Eagle Crest

We had a small family get together in Eagle Crest last weekend.  We met up for dinner Friday night, then got up early with my parents and two of my uncles and headed to Smith Rock for a hike up to Monkey Face.

Monkey Face

We were able to get really close to it.

Check out the climber on the left for scale.  There are over 1500 climbing routes in the park!

We headed to Bend for a few hours for some quick shopping, then back to Eagle Crest for a BBQ at my aunt and uncle's house.

Sunday I got up early and headed toward Sister's to hike Black Butte by myself.  It was smokey, but still great views of all the mountains in the area.  Here are the 3 sisters.

Almost to the top.  There was a fire watch tower at the top, and just a handful of other people thanks to my early start.  1 hour 40 to the top, 45 minutes down.  A great hike I hope to do again with Aaron.

Meanwhile...I had announced at dinner Friday night that Aaron had NEVER ridden a horse!  Knowing that my uncle, who lives in Arizona, had brought his two horses with him.  Well that was an easy fix, Dick was all over it and a Sunday morning ride was quickly arranged.  I would have loved to have gone too, but no horse for me.  Aaron had a great time, they went out for about 2 hours.  Long enough for him to get a little experience.

Aaron riding Blonde

We met back at the house and headed over to the Deschutes County Fair with my parents.  We were all impressed with the size of this fair!  Not only in the fairgrounds - which were large, but with all the entries.  Here is less than half of the canned food that was entered in open class - just the senior section.  We went to the Marion County Fair this year, and this was much more fun with all the participation.

Piglets

Lots of chickens too!  Way more than the State Fair has.  This rooster was a hot mess.

The plan was to stop at Sno Cap on the way home, but the line was to the street, so we passed and settled for gingerbread at the Gingerbread house in Mehama.  Yum!

We had a great weekend!  My least favorite thing about Salem?  Easily the lack of hiking, which is my favorite form of exercise.  It was nice to have the outdoors as our playground for the weekend!

Long Weekend

What a nice long weekend!  I've been off since Thursday, Aaron had to work early Friday morning, but was off by 2.  We both had today off and got a lot done around here.

Thanksgiving was good, we took a pumpkin and apple pie and this braised cabbage - yum!  

I braved downtown on Friday morning by myself, but honestly didn't see much that I wanted.  I hit up Greenbaum's when they opened to get a random discount, I drew the largest, 25% off.  So I stocked up on solids and this whale flannel I've been eyeing for weeks.

Saturday morning we headed out to Minto Brown to ride our bikes.  Many of the paths were flooded.  We had made it across a few shallow areas when we came to this bridge.  We couldn't tell how deep it was, so Aaron went for it.  As you can see he didn't make too far.  Once he stopped moving it was problematic and let's just say this did not end well for his left foot.

We found ourselves in Independence for one reason or another and had lunch at the Pink House Cafe.  My food was good, but Aaron wasn't too impressed with his.  The service was wonderful and it has great reviews, but I don't know that we were wowed enough to go back.  

Sunday we drove to Corvallis to pick up Aaron's BeerAdvent Calendar.  We picked up some dough balls from American Dream, we do this every time we are in town and make up 8 small pizzas and freeze them.  After that we went to Winco, Home Depot and Market of Choice.  So much easier to run errands there, as everything is so much closer.  On the way home we stopped at our favorite old growth trail for a wonderful hike.

Today we got the automatic chicken door going - ran an extension cord through the garage wall and into the coop for power.  They are enjoying running around here.

All throughout the weekend (and over the last few weeks, and yes, months) we worked on the guest bedroom.  We are finally (almost) done!  With painting at least.  This photo shows the color the best, which is Pittsburgh Paints in "Pistachio" - made up with Sherwin Williams SuperPaint.  Trim is Sherwin Williams "Extra White".  I used their ProClassic interior waterbased acrylic-alkyd, semi gloss and really like the self leveling results.

Aaron cleaned and polished ALL the hardware from all the doors.  What a difference that makes.

This room took me so many hours to paint!  It took about 3.5 hours to paint one coat on all the trim, not even the doors and everything got 4 coats - 1 of primer (Sherwin Williams Adhesion Primer), 3 of the trim paint.  This room has a lot going on, 2 windows, 2 doors and 2 smaller doors.  We cut and painted all the quarter round and got that in tonight, then Aaron caulked everything to finish it off.

It's hard to see, but we really liked this light that came with the house.  Aaron removed the base and painted it to clean it up a bit.

Just a few things left to do here, we need to replace a lot of the electrical, so face plates are needed and the register needs to be painted white.

But overall, I'm checking this room off the list!

P.S. Here are some before pictures.  I really don't have many - total fail on my part!
Here is the room with their things in it.  You can't see the carpet.

Here is the room - I think the only picture I have of the carpet, oops - with carpet and the first god awful color we picked out.  It's Sherwin Williams "Gleeful" at 50%.  We tore out the carpet before we had the floors refinished.

Much better I think!

Wahkeena Falls to Multnomah Falls

The snow fall this year has been disappointing, but with warm and sunny weather, we spent some time hiking around the beautiful gorge this weekend. Saturday we hiked to Mitchell Point, which wasn't very long, but super steep, with wonderful views at the top. I didn't take a camera with me unfortunately.
Today we did a loop from Wahkeena to Multnomah Falls. I lost track of how many waterfalls we saw, and most of the hike was along the super pretty Multnomah Creek. There were a lot of people at either end (especially the Multnomah Falls end) but the hike was well worth it. Neither of us could remember ever going to Multnomah Falls, which is kind of crazy because it's a very popular place, and we drive past it at least once a month. I think it's popularity is what turned me off from it, but it is the highest waterfall in Oregon, so of course it is stunning.






Like many people we have made New Year's resolutions, among them are to lose some weight, explore this area more and get organized. So far so good on all fronts. I would also like keep up here more frequently, so hopefully you will be hearing from me more.

Tom McCall Preserve

Two Sundays ago we went to the Tom McCall Preserve in Rowena. It was a beautiful day, sunny and lots of flowers out. The wind was pretty intense, but normal for that area. Julie's post reminded me that I had meant to share our trip too.




Poison oak bushes!

Syncline

A few days ago we went on a hike just across the river in White Salmon, it is called Syncline, or Coyote Wall. There were mainly mountain bikers using the trails, and lots of them. It was a nice hike, about 6 miles. The best part in my opinion was what's in the picture below...can you see it?


Western Meadowlarks singing all around! They were very hard to see unless they were facing us, their backs are brown and blend in with the grass.


The view:


Check these two out! I have a bad feeling their larvae are the dreaded tomato hornworm, which we get in this area. Something I didn't have to deal with before - HUGE green caterpillars that decimate tomato plants. The only effective control is hand picking them off. The chickens will love them at least! I couldn't bring myself to smash these two, especially not being sure.


I don't know what this is, but it was very focused on digging that hole.


I have been trying to get out more lately, but mostly to Post Canyon just a mile from our house. Lots of trails and open space close to home, which is nice on rainy days.