Category: Travel

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Seasonal journeys

In this house there is always fruit on the counter and in the fridge. We do play favorites and eat mostly to season. Winter is citrus, berries for Spring, Summer is stone fruit and Fall is all about apples and melons.

I think apples are my favorite for everyday eating. Thus we look forward to the fall and our annual trip to the orchards that line the hills around Hood River, Oregon.  We make this pilgrimage pretty much every fall for the last dozen years and we always go to the same spot.

Kiyokawa Family Orchards (yeah, I don’t know how to pronounce it either) is about the only place we ever go. There are lots of different stands in the area, check out the Fruit Loop map and website. This place has a huge variety of apples, pears, and plums.

In the past it was a giant apple tasting. Due to current Covid circumstances, they have altered the buying experience a bit. The slices for tasting aren’t sitting on the bins of fruit. They also stopped individually weighing your purchases. Instead, you move through a well thought out social distancing maze, pick out either a box or bag, pay, then proceed to fill with fruit of your choice.

Winding your way past tubs of fruit, you can pick from all offerings, exiting near where you started, only now you have a box of apples and pears.

The only problem is trying to remember the different varieties and maintaining tasting notes so you can find the ones you like best next year.

– book note –

 

You should find a copy of Dan Rather’s recent book “What Unites Us”. A timely discussion on America, democracy and the fragile threads holding our nation together. We’ve been working through it a chapter at a time, reading it aloud to each other. Excellent book, sparking energetic discussion.

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A very old art piece

Oregon Route 31 runs from La Pine to Valley Falls passing south of Fort Rock State Park and Summer Lake Wildlife refuge. The Fremont road is a route we take often. About half an hour into the trip you drop out of the Lodge Pole and Ponderosa forest onto a sage and rocky plain.

Fort Rock sits at the edge of this transition with Summer Lake another 30 minutes onto the high desert.

From tilled fields the road follows basalt columns to a notch just a thousand feet off the valley floor. At the top is Picture Rock Pass, as you drop toward Summer Lake there is a a grand view of the marsh and alkaline flats.

Sitting on this relative high point is a flat rock face with petroglyphs that were etched 7500 to 10,000 years ago. The rock is just a few hundred feet off the side of a road, south of a narrow gravel turn out.  Given humans propensity to paint or tip ancient rock it’s just as well the site is unmarked.

 

It was the marshes and meadows with their abundant wildlife that drew prehistoric humans to the area. Twelve thousand years ago, the Clovis Period, Picture Rock Pass was etched by the area’s early inhabitants.

Archeologists have uncovered signs of prehistoric life that includes 10,000 year old foot woven sagebrush sandals at Fort Rock and 14,000 year old artifacts at Paisley Caves area.

There’s a lot of history in this hundred mile stretch of asphalt.

 

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Treasure on the river

The Crooked River, one of our favorite Oregon rivers.

Quarantine has closed campgrounds, state and national parks but not fishing. This is good news for us.

Once a week we head to our favorite stream with lunch and fly rods. Tip finds joy in both the ride up to the river and running the riparian.

If we are not both fishing, then Tip divides his time between JQ’s photographic adventures and checking in on Jack.

Enough time has been spent on rivers to develop good manners, for the most part. At some point in the day a stick is discovered, dropped at someone’s feet and thus a game of fetch is initiated … though it often involves much vocal encouragement.

This day was a bit different. Instead of a stick, Tip discovered a ball.

Bright orange, this lost dog toy became a treasured possession and required numerous rounds of ball throwing.

The shade side of a picnic table offers excellent cooling to rest up between expeditions.

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A picnic lunch

It seems we’ve moved past spring and gone right into summer. It was 72º on the river today. When you have days like that you need to pack the car and enjoy.

What’s for lunch gets packed into Ello© glass boxes and loaded into the cooler. Today we had chopped salad, grilled chicken, summer sausage, havarti cheese, crackers and chips, chocolate sandwich cookies, snicker bars and some fresh strawberries.

The cooler has  ice extender tubes but also cubes in a ziplock. The sealed glass boxes are stacked on one side and then nestled up to the ice are cans of beer and soda.

When it’s lunch time you have a smorgasbord of goodies to spread out on a picnic table and enjoy.

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Chasing Rain Clouds

A high desert spring day offered an assortment of cloudscapes, wildlife sightings, and a view of Fort Rock. The drive out Highway 31 towards Summer Lake is a tour through a variety of habitats, pine forest to lava beds and back.

This week’s escape from the house was a loop east on 31, out into the high desert and then back toward Bend and through a Ponderosa and lodge pole forest just south of Pine Mt. Observatory.

Partly cloudy forecast means something a bit different on the high desert steppes around Fort Rock. Here you can see the small storm cells moving over ridges. You’re greeted with bursts of sun amid the light rainfall.

The pocked face on the southside of Fort Rock didn’t offer up much raptor viewing. Song birds and ravens were in abundance, as was the occasional herd of migrating mule deer and antelope.

Not until we got near Highway 20 and were headed back to Bend did we encounter humans. As we headed home, trucks and their OHV loaded trailers headed to the network of paths crisscrossing the area.  By the time their engine noise filled the forest we were long gone.