HOW WE SPENT OUR SUMMER "VACATION"

FLUID PLANS

We had thought we would put the boat on land in Trinidad in late May, fly to Maryland, visit friends on the east coast, get our stuff from storage and drive it back to Oregon by July. We planned to take three weeks to decommission Celilo without exhausting ourselves... but... receiving the news that Roberta's Mom was failing, we hurried to get to Trinidad where Michael could deal with the boat alone. We arrived to learn Mom had passed away while we were making the last overnight crossing to Trini from Grenada. The earliest flight out was in three days, so we worked like mad to get as much done as possible before Roberta left for Oregon. Michael stayed back to close up the boat, and arrived in Oregon June 12, in time for Mom's Memorial. After spending a couple more weeks with Roberta's Dad, we flew to Maryland at the end of June to visit dear friends and collect stored stuff. Michael got in some chain sawing too! In a huge Penske truck we spent five days driving our belongings back to Oregon with stops in Pine, CO and Boise ID to visit more friends. We crammed the stuff back in storage and spent the next month and a half going through Mom's boxes of holiday decorations, family photos, papers and cards. We found some treasures in there (a relative's Revolutionary War Army discharge papers!) and great clues to family history. It was a busy, emotional, exhausting couple of months, sifting through each dusty box, examining each piece of paper, sharing photo albums with Dad, and it felt good to have the sorting, distributing, discarding, and re-storing behind us.

We did take time during those weeks to go to a Thorns (Portland's professional women's soccer team) game, have a hike with Roberta's sister and niece and to go to the coast with our daughter, her husband and our granddog! Then... we escaped to play in earnest!

SAGEBRUSH SAILORS

We left Portland on Friday, August 15 and broke up the 6-hour trip to the SE corner of Oregon (Burns) with an overnight at Michael's cousin's house in Bend, where we would return to housesit in four days. After a nice breakfast with her we drove off into the sagebrush. A couple of hours later, when we were still about an hour from Burns, we decided to get off the 2-lane highway and take a scenic dirt road through ranch country and down into the middle of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, driving up to Burns through the refuge. Before entering the refuge, we saw about six Sand Hill Cranes in a ranch cattle pond as well as cattle, ducks, Canada geese, and a coyote! That was the first of maybe a dozen coyotes we saw over the next six days.

We had a picnic lunch at the refuge, a nice chat with the volunteer there - a retired OSU biology prof - and peered at birds in Mitchell pond next to Refuge headquarters. Then drove on around Malheur Lake and into Burns. For those of you not from Oregon, much of the eastern two-thirds of the state is pretty dry and, in summer, brown. In SE Oregon, the towns are small and far between. In those between areas are ranches and public lands managed by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and the US Fish and Wildlife Service and others.

Our B&B was a gorgeous 100+ year-old house on a full city block with green lawn, pretty landscaping, and warm, welcoming hosts. Since we were in ranch country, we had local steak for dinner - YUM!!! Then a fabulous breakfast the next day and off we went, down the central patrol road (dirt again) in the Malheur Refuge, stopping to ogle/photograph birds, watch a mother deer challenge and chase off a coyote wanting to come closer to her two spotted fawns, and enjoying the quiet, the landscape, and NOT SEEING ANOTHER CAR the whole time!!! We visited the historic "Peter French sod house ranch" and that afternoon we had "geology day" driving through the hot, dry, dusty, Diamond Craters Outstanding Natural Area to see the amazing volcanic diversity there - 23 square miles of basaltic lava flows, lava tubes, cinder cones, maars, and craters. We stopped at a historic "round barn" on the way back to Burns. When we got back to the B&B you could hardly tell what color the car was it was so dusty!

Next day, another delicious breakfast, and off to the southern half of the refuge. We felt like sailors on a sagebrush ocean. More dirt roads, more birds... Black-necked Stilts, White-faced Ibises, American Avocets, Chukars, lots of hawks, Golden Eagles, Kestrels, etc. We ended the day at the historic Frenchglen Hotel, a funky old hotel right out of the wild west, managed by a gregarious guy who also happened to be a great cook. Meals were served to guests family style and we enjoyed chatting with very interesting people - fisheries biologists, college professors, wildlife researchers... We spent two nights there while exploring Steens Mountain.

The Steens. WOW! The high prairie tilts up from the west to 9733 feet and then drops sharply down to the Alvord Desert at 4200 feet. When at the peak, the temperature was 30 degrees cooler than back at the hotel! Four immense U-shaped glacial valleys cut through the tilted landscape, creating a stunning vista and a nail-biting drive downhill - again on 52 miles of dirt roads (we found out later that locals advise driving UP the south road so you miss skidding around tight gravel corners with a 2000+ foot drop and no guard rail!!!). Enroute we saw a badger (had never seen one of those in the wild!), dozens of pretty hawks, and had an amazing close-up encounter with a Golden Eagle.

On our way back to Bend, as if we hadn't had enough of dirt roads already, we drove another 90 miles on dirt roads across sagebrush country and the Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge, down along dry Abert Lake, over to almost dry Silver Lake, and stopped at the Fort Rock State Natural Area to gape at this near circle of towering rock (a volcanic tuff ring) rising out of the high desert near where woven sandals found to be 9-13,000 (yes, thousand!) years old were discovered in the caves of another tuff ring.

When we got to Bend, our first stop was one of those do-it-yourself car washes. It took two sessions to get the dust off the car and the bikes on the roof!

SOCIAL BUTTERFLIES

The next 10 days were a whirl of hiking in the mountains (five hikes in seven days!), a horseback ride for Roberta, kayaking the Deschutes River, an art show, many meals with longtime friends, a fabulous Labor Day party at Smith Rocks complete with Celtic Band at another friend's home, and, and, and. Whew! We had a ball, and ended our wonderful time in Bend by celebrating Michael's birthday with a trip to REI (new binocs and a hiking stick for M, etc...) and a quiet dinner alone at one of the many microbrew pubs in Bend.

WOODEN BOAT

On the road again, we stopped briefly in Portland to breakfast with great friends and then on to Port Townsend and the Wooden Boat Festival. We stayed at the Quimper, our favorite B&B and enjoyed the wonderful hospitality, generosity and friendship of our hosts Ron and Sue. In addition to boat festival seminars, vendors, and scrambling around on gorgeous old classic boats, we watched the progress of building a wooden kayak, and had a lovely ride on the schooner Adventuress - can't keep a couple of sailors off the water!

Then down to Potlatch, Hood Canal to stay with Roberta's lifelong friend at her family "crabin" and eat oysters. More chain sawing for Michael and Roberta reupholstered some cushions.

BACK IN PDX

In one week in Portland we managed to fit in doctor visits, a Heart concert, more chainsawing and sewing, and the big RV show... drooling over the new models to get an idea of what we might want for size, features, and layout. Yes, a small, but used, RV may be in our future. We are feeling the need for our own space, less dependency on the goodwill of family and friends, more mobility, and fewer hotel bills during our months on land. Look out! Nest summer we may be coming to a driveway near you!!!

Then Michael left Oregon to head back to the boat via a brief stop in Maryland, and Roberta headed to California to help same lifelong friend begin cancer treatment, which progressed very successfully - whew! Michael arrived in Trini two weeks ahead of Roberta and managed to get Celilo back in the water and many boat maintenance chores completed - even with a bad case of flu - in time for R to hit the docks with three huge bags of supplies, and

SEASON FOUR BEGINS!!!