A Week in Review & a Friday Hike

We've had a week or so of absolutely gorgeous weather, although tomorrow is supposed to head back into a week of being overcast and rainy. Its been absolutely glorious to see so much sunshine though and the week has been full of moments of soaking up the rays interspersed with the extra chaos of our busiest event week out of the center. Earlier mornings this week and extra hours, but after tonight I'm headed into a downward slide toward exiting my job and the spring term.  There will be a week break in June before summer term (and the 11 credits I'm teaching) commences.

This week has brought some additional knowledge of the changes coming up (Tall D & housemate will be moving out by the end of the first weekend in June) and one evening this week was spent discussing with Tall D and his new apartment mates what they want/need to take from the house versus what will be staying, etc. There are a few items that are being negotiated, but the fact that "our" stuff has pretty much always been "his" or "hers" makes it easier. For the most part, Tall D and I are keeping it friendly but at times it can be a challenge. I still care so much for that man and wish that things weren't heading the way that they are, but there are also moments when I feel like it's definitely the healthier decision. Most days I just keep shaking my head that although it maybe was expected, two months ago I also never would have imagined this to currently be our lives.

Tonight is our biggest event happening this week and two of my main guys separately ended up needing to be checked out by medical providers. More than likely they won't be attending, but I'm hopeful that the rest of the crew can step it up and be on their best behavior. To say I'm a little leery of the upcoming evening is an understatement. Tall D and one of his friends will be there however and my cousin will be helping as well.

The chickens are back to laying regular eggs. My coop will be started on over Memorial Day weekend, as will some additional yard work be completed. Plus it's sounding like I will be taking bro to get his birthday tattoo. Last evening, we headed down to take my brother out to dinner and then to celebrate with cheesecake at my sisters. It was nice to spend an evening with my siblings and to rival against my nephew in Wii fit. :)

This week also granted a few moments to half-complete some Insanity work-outs and to get in one dehydrated 80 degree 5k run. I'm in conversation with one of Tall D's and my friends about him helping me train for a half-marathon during the coming year. We'll see how that idea progresses.

An afternoon laying out in the sun reading for fun and indulging in a bottle of wine and a great 7 mile hike in the forest just about rounded out the rest of the week. Pictures from the hike are below:

The dogs checking out the trail.

Beautiful tree tops.

Z checking out the creek.

Roxi looking like a dirty adorable mutt.

Me with the girls.

Pretty flowers and ferns.

The dogs checking out the spring.

Wildflowers along the road.

Big Shrimpin & Some Clams Y'all

Talk about an awesome weekend y'all! 

To be honest, I headed into this last weekend not being sure what to expect and feeling more exhausted than usual. Beyond all the emotional suppression between Tall D and I, work has been busy busy as I finished preparations for this week's events and finally caught up on all my grading. 

However, as seems to be fast becoming the norm, my friends seem to know what I need better than I do these days, and my buddy Z 'napped me for a long weekend of shrimping, clamming, cooking, fire pitting, and wine indulging up on Hood's Canal in Washington with his friends and fam. We were bummed not to be joined with another buddy of ours nor one of my cousins, but it seriously was a blast all the same....

And who would have thought that THIS GIRL (being me) would go shrimpin......except it totally reminded me of the type of fun things we'd do way back in high school. In fact the whole weekend left me feeling a bit more settled, a lot more relaxed, and yet connected to that ol' 16 year old version of myself in a way I haven't felt in years. The sun was out, I got my grading done, and I even snuck in a short little run alongside the busy highway. I learned a new skill, I expanded my eating choices (morrels, spicy shrimp, clam linguine, smoked salmon over salmon pate on crackers---DELISH!), I actually helped prep for cooking one night, I met some great new people, I got in some kiddie snuggle sessions, I loved on an adorable doggie, and I got to be out on one of my greatest of loves: the water. It seriously was amazing folks!

The 2nd boat in our group searching for the right spots to place their pots.

Z hauling in one of the pots...I'm pretty sure I only snagged a picture of one of our emptiest pots from the weekend. ;)

SHRIMP! Us ladies had the job of counting, bagging, and placing each person's limit on ice. (Each person only gets 80 shrimp per day and you can only have your pots in the water between 9am and 1pm.)

The view from the docks, the day we stopped for a leisurely breakfast in between putting in and pulling up pots.

Gorgeous view of the mountains, no?

Z showing me how to rake up the clams.

Me with some of our clam harvest.

The amazing view from my hotel room's balcony.  

Sunday morning I got in an early call to Mom for Mother's Day before we drove back for me to make the last half of Sunday brunch honoring Granny. It was great to spend some time with Dad's side of the extended family and it gave Granny and I a chance to finally chat about the recent changes in my life. While the conversation didn't start out like I'd hoped, in the end she was able to support and understand all the same. (Sometimes withholding the total truth of one's life in lieu of the "everything's all okay" facade can make it difficult for people to understand once the final veil of the facade is lifted....) Then per the recent norm, Tall D, housemate, my cousin, Z, another buddy and myself had our weekly Sunday evening get together, which actually took us back over to my aunt & uncles for an evening of pizzas and drinks on their amazing deck. 

All in all, the weekend was full of good food, good drinks, good people, and good times. To say that much sunshine and smiles occurred this weekend would be an understatement. Here's hoping the forecasted week of sunshine continues and that those smiles might stay in place also!

Wishing the best for you and yours!

PS Heather---you're the best for the card, thank you so much!

Weekend Camping

 A weekend camping trip with the "baby" cousin and her boyfriend. The site was perfect--in the Tillamook Forest.

 A sunny afternoon on the Wilson River....hub eventually got Anna to cross the river but Roxi was all about swimming through the tiny rapids.

 Walking across you could see all the little larva in their wrappings....

 ....and Roxi kept on swimming.....

Hub and the cousin's boyfriend jumped into the river.....

....and Anna enjoyed being our pre-clean washing cycle for the camp dishes.

Lots of smores were made, lots of washers & bean bags played. One evening spent uno-ing until the camp lantern wasn't even enough to light our cards. Naps in the hammock while cuz and boyfriend took off on a trek to the Forest Muesum. Hub spent more time reading than I've ever seen him read before but still made sure we all were fed and warmed by the awesome camp fires. We also talked a lot of Army shop talk as cousin's boyfriend is heading off to basic training following the same path that hub had in his Army career--hopefully he'll stress less and enjoy a bit more of his last summer of freedom ;) Lots of time remembering what it was like to be a teen, and lots of gratitude and appreciation for life as it is now.

How Thy Garden Doth Grow

The 2011 Trial & Error Garden:

This wood raised bed: 3 tomatoes, 3 peppers, 3 strawberries, 2 mini rows of bush beans, 6 parsnips, 2 mini rows of turnips, 6 lettuce plants, and an artichoke.

Second wood raised bed not pictured: yellow squash, zucchini, cucumber

Cinder block bed in background: (what actually came up) two mini rows of red and yellow onions, two mini rows of carrots, and a small row of snap peas. Two blueberry bushes and two melons.

4 of our five (small) bushes have blueberries and are growing!

Looks like we'll have raspberries and under the raspberries is a whole ton of mint....

Some things are seeding....no idea what this is but there is a large area of it. The asparagus is going to seed also which I'm hoping will lead to an even larger area of it next year.

The kiwi came back after the hacking the landlords gave it. The grape is just starting up the other corner of that trellis, and the bird feeders from Mom & Dad's are hanging up.

Potential kiwis: think these will develop into blossoms.

Asian pear.

The old faithful watering can even more in use now. He leaks along the bottom a bit from rust, but he still does just fine ;) After we got our first water bill since starting the garden, I'm monitoring a bit more how frequently I'm watering and only intend to water using the can to limit how much extra flow we have.....hopefully it will help some.

And a beautiful sunset this week as well!

What's growing in your backyard?!

Camp Lessons & Products

There were a few great items that got us by while on our travels, and the lack of facilities and light packing taught me some great lessons along the way too.

Anyone that knows me knows that I am a shower-every-night type of gal. I hate going to bed without being clean. I "put my face on" almost every single day, even if I'm not going anywhere. I floss every.single.night. And much to my husband's dismay, I totally use "face stuff" aka a layer of protective zit cream before bed each night. BUT when you're camping in the woods with no mirror, no running water, a lack of desire to carry extra weight, not wanting to use products that might damage the environment, and in locations where it's luck to have an established hole in the ground to do one's business.....then you sort of throw your "normal" tendencies out the window.

I packed a small ziploc that stayed in the truck and contained the following: two bobby pins, a small bottle of face lotion, a small bottle of Burts Bees outdoor body & hair wash, a tiny packet of foundation and a foundation brush, a tube of chap stick, a tube of fix-all ointment, black eyeliner, floss, and my leftover nub of a cover-up stick. I also had a stick of deodorant and my Burts Bees facewash in my bag. However, in my hiking pack, I had more bobby pins, "natural" bug repellent, my toothbrush, and another tube of lip balm that I figured could be used for a couple functions.

So here's the irony, I packed almost nothing for this trip.....and it was rare that I even used what I brought. In fact, on the backpacking part I used basically none of it. I rinsed my face with running water from the stream morning and night and I washed my feet in the stream before bed. I did run my toothbrush over my teeth, but without paste because I didn't want to leave the paste behind in the woods.

Once we got to the second camp site and were camping out of the truck, I still didn't use anything extra, except this time I did floss and I did use toothpaste since I could deposit them into one of those holes in the ground (aka an established outhouse....).

In fact, thanks to the magnificence of baby wipes (again only deposited into the outhouse) used just to clean (TMI) my swimming suit region, I didn't even mind not showering for three days. Yea I was dirty and I'm pretty sure sweating into the same shorts for three days put off an odor, but it really wasn't all that bad. THANK GOD FOR BABY WIPES though! ;)

Even once we could shower again and were back in civilization, I only put on the little amount of make-up I had when we met friends and the dry mountain air actually seemed to be great for my skin.

The second irony of our trip is that I had only intended to not be camping for one day---meaning I packed all hiking clothes/shoes and only one pair of jeans, one regular wear Tshirt, and one pair of light-weight flip flops....so I ended up wearing the same jeans, shirt, and flops for three and a half days in a row. We washed our hiking clothes while at my parents, but somehow I actually didn't mind wearing the same outfit---definitely made choosing what to wear a whole lot easier...

Beyond the clothes and personal care products, I did get introduced to some great hiking and camping gear. (You have to understand that I didn't really grow up camping, before this I'm pretty sure I'd only legit tent camped maybe, maybe 5x.) Since hub spent the last two years pretty much camping and running around in the woods half of every month thanks to the Army, he's got some pretty neat stuff:

This is the Jetboil pot. Great for heating up water in a flash and great for backpacking since its small and lighter weight. Image found here. We used this to heat water for cocoa, to fill our kanteens for warmth in the foot of our sleeping bags at night, and to cook our meals. We did decide that we need to get a legit camp stove however for when we're cooking & camping out of the car.

Hub recently found a water purifying device apparently called the SteriPEN. It uses UV light to kill bacteria and viruses. Its light weight and is similar to a lighted wand you stir like a stick in a stream-filled water container. His bud and he used it on their longer backpacking trip without any illness, and we used it on this trip too. You can read about it here and the image was taken from here.

I had my first introduction to freeze dried food from a PNW company called MountainHouse. We ate the Macaroni & Cheese, which hub thought was amazing for freeze dried food and which tasted almost exactly like box mac n cheese. The more I thought about it, I'm pretty sure box mac n cheese must already be some sort of freeze dried. We also had the freeze dried ice cream sandwich which was A-MA-ZING! Image from here.

Two days before leaving on our trip we found a sleeping pad for me. We settled on a Thermarest Trail Scout that was on sale at our local Sports Authority. It was definitely comfortable (much more comfortable than hub's Ridgerest basic light weight!) and with enough padding to separate me from the cold ground. Image from here.

One item that we used at the second camp site which we also string up in our backyard is hub's camp hammock. It actually can be used for sleeping and its incredibly simple to hang up and take down. The whole thing stuffs into a tiny little sack and its also light weight. It's the ENO Doublenest Hammock and the image is from here.

Some of the other camping and hiking gear was stuff hub had from the Army, including a sleeping bag and backpack. As usual our Klean Kanteens were awesome, although hub did also use one of his old Nalgenes (hello BPA exposure.....).

One thing I do have to rave about were the Eddie Bauer shorts I recently found on sale that were fabulous. I'm not a huge shorts person, but these seemed great for hiking and have proved to be quick to dry and easy to move around in. They have great pockets on the sides to hold IDs, chapstick, and a thin camera without being weighed down. I'm pretty sure they are these, although they seem to hit me shorter than they appear in the picture.

Hub and I also snack along the trail when we need a burst of energy and while most of our snacks consist of apples or dried fruit & nuts (cranberries & almonds are a fav, but we've recently added another lil bag of dried apricots and cherries), we discovered Nature Valley's new Oats N Dark Chocolate granola bars on our last Costco trip. They were delicious, made the fastest breakfast possible, and provided great energy to get me through a few more miles. Hub also made white chocolate chip-cranberry-coconut oatmeal cookies that we ate while camping. Unfortunately I left our other great Costco hiking grub at home---peanut butter filled pretzel bites!

Some great gear, snacks, and camp lessons!

The Rest of the June Traveling Story

After breakfast we knew we had some time to spare and still plenty that could be seen before we headed over to hub's family's for the afternoon.....so we looked on the trusty REI hiking map and discovered the Oregon Badlands walking trails....

 Now hub wasn't quite as impressed with this section cause he was already familiar with the Central Oregon terrain etc and the landscape didn't change the entire 7-8 mile round trip stretch that we walked.....but I enjoyed seeing something different and day dreamed about how easy it would be to lose track of location and one's mind when traveling these stretches 100-150 years ago. Lucky for us it wasn't too warm as we walked and there was a breeze blowing through, but there was no water source during the stretch we walked, junipers that had been struck by lightening during years past, and birds that had a call that sounded like mocking laughter. ;)

 Gorgeous contrasting wildflowers astounded in the badlands---these blues, bright pinks, and vivid yellows.

 I had no clue that junipers are actual trees! This was part of the "Ancient Juniper" trail.

 Another trail we walked along cut through an old homestead. I think this was the old well on the homestead but I couldn't find any remnants of the home's foundation or outbuildings.

 Old shooting targets:

And here's where most the photos stop ;) After our trek through the badlands, we headed over to hub's family's for the afternoon. After three days, we both showered and cleaned up. Hub, his dad, and his uncle started talking fishing and hunting goods, as part of the reason we'd headed over was to pick up the hunting guns that hub's dad had said he could have (and a gun safe---the compromise between us....). After cleaning up, we headed over to see one of my great gal pals for a BBQ dinner at her place, where we had the absolute pleasure of meeting her two adorably dirty faced children, who played wonderfully with our dogs in the backyard while hub sucked in the enjoyment of using their Traeger grill. After not seeing her for four years, it was great to catch up as much as we could in two hours, observe how good of a mama she is and how amazing her two kiddos are, and let her get to meet hub too. (Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures and her awesome hub happened to be gone for the weekend.) We ended up heading back over to hub's family's to spend the night and the next morning I sat and listened for hours hearing great work stories from hub's grandpa. It was incredible to hear him talk of working in a mining shaft, building roads, working on oil drills, and rounding up cattle on the family farm, along with panning for gold for fun in his "free" time. While grandpa and I chatted, hub loaded up the back cab with the "hunting gear." Between his new stuff, our backpacks and camping gear, and other random odds and ends in the back cab and our stack of camp wood, gun safe, and dogs in the truck bed, we sort of started looking like the hill billies! ;)

Hub and I headed out to come back to our place about 2pm but once we'd made it over the pass and were an hour from our home, we looked at each other and decided to make the three hour drive south for our hometown. A quick call to Mom and Dad for permission to bring the dogs (Dad's allergic and not a big dog fan....) which he readily gave, and then we headed south....and just in time for Father's Day. ;)

The bridge heading into our hometown on the coast:

 The dogs peeking out from under Mom and Dad's gate:

 Luckily the dogs did great settling into Mom and Dad's backyard during the day and sleeping in the bed of Dad's truck in the garage at night. We've been super impressed with them through all of our travels, and they did well enough that Dad gave the ok for them to come along anytime we want to come down--woohoo!

Going home allowed us to spend some moments with my parents, grab dinner with friends at two of our favorite spots, and take our dogs out to the beach for an afternoon with two separate friends and a couple of other dogs. The weather was drizzly but not too cold, and altogether the extra trip home was wonderful. Dad shared old backpacking photos with hub and the two of them talked for a couple hours about technology advancements, music, and sports---its always satisfying listening to the two of them engage in conversations about their similar interests. I also had the fun of running into one of my best gal's dad and (separately) her MIL while we were home, and we were able to share in the joy of the recently announced pregnancy of hub's best friends. Hub also was introduced to the show Extreme Couponing....and now I'm afraid there might be a new hobby in his life..... ;)

We split the four hour drive back up to our place and within two hours of being home had the truck unloaded, the mail opened and sorted, the gun safe installed and doing its job, the front entryway weeded, and the garden watered. An absolutely great trip through about half of our wonderful state, and we're looking forward to more trips to come!

Crooked River Camping

After our trek around Paulina Lake we checked out the map to see where we should camp next. We didn't want to go too far from one of the major towns in Central Oregon and hub remembered an old potential camping area along the Crooked River, where he'd spent some time hiking around when he was younger. So we drove over to see if we could find the spot again....passing many of the beautiful fields and livestock along the way.

 And sure enough, we found it and what looked like a great place to camp even if we weren't entirely sure if it was actually a legit camp site.

But after 20 miles of hiking between the day before and that morning, it was great to string up the hammock between two trees, pull out the lawn chairs, and lay in the back of the truck reading and enjoying the afternoon sun. The dogs were even too tired to care too much about their bones ;)

 We did take the half-mile canyon trail down to the river twice however and caught some beautiful views:

 Steelhead Falls and the little separate cascading water section on the far left is a man-made fish ladder:

 Back up at the camp site, we set up the tent, moved the truck to be our wind block, and after a low-key dinner, we crawled in for the night.

At 4:45am we woke up to a ruckus from a far camp section where some "long-term campers" were located. Not being sure of what was going on and not wanting to get involved, we quickly broke camp, loaded up, and headed out around 5am.

By waking up that early (which happens most the time when camping), we were fortunate enough to catch the beauty of the sunrise against the snowy mountains:

We ended up driving over to Smith Rock State Park, which we intended to go back and hike down into the canyon later in the day but didn't ever get back there. We did catch a few pictures from above the canyon however and watched some mule deer cross a stretch of the road:

Since it was barely above freezing and 6:30am, we drove into town and tried out the Black Bear Diner--incredibly friendly service, lots of good food for cheap including healthier options, a core value of willing to make substitutions per your request, and its a somewhat local-like option as its only located in the PNW. 

Part 3 to come ;)