the afternoon, but were back home by 2.

Being on the road and traveling in the summer can get so tiresome, with overcrowding, parks full of kids, hot weather, and no vacancies plaguing so many folks any more. Our idea of good summer times is enjoying all the beauty of our own local world. I think we are off to a good start.

Summer Doings

I am writing this post in late August, the 22nd actually, and a large thunderstorm has just passed over the east side of the Cascades. We don’t often get moisture this time of year, so it was a surprise, lovely and luscious and more than a little bit scary. Hopefully there is enough rain in the storm to offset any chance of lightning strikes starting more fires. The temperatures have dropped considerably this afternoon, and I had to actually put on a pair of sweat pants.

The month of August seemed to fly by, and somehow one of our favorite little gatherings slipped by without even a mention. For the past 11 years, Klamath Blues Society has hosted a Brats, Brews, and Blues Festival at the Pelican Marina in Klamath Falls. It usually runs from early afternoon to about 7 in the evening, with local blues bands on the venue for some delightful entertainment. The bands come and go and are at various levels of excellence, but for a small out of the way town like Klamath, it is still great fun to go listen to music on the shore of the lake and pay 20 bucks for a bratwurst and 6 beer tickets.

Each of those tickets buys a very small sampler of beer. but It’s all for a good cause, with proceeds from the event go to Camp Evergreen, a youth bereavement camp run by Klamath Hospice for children who have lost loved ones. A couple of local breweries are there to peddle their wares and this year the midges were absent and the weather was perfect. This year the event was in early August, and for once, Mo and I weren’t off traveling somewhere.

Even more perfect, my daughter Melody and son-in-law Kevin were the emcee’s for the event and my daughter Deborah now lives close enough to join us for a great afternoon. It was sooo much fun. We ran into our neighbors, Wes and Gayle, who enjoyed the event as well. Not as much as I did though, since I had my daughters there to get me up out of my chair and dancing. Once I started, there was no stopping. I would try, but then that dang beat would keep me going and laughing like crazy and trying to keep from falling on my face, I just kept on dancing with my girls. Haven’t had that much energetic fun in a very long time.

The other summer doings around here have been a bit less delightful. Our giant ponderosa pines have very long needles, lots of them, and every summer it is a big job getting them off the roof. Mo is the ladder climber in the house, since I get wobbly and goofy up there. I can do the roof part, but that part where you get from the ladder to the roof not so much. I watched her up there, holding the ladder for her ascent and helping jockey the blower cord around so it didn’t get in the way.

Other excitement around here has been even more subtle. I have been watching flowers bloom and trees grow while Mo mows. She built this place a year before I knew her and I was comparing some of the photos of what it looked like in 2002 and what it looks like now. It is so much fun seeing tiny little trees that were a foot or so high now reaching for the sky at more than 30 feet. Something has “grabbed” in the last couple of years and everything is growing like crazy. Starting to look like a jungle out there in spite of the challenging climate we have here in the mountains.

Somewhere toward the end of July we traveled a few miles east to the Running Y Resort for their “big” garden tour. One of the gardens there was carved out of all that rocky basalt with an incredible amount of work and planning. She won “gardener of the year” for some sort of statewide thing, and said she was amazed that she won over some of those lush Portland landscapes. We drove through the resort roads from garden to garden, marveling at the variety of stuff that could be grown in a dry rocky landscape.

The Running Y Garden Tour Winning Flower Bed

I also thought that I should have a garden tour of my own! Instead, when the kids come to visit, I just take them on the “garden walk”, telling them how things are doing and what is what in my Rocky Point landscape.

My Flower Bed

I still have issues with the deer, spraying the very smelly Liquid Fence at least every two weeks to keep mama deer and her babies out of my flowers. When we got back from the last trip she had nipped a couple of flower heads off the rudbeckia sunflowers, a plant I thought deer didn’t eat, but she hadn’t touched anything else. Next door at Wes and Gayle’s, she even ate all the herbs on the porch. I didn’t think deer liked strong flavored herbs, but I guess since all my flowers tasted like rotten eggs and old milk she figured something was better than nothing. Go me! Sorry, Gayle.

From the Heart

“It shifted from being written directly to my family and friends to something with more explanation and less from the heart, if you know what I mean. “ “paying too much attention to the reader community and not enough to my own preferences. “

Words this morning from a trusted friend brought me up short. I know the feeling, and I fight it sometimes. Case in point: my last post and this one. There is enough going on around here that I have some things to write about, some life to share, and yet I found myself liking the way the last post looked so much that I didn’t want to upstage it with a new one that wouldn’t have those photos of my pelicans. Now just how silly is THAT?! Mo said, “Well, why don’t you just put the pelicans up on the header photo?” Yeah, ok, I’ll do that, and yet the thoughts behind why I didn’t want to write a new post were still somewhat interesting to me. Sounds like I may be slipping into what this friend described in that last sentence I quoted in the first paragraph!

My Goal: write from the heart. Write about stuff, explain stuff, but keep the heart in it. Write as if I were writing to a trusted friend. Of course, some stuff I wouldn’t even write to a trusted friend so I won’t write that part in here. Those parts are saved for private journals that even my kids will never see. The good thing about this goal is that when I go back and read (and I DO go back and read my own blog), it will be entertaining and fun, and will help me remember not only what I saw and what I did, but how I felt about it. At least that is the goal.

Personal journals, on the other hand, can be incredibly depressing to read later. I journal a lot when I am angry, depressed, or just plain falling apart. Not fun reading. On another note, I don’t seem to have a lot of personal journaling going on now as I did when I was younger. Life is less full of angst and worry and frustration. I guess after 66 years, it is about time, right?

I think especially of this kind of “from the heart” writing when I think of Sherry’s story of David’s journey. I have mentioned them often enough that anyone who reads my blog has probably found theirs. Good news today with 8 million stem cells in his collection! Then, again from the heart, Laurie Brown’s eulogy to her Dad. Semi-True Tales of the Road has been one of those that stands out so far above so many of us that it is hard to see it wind down a bit. The only blog I read for years, I still always watch for a post from Laurie. Many folks mentioned her great campground reviews, but when I think of Laurie, I think of great food stories, seriously funny moments (aka Desert Hot Springs), and the clay oven.

Speaking of bloggers, last week brought us another blogger meet-and-greet treat, with Merikay and Craig visiting our world. They spent a long time hiking the trails of Crater Lake, many that Mo and I who live an hour away have never traveled. Then they camped a couple of nights right here in Rocky Point, giving us the chance to get Merikay and Craig out on Recreation Creek in the kayaks.

I love showing someone how much fun it is to get out on the water in a kayak and this was no exception. We had a perfect day with water smooth as glass for our morning adventure. Getting into a kayak for the first time can be a bit daunting, and once out on the water, it sometimes takes a few moments to get used to that wiggly feeling. Within a short time though, that feeling goes away and your body settles into the balance much like it happens on a bicycle. We had a nice, short paddle for their first run, and I do hope they will try it again. It is such a great way to get up close to the birds and feel a silence on the water that is hard to find any other way.

A little benefit of blog meet-and-greets are the photos! Loree has photos of Jeana on her blog since they met up as Loree traveled east, and we got a great photo of Loree on Jeana’s blog as well. Now isn’t that just fabulous?! Somehow the photos that others take of you are quite a bit different than the ones you might put up on your own blog.

Later that afternoon I invited Merikay and Craig to the house for supper, along with our closest neighbors, Wes and Gayle, our Tucson friends who live here in the summer. We had appetizers on the porch, dinner inside at the dining table, and dessert back on the porch, all accompanied by a few different wines supplied by each of us. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, especially since hostessing a meal is a favorite thing for me to do. I was having so much fun I forgot to take photos of the table, the food, and my guests. I guess that is a good sign.

Fourth of July was wonderful. I do love the Fourth, not for any particularly patriotic reason, but for its ability to bring up happy childhood memories and to create small town joys. As I spent the morning making potato salad and meltingly perfect chocolate cupcakes, I remembered my foster mother, who loved all holidays and taught me to appreciate them with huge church picnics, decorations for everything, and always always great holiday food.

With Melody and family in town, Mo and I drove in for the celebrations. Klamath Falls once again scheduled the holiday parade for 5 in the evening, ending in Veteran’s Park, where the fireworks were scheduled to go off at ten pm when it is finally dark here. It is much nicer to have a later parade and only have to drive to town once. When the parade was in the morning, it was harder to figure out what to do with ourselves while we waited for the fireworks twelve hours later.

This time, the parade was nice, but I still wish we could get more marching bands to come. There was only one. Parades need music! There were lots of red white and blue decorations, however, and the Shriner guys in their little cars always make a parade seem like the real thing. Of course, seeing my son in law and my grandson representing the Klamath County Sheriff’s department was a treat. Kevin is a reserve deputy, and Elric got a big kick out of being in the cop car in the parade. UhOh. Elric is now Xavier, but I keep forgetting. I have no clue why teenagers think they have to change their names, but I am trying to get with the program. Seems to me that Elric is enough of an interesting name, but n-ooo-ooo. He has to make it more interesting! He is 13. What can I say…

Hillary/Axel (remember that other name change I mentioned in the last post?) spent most of the time between the parade and the fireworks volunteering for the face painting booth. Terrible me, I can’t remember what the booth was promoting, but it was some sort of socially redeemable venture, I am sure. We had fun watching her and as the evening wore on, the line grew exponentially. Word was getting around that she was painting some fairly radical faces, unlike the typical butterflies and such. Well, with a name like Axel, who would expect butterflies anyway?

By the time the fireworks started, we were all starting to get fairly chilled, but the bugs weren’t out this year so that was a blessing. Why don’t I remember that even if it is 90 during the day, the air will require sweats, jackets and even gloves by ten pm. I hate to say it, but when the fireworks began we were pretty disappointed. It may have been because of the high winds that evening, but once again the big booms couldn’t seem to rise above the trees lining the lakeshore at Veteran’s Park.

It made for some interesting photos, especially with the full moon rising right where the big fireworks were exploding, but it also made for a few unhappy folks hanging around all evening waiting. Next year we may just give it up and go check out the fireworks at Lake of the Woods, closer to home for us, but not part of that small town Klamath thing that we love.

I guess the small town Klamath thing means there isn’t enough money for a big town fireworks show.

The Delights of Traveling Close

Something wonderful happens when summer finally arrives. The family is nearby, the porch is inviting, the kayaks are waiting, the flowers are blooming. Ahhh. It takes a long time for summer to actually show up in this part of Oregon, but when it does, it is worth the wait. While most of the country swelters and much of the west in on fire, here the mornings are still cool, the nights chilly enough for a comforter, and the daytime temperatures are in the mid 70’s. That is a Rocky Point summer.

My daughter was blessed with a three day weekend and if you remember how life is when you are all working full time, it takes a couple of days to catch up on chores at home. The three day weekend gave her a chance to play, and this time their version of play was a night at the Casa del Sol (our little cabin by the house), with burgers on the grill, marshmallows in the wood stove, and a morning on the water with mom. Somehow busy-ness gets in the way of recreation, and I have only had my grandkids out in the kayaks a few times. I love seeing the look on Hillary’s (who is changing her name to Axel but I still am not “there” yet) face when she gets on the water. She loves it. Melody kept exclaiming, “This is amazing, Mom, this is amazing!”. Grandson Elric chose to hang out at home in the cabin with dad and when Melody, Hillary, and I returned we were treated to a great late brunch cooked up by the son-in-law and grandson.

Good things do come to an end, and the kids headed back to town. Of course, for Mo and I it didn’t matter that it was Sunday night. Mo wandered off to a place we have wanted to camp for a few years and never remember. She called me and said, “Why don’t you meet me and Abby out here at Eagle Ridge, and maybe bring some supper?” Great plan again!

The last time we were at Eagle Ridge we still had the sailboat, and the winds were challenging as usual on these mountain lakes. Once again I remembered why we decided kayaking was easier than sailing! It is a lot easier to launch a kayak than a sailboat and even with all the paddling, it is a lot less work. Eagle Ridge is a Klamath county campground about half way between town and Rocky Point, maybe ten miles from home for us. There are a few primitive sites, no charge, no dump, no amenities except a great view of Shoalwater Bay, a launching dock, and sites right on the water.

The road to the park is about 4 miles of rough gravel and dirt, with not a few bumps, but the MoHo handled it just fine. No one else on the road to kick up gravel to worry about. Except for a couple of fishermen in the early evening, we had the place to ourselves.

Shoalwater Bay is on Klamath Lake proper, and the native algae that our lake has made famous was in evidence. Great kayaking, but probably not something to swim in. It is perfectly safe, but green. I think there is a Blue-Green algae company that is still making a good profit from Klamath Lake. I guess it is the reason our lake is so gorgeous and not surrounded by development. John C Fremont, back in 1857, said this lake wasn’t fit for a horse to drink. The algae is supported by all the natural phosphorus in the lake because of all the volcanic ash from Mt Mazama (Crater Lake) deposited several thousand years ago. The ambient phosphorus load is a big point of discussion about our lake, especially when trying to determine how much phosphorus is coming from the agricultural lands on the Sprague River which feeds the lake.

If you want to see incredibly clear blue water, just head up the hill to Crater Lake. Merikay and Craig are hiking there this week and have some really gorgeous photos of all that blue clarity. Notice, however, that all that clarity doesn’t do much for the water birds. On the other hand, here on Klamath Lake, water birds are everywhere. My favorite, and in my opinion the greatest of all, are the American white pelicans. They winter in Mexico and South America, but every year in March they return to Klamath Lake and the first pelican is the sign that spring is coming, much like the first crocus. They have a 9 foot wing span, and fly in formation much like fighter jets. I suppose it is my favorite part of kayaking around here, coming upon a raft of pelicans and watching them fly. I especially love the black wing tips that don’t show until they are airborne. I don’t often put in a slide show, but I do think this one is worth the band width. Check out the pelicans that we found on our paddle.

https://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

We watched the sunset over the bay, and found enough old driftwood to built a nice campfire on the beach in front of the MoHo. I heard recently that Oregon is the only state in the west that doesn’t currently have any large active forest fires. Notice all that green grass and moist vegetation. Of course, it won’t be like that later in the summer, but for now having a campfire was delightful.

The night was silent except for the lake breezes and dark until the moon rose. Not a soul around, and just four miles from the highway. Nice.

Morning came slowly with Eagle Ridge directly east of us, and the dew was thick on the windows. We even had to turn on the furnace for a few minutes with morning tea as we watched the day lighten. Deciding that breakfast back home would be nice, we drove the few miles back to Rocky Point and cooked up a nice Sunday breakfast (even though it was Monday) watched the news, and got ready for our day, much refreshed and renewed by our little side trip.

The flowers are starting to bloom more and more, and I am enjoying the gardens now that the heavy labor of May cleanup has dissipated a bit. We had another load of juniper delivered, and it is piled high in the MoHo shed, so the big job of splitting and stacking has begun. July is about good weather and having fun, but it is also about getting in the firewood, spraying the deer repellant, and mowing the lawns.

We keep driving to Grants Pass, thinking that someday when we are “old”, we will settle over there out of the snow into a better growing season. I looked around last week at this beautiful place and said, “No”. Let’s just stay here till we have to go into a home somewhere. Worst case scenario, we have to pay someone to help now and then with the hard stuff. But every time I drive to town, or over the mountain to the “other side”, and then return I feel my breath quicken at the sight of that murky lake below in the sunlight. I am thrilled by the birds, the silence, the clear sunny skies, the forest. It is home. I guess that is why we have a motorhome after all, we can leave in the winter, we can travel if we want to, but we have home right here. I don’t want to give it up, even for a growing season that would let me have more flowers.

A parting thought here, one that came to me last week as we were traveling home from Oroville:

Sometimes, when riding in the MoHo, memories wash over me in waves. Maybe it is the vibration, maybe the changing scenery flying by. Somehow the complexity of my life flows by me like the trees rushing past, ephemeral, hard to catch, hard to track. I was once known for my phenomenal memory, spitting out dates like “Oh that was on a Tuesday in 1987”. Memories used to be like individual stories, with a beginning and an end, solid and real and separate. Lately, as life gets more and more full, and the memories begin to stack up, they are becoming more fluid, overlapping each other and flowing by in complex scenes, just as rich, but somehow with more flow. I wonder if that is what the old folks in the rocking chair on the porch are experiencing, that magical, colorful flow. I like it.