Book Reading

We’ve been spending time in Astoria and Portland the past week, helping Sarah and Gordon move into their new place, and we caught a really cool event in Astoria the other night.  Gordon called us from work to tell us that Ken Babbs was doing a reading at the coffee shop that shares the lobby of the hotel he works at.  Ken Babbs is one of the infamous Merry Pranksters; if you’re not familiar they were the group of revolving around Ken Kesey who are the subject of Tom Wolfe’s “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” the movers and shakers of 60s subculture.  It was  really interesting and a little surreal to meet someone who was a character in a book I’ve read.  The readings that he did from his book were great: colorful and captivating.  It’s based on his experiences flying helicopters for the USMC in Vietnam, written in 1962 before his days of psychedelic bus trips (but just published recently).  It was great to hear something on that time period from a first person perspective, written with a sense of humor and lightness that makes a heavy subject a little more digestable.  Astoria seems to get some really cool things in the way of music, speakers, etc. for being a fairly small place.

Also, this came in the mail the other day, and I thought you all might like to see it.

XOXOXO

Tree Climbing

Today I was feeling a little less under the weather and I decided to go catch the second half of the tree climbing class that our/Sarah's friend Josh is teaching (the one that Seth went to yesterday).  It was at Shively Park, which is at the top of the hill in Astoria.  Tree climbing has a lot in common with rock climbing in the way of gear, knots, techniques, etc. so some of it was really easy to pick up.  Basically, you use something heavy to sling a rope over a sturdy branch (or, in our case, someone more experienced has already been up the tree and set an anchor way up there) and then you climb on a fixed single rope.  You have one line that connects your harness to the rope above you and one line that connects a foot loop to the rope, and you basically shimmy up it by moving one at a time: sitting in your harness while you slide up the foot loop and then standing up in it so that you can slide your harness line up.  Then repeat.  A lot.  Once you get up to the branches you can climb within them by a different method, where you have two slings attached to branches around you, moving them up to other branches one at a time with you as you climb (this way one is always connecting you to a sturdy branch).  It was tons of fun, and I'm really looking forward to getting to climb again with Josh.  He hasn't done much rock climbing but is interested so it should be a cool set of skills to swap.  No pictures, just having a great weekend and thought I would fill you all in!

Hood River and Mt. Hood

Last week, in between spending time in Portland, we followed the Columbia further east to Hood River, which is kind of the gateway to the Mt. Hood area. Along the way we stopped to check out the swaths of waterfalls that speckle the gorge east of Portland.  They were beautiful, but mostly too crowded to stay and enjoy for long.  Hood River is a cool little town, and we stopped in to visit one of their multiple micro-breweries before we headed up into the mountains to camp.  It feels like a little slice of Colorado dropped right in the middle of Oregon.  It's super sunny there and the town has that iconic Western look to it, with big blocky brick buildings lining the streets.  

We also stopped in at an outdoor store to chat up some locals and get some info one where the best camping is.  The guy we talked to gave pretty sparse detail on the place he sent us to, saying simply, "It's really pretty up there."  Heading up from Hood River, the hillsides are covered with orchards, and views of Mt. Hood reveal themselves as you turn around the hills.  My apologies for the rearview mirror cameo in this photo.  It can be hard to take pictures from a moving vehicle!

When we found the campsite that the guy at the kayak shop had recommended to us, it was indeed pretty, and free to boot.  This is our campsite there; it was mostly an equestrian site with trails for horses and mountain bikes, but I think we might have enjoyed it more on foot.  When we got out for a serious hike our second day there we discovered that "pretty" had been an immense understatement.  Coming up to a ridge, we found views of Mt. Hood towering above us, St. Helens, Rainier, even the Cascades, and some other snow capped peak (which I have yet to identify) laid out before us.  Unfortunately, the sun was in full force that day, making my camera totally inept at capturing the view (sun-baked ice comes out more than a little washed out without the time and a tripod to pick it up).  Other parts of trails there were lovely too.

There were all sorts of wildflowers along the trails (and along most of the roads we drove).

I now understand why Oregon is the "Pine State." I think I've seen more
pine trees this past week than the rest of my life combined.

I promise this raven was more impressive in real life (mostly bigger).
It was darn hard to take a photo of too!

It was beautiful weather while we were there, sunny the whole time.  Seth started to come down with a cold, so we retreated back to civilization.  We stopped in Portland for a few days, and helped our friend/Sarah's roommate Gordon move some things from his apartment there to he and Sarah's new place in Astoria.  Seth is recovering from the cold and is at a big tree climbing class today, and I'm taking it easy as I'm (of course) just getting the cold.  More soon! XOXO

Driving back through the Columbia River Gorge