Where the heck did we go?

Sorry guys for such a long delay! We didn't get our 4th of July week up from when dad and Dave visited, or our trip to Bend (not very many pics, too much beer and whiskey), or my parents visit. Matt has been busy training for his first half marathon event at the end of October and Sam was super busy in the office and is now on her 3rd straight week in the field (there will be a 4th at least before a break). Check out Sam's Instagram account (link in the column to the right) where she posts pictures from the field... mostly mushrooms as of late. Hopefully things will slow down just a tad. Matt celebrated his 34th birthday this week and for the second year in a row Sam was in the field somewhere for it. We have football and soccer games, a concert, and more family visits coming up in the next few months. Nothing too terribly exciting, but whatever. Hopefully we'll get caught up on our more interesting adventures before too long and embark on some more. Until then, thanks for being patient!

Hiking in Gifford Pinchot

 We wanted to go hiking this last weekend, so Matt perused the Curious Gorge book and found 3 up in the Washington state area. We ended up doing two based on drive time and degree of wetness required. The area is the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. According to the Forest Service website, it was named after 

"Gifford Pinchot, an active conservationist, was appointed first Chief of the Forest Service. He played a key role in developing the early principles of environmental awareness. Pinchot's philosophy is made clear in his farsighted statement that the forests should be managed for "..the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run." In honor of his leadership, the Columbia National Forest was renamed for Gifford Pinchot in 1949."

On the way out you'll pass a Forest Service Station where you get a climbing permit for Mount Adams. If you had quizzed us on the elevations of the peaks in our general vicinity we would not have had a perfect score. Both of us believed Mt. Hood to be taller than Mt. Adams. Maybe it's because Hood is pointy and Adams is fairly flat top. [...]

Eugene and the Dirty Dash

Zirk, named after a car part

June 29-30

Mom popped down for her first visit to Hood River this weekend.  She made it in on Friday and brought the new pooch, Zirk.  Zirk is a rescue, and your general American mutt.  Mainly he is healer, cattle dog, among a bunch of other things.  He is black, furry, and a general wuss.  He got along great with Thomas!  Go figure.  We didn’t really show Mom downtown Hood River, but grilled out that night.  Pulled out some salmon and introduced mom to grilled corn.  Fresh corn with olive oil, salt and pepper, wrapped in foil, and 20 minutes on the grill.  You will never go back to boiled corn.  Mom was nice enough to bring some fresh lettuce from her garden for salads.  She had it all set up for us to keep our own fresh lettuce in a shallow bin to pick right off the plant for salads.  Unfortunately, in the coming weeks, Lucy had other ideas.  Lucy ravaged our new lettuce bin like Godzilla over Tokyo.  It was good while it lasted, though.  Thanks, Mom! [...]

Weekends in Oregon

June 22-23

So, there is something about living in Oregon in the summer.  It kinda rocks.  Random weekends are worth mentioning.  At the beginning of the summer, we bought Curious Gorge, which may as well be a hiking bible for the National Scenic Area in which we currently reside.  On this particular weekend, we decided to try some lesser known hikes mentioned in the book on Saturday.  The early hike was Shellrock Mountain 1872 Wagon Road.  There is actually the oldest road in the gorge right off I-84, and no one really knows it’s there.  You have to park on the eastbound side of the interstate, just after exit 51 and hop the guardrail to find the trail.  About a half mile in, sure enough, there is the old wagon road, built circa 1872.  Switchback up the hill and you can walk along and sit on the old road.  Just below is the freeway, where everyone blowing by is oblivious to the old road.  Never saw another soul on the hike, but just watching the world, and river, go by while sitting on top of the old road. [...]

OWSA

On a whim I joined the Oregon Women's Sailing Association. I heard about it from a coworker whose significant other is a member. Both of them sail quite a bit. My first meeting was in May and these women are a mix of personalities and sailing experience. Another woman who I met and was at her first meeting was engaged to a fellow who sails. Her role aboard is drink maker and sun bather. But he wants to get a larger boat and take it on the ocean, so being the smart woman she is, she decided it would greatly behoove her to learn to sail in case anything should go down on the high seas. No matter what their role or reason to be there, the woman were intelligent, strong, and quite hilarious. The biggest factor for me was that it did not feel like being trapped in a floating room suffering from terminal levels of estrogen. A former UAA classmate (we didn't have any of the same classes, but we were in the same group of friends), Emily, had apparently taken a small group of these women and worked with them on storytelling skills. I think there was 4 including Emily who went up and told a story about themselves, generally focused on sailing or somehow linking up to it. It was amazingly well done.Their stories were intriguing and genuine and all the body animations typical of women story telling (my mom and sister are excellent case studies in talking with your hands and your whole body, respectively) added to the tale instead of distracting from it. I was rolling in the floor. I laugh regularly, but it is usually more of a chuckle. This is full on belly laughing with a big smile. The meeting was fun and relaxed and informative. Food was provided by a group of volunteers who cooked up tacos. Another neat surprise was that its BYOB. Bring beer, wine, etc to share with the other ladies sitting at your table. So far, this meeting was the only one I have been able to attend due to work. I am in the field every other week Mon- Wed. and don't always get back in time. [...]

Lost Lake

Outdoor Vino from Naked Winery- obviously!!

I am not sure if you googled "Lost Lake Oregon", but Oregon has at least 19 lakes with this moniker. This Lost Lake is probably the most known, I'd imagine. There is a small resort here that charges you $7 for parking for the day. The lake is about 21 miles southwest of Hood River, located just north of Mt. Hood and provides spectacular views on a clear day. There's some fishing available for brown, brook, and rainbow trout and kokanee salmon. There are no motor boats allowed. We saw quite a few paddlers as well as some aluminum hulls powered by oars and arms. The resort has some of these available to rent and some rustic cabins and a general store. We did not stop by the general store even out of curiosity. Despite being further "inland" from the Columbia River, it was still quite windy and gusty. We started out very chilly and quickly warmed up in the sun and with the exertion of human power. We clung to the northern half of the lake because it was the sunniest (widest area). Unfortunately the view to the south was still very cloudy and only the base of Mt. Hood was visible. We did notice that every time a cloud covered the sun large gusts of wind would arrive, which at least made it predictable. [...]

Victoria and the Maiden Voyage

For Memorial Day weekend we went up to visit Matt's grandma. We left on Thursday evening after work. I had driven the Suby with the kayaks on top to the office and because it was nearly flooding outside, received a few Noah's Ark jokes. It proceeded to rain very hard the entire way up. It was a bit nerve wracking between the darkness, the heavy rain, and our first long trip with the kayaks (aside from moving from one town to another). We made it just fine and at about a quarter to midnight. Our plan originally was to get up and catch the first ferry over to Victoria, but we were not confident in our ability to get up after arriving so late. Turns out we both woke up the next morning without an alarm... at 6 am. [...]

Check Out Those Cans

Beer!  Home beer.  In cans!

Coalition Brewing in SE Portland was hosting a canning event for homebrewers this past weekend.  Oregon Brew Crew got a discount.  $20 and you get your 5 gallon corny keg put into 16 oz cans.  Of course, we got two.  We signed up, paid, and got our time slot months ago.  Then, we decided to move.  The ideal time to get our brew on would have been moving day.  But, we were moving, which didn't lend itself well to making new batches of beer.  And we had paid.  So, we came up with a couple ales that would ferment fast after we got to Hood River and would be ready for canning in a few weeks.  We also wanted to make a couple beers that we had already done, and we knew were tasty, because, well... we were about to have a lot of cans of beer.  So,

Prepping for summer: home, river, and booze news

First time ever we live in a house and not a condo- no shared walls, no neighbors with windows looking into yours, and we have a lawn!

The weather has been phenomenal the past 2 weeks. It was in the low 80's but it was a dry, hot 80's and the breeze was warm too. We both got a little sun despite wearing sunscreen. On the drive to work there is a distinct weather line just west of Multnomah Falls and when the Portland area is clouded in this is where you seemingly go through a portal to another world... one with a 500' ceiling of clouds. Meanwhile east of there is nice and sunny. We've experienced this from both directions. We're so happy to be living in a sunnier region!

Litter Box Project

When I was little we had a door between the dining room and the living room and I would make a point of slamming it shut whenever I went through. My parents were at the wits end after telling/ yelling at me to stop slamming the door. Finally, my dad said "The next time you slam the door I am taking it off it's hinges and putting it in the attic." Of course I walked over there and slammed it. The door spent the rest of the time we lived in that house in the attic. It was a pretty effective way of resolving the issue without just spanking or scolding me. You can't slam the door if there's no door to slam. 

Since bringing the cats home, we've gone through various phases of cat-proofing attempting to do the same thing- remove the things they find to cause problems. This works for the most part. We don't follow the rules on the litter box though. They recommend having 1 more litter box than you have cats, which would put us at 3. We've barely had room for one box, so this was never an option and we're typically too busy to clean it more than once a week. Lucy shows her disapproval by making an art of getting as much litter outside the box as possible. Her success is astounding and baffling. For example, we now have 3 floors and the litter box is in the basement. She manages to spread it all over the basement floor, up the stairs and somehow gets a little all the way to our bedroom and into the bed. We can't exactly remove the litter or the box, so when we discovered our friends had a top entry litter box and said it really cut down on the litter tracking we were thrilled! On Amazon, they cost about $40, which is absurd. That's double what I paid for the boxes we have and it's nothing more than a glorified storage tub. So, here's the how-to in pictures for building your own (should you find your self in need) for $10 each. [...]

Field Trip

Was in the field this week north of Seattle and wanted to share some photos. We had progressively nice weather, but the rain left large puddled areas along our access roads and determining draining solutions was challenging.

A beautiful and chilly morning with some patchy fog.
[...]

On the move again

It's been a while since I've posted and I know I still need to finish out my Belize posts. 

Work and Moving news:

New work toys: GeoXT and a Rangefinder

I was laid off at the end of January and spent February and March collecting unemployment and looking for jobs in any way related to my field or bartending. I discovered two things- my career field is not really hiring and you can not get a job anywhere in this area without knowing someone... not even a bartending job! Mackay Sposito called me in March wanting to add me to a new project and I started April 1. I am now listed as an Engineering Tech in the Engineering Dept. The work is not quite surveying and not quite engineering or design. I am helping assess transmission line access roads for improvements, reconstruction, drainage, etc. At some point I will be assessing and mapping access road stream crossings. Washington state doesn't want anyone impeding fish migration. [...]

Solo Snowshoeing

Bennet Pass Trail

Suz took Tuesday off and we went back to the Mt Hood area. She went snowboarding, but I don't do that. So I went to the Bennet Pass Trail to snowshoe. This was my first solo hike in I-can't-remember-how-long. Went about 4.5 miles total in around 2 hours. and there was hardly a soul in sight. Passed two cross-country skiers on their way out and a couple walking their dog once I was nearly back to the parking lot. The weather was very nice- at least on the Mt. Hood side of the trail. On the Badger Wilderness area it was fast moving fog with a light rain. [...]

Naked Snowshoeing

Matt, Suz, and I went snowshoeing with Naked Winery on Feb. 9th. We met at the White River West Sno Park with a bunch of winery members. Just like the winery- all the members are fun-loving and easy-going too! This was our first event with the winery outside of tastings and wine pick-up parties. Matt and I went to REI and rented the gear. It was a lot of fun and my first time snowshoeing in years.

We trekked and along the way dug up previously buried bottles of wine. They were marked with fake red roses- easy to spot, right- but apparently someone not in our group thought they should collect them. We spent some time looking for two of the bottles after the roses went missing, but we found eventually! If only they'd known there was wine underneath! We maybe went 1/2 a mile to a mile the whole round trip, stopping every 10 minutes of walking to uncover another bottle. It was a blast and I wasn't the only one who wished they'd eaten a bigger breakfast.  [...]

Turkey Meatloaf Muffins

Yesterday I ventured into the meatloaf making world for the first time. I essentially combined two recipes. The original one where I got the idea from Jamie Eason here and the meatloaf recipe from our Cooking with Beer book by Paul Mercurio. Most recipes call for a cup of oats, but we don't have rolled oats in the house (just steel-cut), so I substituted short grain rice. 

Free form cooking is our general method and involves taking whatever veggies are in the fridge and spices that sound good and for the most part ignoring that part of the cookbook recipes. All of the ingredients below are approximate measurements and done to taste. Essentially this recipe is 2 pounds of ground meat, chopped veggies, and spices. Also, I suggest taking a bit of the mixture and frying it in a pan and adjusting the spices as you see fit. 

These turned out fantastic. I am glad I tested bits in the frying pan. I ended up adding more chipotle spice and some apple maple bbq sauce to balance the heat with sweet. They are pretty filling too. I had one for dinner last night and one for breakfast this morning. They heat up nicely in the microwave. [...]