Hood River, OR to Crater Lake, OR


We stopped along the road in northern Oregon at a spot that promised to identify the mountains in the distance, but they were barely noticeable behind the haze of smoke. You can see that one side of the road has burned in the recent wildfires that have plagued the region and the other has not.


This is the Cooked River Railroad Bridge south of Madras. There were four geocaches in this little park that included three crossings of the 300 foot deep gorge, the RR, the current 5 lane highway and the old two lane one. The smoke has cleared at this point and you can see several mountains in the background.


A view of Wizard Island in the middle of Crater Lake from the North Junction overlook. Traveler’s Tip: Drive the loop in a clockwise direction because that puts the mountainside on your right. Traveling the opposite direction frequently puts nothing but a huge drop with no guardrail on that side of the car.

Lake Stevens, WA to Hood River, OR

A 300 mile day in the car as we went up and over Stevens Pass and down the eastern side of the Cascades to the Columbia River. The west side of the pass was green and lush pine forest while the east side was all dry and scrub bushes. We stopped for a leg stretch and a geocache in the faux Bavarian town of Leavenworth. And we ended the day at the Big Horse Brew Pub where for Donna’s birthday I got a new Brew Pub hoodie and a beer.


We bought some stamps here at the Skykomish Post Office (98288.)


Some of the giant one legged alien life forms that live in the Kittitas Valley.

Blackberries & Maddie Gets Equal Time


Scott & Beth have access to a large patch of blackberries and we spent as long as the attention span of a 4 year old could stand. Which means we barely covered the bottom of a bucket. Of course quite a few never even made it to the bucket.


I got grief for posting nothing but James pictures yesterday, so today we have a few of his younger sister Madelyn.


Niece Maddie is a bit camera shy, so snagging a photo is hard work.


Plus, she doesn’t stay in one place for too long.

Foggy Morning, Roping Buckets, Pigs Fly & Cardboard Cows


Lake Stevens is hidden behind the fog on our early morning walk. I wonder where the person is who belongs to those abandoned flip-flops?


Nephew James gets some help as he practices for the roping contest.


These Alaskan Pigs really fly while racing around the track on the grounds of the Evergreen State Fair.


Nephew James is too young to show an actual cow at the 4H show, so he and a lot of future farmers show cardboard ones.

Senior Travel Tip #213

Don’t pack your Benefiber in your carry-on luggage. It makes the TSA nervous, causing them to hand search your bag, then sprinkle out some on a piece of paper and watch what color it turns. I guess blue means OK.

Beckett’s Epic

The Sox are playing the Texas Rangers in Texas tonight and ESPN2 is kind enough to be showing the ball game. I have complained here before about the length of the Red Sox games, but tonight is one for the ages. Josh Beckett is on the mound for the FRS and he is what the announcers politely call deliberate, but you and I would call it slow, a lot slower than the other Sox pitchers.

The game has been going for just a little under 2 hours and we are exactly midway through at 4-/2 innings. May be looking at a 4 hour game. Because it is in Texas the normal start time was to be 8:10 Eastern, but was moved up to 7:10 for TV. Good thing too or I’d already be thinking shower and bed, now I’ll probably get to see another inning and a half…

Sundry Stuff

I hit the Daily Double yesterday as both the 7:00 & 7:30 PM episodes of Two And A Half Men were new to me.

In today’s Draft Order Draw for this year’s at work Fantasy Football League I got #11 out of a possible 12.

My wife said she felt today’s earthquake that was centered in Virginia, me on the other hand, the first I heard of it was on Google News about 20 minutes later.

Keep your fingers crossed that Irene keeps creeping east, because yesterday’s predictions placed the west side of her possible path over Charlotte about midday on Saturday, which coincided un-nicely with our departure on Delta Flight 2446 to Minneapolis/St Paul.