Flight of 5

Nor driftwood at Driftwood Beach, Flight informed me. Misnomers abound on the Oregon Coast, yet any of the state’s advisory notes are extremely polite in their recommendations:

Apparently in Oregon you get three warnings that the highway grade is changing – very Canadian, I thought.

Sorry, let me back up…

Despite being saddened by departing Bend, the four-hour trek to the ocean had my heart soaring. While still on the desert side of the Cascades the haze from the fire was still fairly pronounced, but it cleared as soon as we crested the pass. Within a short number of miles the flora transitioned from high altitude piney clusters to being thick with the richly moist underbrush accompanying even taller old growth trees. It was reminiscent of Washington Park in Anacortes and truly felt like going home.

We made our way to the coast in some less than optimal weather (it was raining sideways), but as Keeper observed, “My body was made for this.” Our kids continued to remind us they were born in the Pacific Northwest and assured us they needed only shells to face the treacherous weather. Perhaps it’s because we’ve often quoted REI’s tag line, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing…”, but whatever the reason I’m glad to see they’ve taken the sentiment to heart.

However, after a brief stretch on the beach in the gusting winds and accompanying stinging sand, we all cried uncle and returned to the campsite for dinner, praying the next day would welcome better weather.

And it did. Sort of – at least there were some sun breaks.  Good to dust off some Pacific NW vocabulary.  After we enjoyed a quick bite to eat, we went back to the beach for lessons in marine biology and coastal engineering. There would be plenty of time for math and reading while at the Laundromat…

One of the first things that stood out as we picked our way down to the waterline was how yesterday’s raging wind had carved the beach into small aerodynamic sand ridges behind anything larger than a Perler bead.

For those of you who don’t have elementary school aged girls, Perler beads are these plastic bitty pieces you form into shapes on a template before using an iron to melt them all together. For the record, they are almost as irritating to step on as Legos.  Trust me, no further research is needed.

While Flight led the marine biology lab, primarily with WoodSprite:

I ran a coastal engineering lab on erosion, and oversaw an ocean engineering bridge building enterprise (okay, that endeavor was pretty much Firebolt’s solo effort). There was a freshwater (I hope) run off that came down under PCH and made for the ocean. I dismissed my initial concerns about the water’s source and asked the older kids (WoodSprite was still with Flight looking at sea anemones, which I still have to look at written out in order to say properly) about their observations of the “river’s flow” and how it was carving its path.

There was a sizable slab of rock over which the water rushed in some places and not at all in others. After our initial observations Keeper plopped a large mass of sand on the slab where there was no water flowing and I first tasked Keeper (while Firebolt built her bridge) to redirect the flow to erode this newly deposited land mass. While Keeper built a drip castle on the river’s edge, I deposited a new sand mass and asked Firebolt to do the same. Using only locally available rocks (design specification), they each handily accomplished their missions. And undid their work when complete. I love that we’re raising ecologically mindful engineers.

It was still pretty early in the day when we loaded up the Suburu with our accrued dirty laundry and headed to into bustling Waldport (population at last count 2,163). While Flight and I snagged five machines to start our laundering, each of the kids broke out their math workbooks and completed their requisite exercises. During one of our runs out to the car to collect yet another laundry bag, we noticed there was a locksmith shop literally next door. This was most fortuitous as we were down to only one set of RV keys (one had gone on walk about during our recent river float – !!!) and needed to make another set. Perfect – two birds, only one confined trip in the Suburu.

Laundry cleaned, folded, and returned to the Suburu and now the proud owners of three new sets of Davista keys, we popped around the corner for a restorative lunch at Grand Central Pizza. I was happy to see so many of Bend’s best offerings on tap and hope to see Atlas’ huckleberry cider become more readily available.

ADMIN complete, we headed south along the coast to conduct Varsity Marine Biology classes. Flight was happy to pry various marine creatures from their places of residence to show them to the kids (and I was happy just to visually document the observations), after which he returned them to their homes.

Until a squall schooled us in earnest.

Fortunately we were on the way back to the car and not still straddling tide pools. Flight gathered wee WoodSprite under his shell and I ducked into a shallow cave with Keeper and Firebolt. They had identified our temporary sanctuary and made enough room for me to shelter as well – such kind children.

Flight’s recollection (below) is only partially correct, for we three who were well ensconced in the natural alcove avoided the brunt of the pelting rain. WoodSprite also faired well in Flight’s rain shadow. Flight, less so.

In only minutes the squall passed and we extricated ourselves from our hollow and our exploration was maybe more subdued, although only just because shortly thereafter I was “Hey, Momma”-ed again by WoodSprite.

I have to admit I love driftwood, especially enormous trees that have floated only heaven knows how long or far. I was blown away by this enormous piece of driftwood (perhaps it had abandoned its post at Driftwood Beach?), especially all the designs and colors.

No kidding, I want some jewelry that looks like this, although probably a little smaller.

Some of us (Flight) were more damp than others, so we called it a day and retreated to Davista’s dry warmth to fill our bellies with a hearty meal. A most productive ADMIN (and heavy STEM) day, crazy rain squalls notwithstanding.

The next morning threatened to be a beautiful day.

As had become our habit during our short time on the Oregon coast, we meandered down to Seal Rocks Beach to check it out. Not only was the “river” we’d observed two days before carving out a totally different path to the ocean (meaning we could have a different Coastal Engineering Lab EVERY DAY were we to stay longer), much of its transit was being covered by “Flarp,” the sea foamish substance cloaking the shoreline. Frankly I’m not sure Flarp is a proper noun, but it looks like it should be. Perhaps verbifying too might soon follow, but considering it’s one of Keeper’s words, I’ll let him further explain its origin and verbify away if he opts to do so.

As Flight explained, we did look it up and learned the copious amount of sea foam is mostly comprised of the by products of algae decomposition, sped along by the recent storms’ tumultuous churning in the surf zone, whereby it also trapped air in its pseudo-surfactant composition and came to resemble very dirty soap bubbles.

Sweet, a chemistry lesson too!

Regardless of how cool the scientific mechanism is behind generating its existence, Flarp is just plain gross when you get up close to it. Organic, okay maybe, murky and filthy looking, absolutely.  However, from a macro perspective, it is pretty cool just to sit and watch how it moves along the beach. Looking a lot like a malleable blanket of coffee-colored fiberglass insulation, yet more mercurial, it seemed to slither over the top of the water and travel its own path, indifferent to the water’s periodic motion beneath. It was truly mesmerizing.

Flight rallied us out of our respective trances to get on with the plan of the day. We mobilized the family to explore one more beach, this one with the intention of collecting sea glass. Just over a year ago, I went to visit a dear friend in Newport, RI, and we were strolling along a nearby beach where there was a modest amount of this treasure presenting itself at low tide. I’m embarrassed to admit my hamstrings were a little sore for my stooping so often during the arduous hunt, but I didn’t care.

I had been bitten by the sea glass-collecting bug.

Big time.

So much so that on the Monday morning after I returned home, I shanghaied the family into crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to meet low tide just before 0700. We spent a couple hours combing the beach and I was in heaven. They must love me, at least enough to tolerate these expeditions, although truly I didn’t give them much of a choice.

Since hitting the Oregon coast, I have been reviewing on line recommendations for somewhere nearby to find sea glass hoards just awaiting my discovery. I was pleased to learn there was such a treasure trove just north of Newport. WOO HOO!   We’re going to Otter Rock!

The beauty of the morning had been swallowed up by more swollen storm clouds, but our shells were donned more to stop the wind than any rain. We got to Otter Point but couldn’t find our way to the beach that was mentioned. Bummer. Instead we checked out the Devil’s Punchbowl Arch, sporting a wicked cocktail that had its own special ingredient – FLARP!

 

We popped down some very steep stairs to reach a different beach and let the kids run out some energy.

I liked seeing what the storm had done to the sand:

A little bummed I hadn’t found THE beach, we returned to the car and Flight humored me by trying to locate it. Good man. We turned down a side road and saw another stairway, presumably to THE beach. This looked promising! At the top of the stairs, this guarded the descent:

Oops. Sorry urchins, anemones, and starfish. I swear we didn’t know.

A little chagrinned (and hungry), we abandoned our quest (mine really) and sped to Rogue Brewery for dinner. Although I enjoyed my Fruit Salad Cider, the highlight beverage (for me) was Keeper’s Root Beer. After dining, we bought several of Rogue’s sodas to ration out along our journey: the requisite Root Beer (of course), Honey Orange, and Citrus Cucumber.  And so we returned to Davista, sans ocean-aged rubbish, but happily short on fridge space.

We chanced one last trip to the Seal Rocks beach to see what the Flarp had done in our absence.

Flight and Keeper taunted the incoming tide with this stunt.

Flight emerged Flarp-free, Keeper not so much.

Looks like we’ll need another laundry day when we get to the Redwoods…

[sic]

Coast to coast at last, though it may be a stretch to call the Chesapeake one of the coasts, and an even bigger stretch to lead off with a Lewis & Clark expedition quote.  But it was pretty cool to see the Pacific again through the windshield.

We headed northwest from Bend into what appeared to be a new and thicker blanket of forest fire smoke.  It was smoky enough this time that we could actually smell it, and the mountains on either side of us weren’t visible.  Still though, it was a gorgeous drive, which speaks volumes about that area.

This was the first time we returned to sea level(ish) in several weeks, and I was struck once again by how little the Davista/Toad beast enjoys grades, whether ascending them or descending.  Though driving in general has become much easier, with respect to total attention required, than when I wrote my first semi-panicked post about it, this does not hold true for going up and down.  I’ve become acutely aware of any elevation change in a road and try to roll considerations thereof into my planning, though sometimes there’s very little choice.  Steep downhills are the most nerve-wracking I think.  Steep and long downhills even more so.  Though climbing steeply is a grind, it doesn’t feel dangerous, just slow.  Going down anything more than about 6% of grade, however, will push us into 2^nd gear and 4500+ RPM in order to maintain a reasonable speed without using excessive brakes (which would, of course, be worse).  I’ve read that this is fine and the preferred technique to tackling hills, but when I start pushing 5000 RPM it just doesn’t feel right.  I figure something is taking up all that strain I’m feeling, whether it’s the transmission, the engine, or something else.  Maybe I’m just not used to it.

At any rate, we crossed the Cascades and descended all the way into the Willamette Valley, and thereafter the short (but steep) Coastal Range to the Pacific.  It was interesting to watch the vegetation change as we crossed quickly from the “dry” side of the state to the “wet” side.

The weather wasn’t the best, but we had expected that.  Pretty much from San Francisco north to Canada they were expecting a few days straight of cooler temperatures and rain.  Sorely needed in the fire-scorched Pacific Northwest, but not ideal for our Oregon Coast excursion.  On the other hand, we were due for some rain – we’ve had very little on our trip — and what better region than the Pacific Northwest to experience some?

Due to previously mentioned time constraints and some dawdling in Park City, we’d had to distill our Oregon Coast time to one site from three, and we opted for Seal Rock, just south of Newport and north of Yachats (go ahead, try to pronounce that.  WRONG!) and Cape Perpetua.  We’re in a somewhat old school private RV park rather than a State or National Park, but there’s wi-fi and the view is stunning, with the beach right across the street.  “The street” in this case is Highway 101, but out here it’s pretty easy to cross, unlike, say, at Cahuenga Pass in LA.

Our first order of business upon setting up was to throw on some rain shells and head down to dip our feet into the Pacific, high winds and sideways rain be damned.  Woodsprite wouldn’t even put on sweats (but quickly regretted her obstinacy).

The next few days were quite different than all that had come before, and as such marked well the beginning of the “coastal” part of our journey as opposed to the “mountain” part which we’d just finished.

One of the things I had been looking forward to for quite some time was taking Keeper salmon fishing, and hopefully filling an ice chest or two with the fresh pink/orange stuff, not to mention having it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for several weeks.  I’d planned out our Oregon Coast stops based at least partially on river mouths, reasoning that late September would be just about right for the salmon to be heading in from the ocean, netting us a high probability of a decent catch from the shore.

There are several flaws in that reasoning, the most significant of which being this is me we’re talking about, and evidently I reek of salmon repellent.  Also lessening our odds, though, was the fact that our time constraints limited us to one river (the Alsea, which is ok for salmon but not a front-runner, I learned afterwards).  And lessening them further were the tide / time of day considerations and our non-willingness to rent a boat to get where the salmon were.  Somewhere in the recesses of my imagination I had once upon a time pictured our going out in the kayaks to salmon fish, but seeing the environment in which we’d be fishing disabused me of that nonsense almost instantly.  Not saying that every river mouth is like the Columbia in Astoria, but there’s a reason there’s a Coast Guard station there and that they’re so busy rescuing people.  The Alsea is like the Columbia in miniature, but not too miniature.  Huge Northern Pacific waves meeting a large, shallow river mouth with shifting sand bars and currents plus high winds and 13 or so feet of tidal shift = no chance whatsoever we would be blowing up the inflatables to brave it.  Plus it was supposed to rain.  Nahhh.

Still though, we awoke dutifully on day 2 at 5:30AM after buying our (semi-exorbitant) 3-day fishing license and some “can’t miss” lures, bundled up, and drove down to what looked like a decent spot to do some casting.  It was actually really cool.  The rain let up right as we arrived and turned into more of “showery” thing, with most of the showers missing us.  We were even treated to a rainbow at sunrise and a single lightning bolt that struck near enough to us to get our undivided attention, but no more followed it.

It became clear pretty quickly that any salmon we were going to catch would have to be lost or at least unintelligent, as we weren’t able to get the lures too far off shore, and we could see in the considerable distance where all the boats were fishing (and presumably where the salmon were).  Keeper lost a bit of his enthusiasm when he realized this was going to be yet another fishing-with-no-fish excursion with Dad, but to his credit he kept his spirits up and we fished for at least an hour before heading back to the women-folk and homeschool time.  We even did it again on day 3, with the same result.  Decided to sleep in on day 4 though.  Mmmmm, warm.

A quick note on 3-day fishing licenses, at least in Oregon (and California I would presume).  They are not economical.  I forget the exact price, but I did, without thinking, blurt out “no, I said a 3-day pass, not annual” when I was told the price.  Oops.  After being assured by the woman behind the counter that the price was in fact correct, I made some quip about how I was far (FAR!) better off going to the local grocery store and buying a salmon there.  She chuckled dutifully and offered that that wasn’t true if we caught 3 or 4 of them (with the implication that this was a simple matter).  Clearly she doesn’t know me.

The weather, despite the overall wetness and chilliness, actually cooperated with us far better than we expected throughout our Oregon time.  It seemed to rain all night every night, but the days would bring a decent amount of sun in between the random showers.  We were able to see quite a bit of that part of the coast, which is spectacular by any measure.  Our beach at Seal Rocks morphed with the tides from a wide, shallow tide pool wonderland with waves crashing in the distance, to a roiling maelstrom of sea foam that we could only watch from the path above.  Something none of us had ever seen was a sort of brownish sea foam that didn’t dissipate at all, and in fact collected on many of the surfaces there and in the various gyres that formed based on the all the rocks / reefs.  We looked it up (because in 2017 you don’t have to “wonder” anything) and discovered that it’s associated with rough seas and is composed of ground up seaweed/kelp and other organic material.  One of the kids decided it should be called “flarp,” so that name stuck.  Here’s some flarp.

This was the first time the girls were really able to see no-kidding tide pools with anemones, urchins, sea stars, and the like.  Keeper had seen several, and Firebolt had seen a few on vacation, but she’d been too young for them to make an impression.  Plus these were far more dramatic.  We spent several hours over the few days engaged in tide pool exploration.

Cape Perpetua, a few miles to the south, took the “rugged Oregon coast” thing and upped it several notches.  We scrambled on the tide pool strewn rocks next to the ocean where there’s a feature called “Thor’s Well” and another called “Devil’s Churn.”  You get the idea I think.  Waves were running about 15-20’ as well, so it was a little intense with the three kids wanting to go in different directions.  Hilarity ensued when I managed to get splashed pretty heavily by a wave while trying to demonstrate to the kids where the safe and less safe places to stand were; I was in a “safe” place.  My seawater-soaked jeans quickly became a non-factor, however, when we all got caught in a downpour and tried, unsuccessfully, to huddle downwind of a small ridge.  The kids took it in stride, though, and we chalked it up to “adventure.”

The last night we spent up in Newport, where Keeper (OK, it was me, but he definitely helped) dragged us to the Rogue brewery.  Keeper had tried Rogue’s root beer at a restaurant recently, and had declared it the best soda he’s ever had.  He’s not a soda guy and doesn’t particularly like sweet drinks, but this is evidently solid stuff – heavy on the “root” and light on the sugar.  We’d promised him he could buy a few bottles there as it’s almost impossible to find elsewhere.  I had a sampler flight with my dinner, as I’m inclined to do when I visit a brewery.  I like Rogue.  They’re not my favorite by any stretch, but there’s very little beer they make that I dislike.  The dinner was solid and Pacific Northwest-y too, with some Dungeness crab thrown in there for good measure.  Between all that, the rain outside, and the chill in the air, it felt very home-ish, and even Keeper expressed that sentiment, which surprised me a bit.  He seems energized in this environment, and I find that encouraging.

Tomorrow we head further down the coast into California and the Redwoods.  The last time I was there we blew through the area; I’m looking forward to spending some time there this go around.

By the way, if it wasn’t completely clear, we caught no salmon, and presumably won’t this trip.  At some point someone’s going to have to teach my son how to fish…

Our last day in Bend came too soon, but we made the most of it. Since we’d already done a riverside hike, we opted to check out the volcanic terrain as well. Although it was hazy due to all the fires raging north of us, the surreal landscape was spectacular nonetheless.

Having several Minecraft aficionados in the family, we noted that this particular trail could easily have been the inspiration for that particular computer game. The kids loved scrambling all over the angular rocks peppered with crevices of unknown depth. Because my sense of balance isn’t always trustworthy, being in close proximity to such places tends to make me a little uncomfortable. Watching our son rocket across them was no more enjoyable, but I heeded Flight’s observation from our previous hike and let him go. I was pleased to see that when my mother’s intuition really objected to his intended path, Flight, too, weighed in as a voice of reason discouraging any foolhardy leaps of faith.

Firebolt was a trooper. In a rush to pack up and get on the trail, I didn’t do my standard clearing turn to make sure no one’s fingers were near the hatchback before I shut it. Fortunately her hand was on the boundary of where the hatch meets the frame and only got pinched. While that was certainly uncomfortable enough, I am very thankful it wasn’t more serious. Firebolt totally rallied and was an enthusiastic hiker regardless of her throbbing finger(s).

I am vaguely concerned that we may be raising a society of narcissists. WoodSprite often loves to strike a pose and say, “Hey, Momma, can you take a picture of me?” and as soon as I move my iPhone from picture taking position, she asks, “Can I see it?” This hike alone provided me ample opportunity to make this observation.

We wove our way through the woods thick with solid lava flow and came first to a bitty lake.

After thirty minutes of mad scrambling over the lakefront’s rocks, pausing only to launch larger and larger boulders into the water to observe the ripples move out (physics lab complete), we moved on to the larger body of water on the trail, Lake Sparks.

Tarrying to match WoodSprite’s shorter strides, we rounded the last patch of trees and came upon this view:

Flight was helping Firebolt to ascend this sizable pile of rocks and Keeper was clambering across the crest. When they were nearly to the top, I asked Flight how the going was because WoodSprite really wanted to join everyone at the summit. Of course she did. I dug in past my vertigo-based apprehension and committed to climbing as well.

The views from above were stunning, but it made me quite woozy to sit atop the ridge line. I solidly grounded my lower limb proprioceptors and distracted myself by taking pictures. This vertigo business blows.

After a beautiful hike, we headed into town to sample yet another delicious dinner at 10 Barrel.

Flight and I are of like foodie mind and, in order to enjoy more items from any menu, we confer then tend share whatever we order. We opted to split the Moroccan Grilled Shrimp, Wild Alaskan Salmon Wraps, and the pizza of the day (one celebrating the local squash harvest partnered with goat cheese). This was one of our favorite meals thus far as the flavors highlighted were beautifully partnered. If you don’t believe me, check out their menu here. And, as you may imagine at one of the best brew pubs in town, the beverages were pretty rock star too.

I crawled into bed that night a little bummed we wouldn’t be staying in Bend for a few more years days. Because we’d already sacrificed precious Oregon time for a longer though certainly not regrettable stretch in Park City, we had to move on in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, I am eager to see the Oregon coast, I just don’t want to move free of Bend’s grasp just yet. So, in case I haven’t been clear, aside from the tricky commute for Flight, Bend hits all of my wickets to lavishly feed my soul for the foreseeable future.

While that may sound like the start to an Irish proverb of sorts, the above turn of phrase is attributed to Albert Camus who was decidedly an outside-the-box kind of thinker, a characteristic I always appreciate.  Although our respective time in Algiers was separated by decades and I’m pretty sure he never made it to Bend, I think he was spot on and I believe I have found where I want to live next. Our whole family loved it as well, but Flight’s commute to and from Bend might prove to be an insurmountable challenge.

Permit me to give some background…

We had visited Bend five years ago over the 4^th of July. Our brief stay was nothing short of enchanting. We watched people hefting their flotation devices over one shoulder and sporting some local brewery product in the other hand as they purposefully made their way to the center of town to float the river. We rented a quad-cycle for the family to tour through town. Eight-month old WoodSprite was strapped to me in the red Moby Wrap and Keeper and Firebolt were appropriately garbed in red, white, and blue in the front two seats.

As we were cycling around Drake Park, a local pointed to the way we were headed and told us, “Watch out, The Freedom Ride is coming through any minute.” ??? Apparently hundreds of cyclists make a parade through town on Independence Day and, in seeing the front end of the wave approaching us, we promptly did a 180^o just before we were overtaken by the surge. Trying our best to look like we belonged, we simply joined in the parade, our kids high fiving townsfolk along the way and yelling, “Happy 4^th!”

After our incredible bike ride, we strolled through Drake Park where there was a market of sorts set up. Local artists and crafters were selling their wares. One of the local bagpipe bands was auctioning off a beautiful SUP board with glorious Celtic knot work artistry. And there was Scottish Country Dancing – seriously, did they know I was coming? If memory serves (and it usually doesn’t), we ate an incredible dinner and retired to our place at Mount Bachelor, basking in the enrapturing day.

I was a bit dazed leaving Bend five years ago, not sure really what happened but convinced that the place is magical. Flight and I spent the next stretch of our road trip wondering what it would be like to be in Bend some other time as clearly the city had donned its holiday finery to woo us. Would the charm then hold?

Five years later we (sorry, Flight, I…) know the short answer to that question is yes, unequivocally so.

The long answer is a bit more nuanced, mostly owing to the requisite (and potentially brutal) commute for Flight, yet our time in Bend was no less enchanting this go around. We spent several days exploring some of the bounteous and wide ranging outdoor activities in the area – and we know we didn’t even scratch the surface of all that is offered.

Unfortunately, we stayed well outside of town, actually closer to Sunriver than Bend. The campsite was fine and offered enough space to sprawl out a bit (see Flight’s picture below), hugely welcomed after our stay in the tight KOA construction site campground, but it meant some time in the Suburu for any outings.

Our first day was a hike along the Deschutes. Starting at the Benham West Trailhead, we followed the path the river had carved out, where it was sometimes gently flowing, sometimes intensely rushing.

It was awe-inspiring and I was thrilled to be surrounded again by the pure energy of a real forest, and by that I mean the centuries of massive growth topping out at more than 200 feet (I can’t wait to get to the Redwoods!).

The energy of such old growth seems to streamline my own and being surrounded by such trees is so perfectly centering. Oh, to live so near such a sacred space…

Just beginning our hike, the girls asked why we had to go for a hike and repeatedly wanted to know for just how long we’d be hiking. However, about a quarter mile into it, they left off that line of questioning and were eagerly foraging for their own hike souvenirs. Firebolt collected as many sizable Ponderosa pinecones as she could manage, momentarily depositing them on the side of the trail to explore a downed tree.

She then deftly retrieved them and surprised me by quickly rapid-fire launching them into the river to assess how fast it was moving. And then she announced she would collect more pinecones to see if the river was moving faster or slower in other places. The whole world is a scientific laboratory when you really think about it and I love that she sees it so as well.

Keeper loved being out and about on the hike, climbing some rocky outcroppings awfully close to the rushing river, which made his mother a little nervous. Flight reassured me that that’s just what boys do and I need to let him do it.  Hoo boy.

The ease by which Keeper has transitioned to thriving outdoors is very welcome to observe, especially considering he’s a far cry from where he was earlier this summer. At one point he called home from Boy Scout Camp to inform me and Flight that nature was attacking him and we should come collect him (which we most certainly did not). Apparently desert mountain climes suit our boy more than tick-infested humidity. Good to know.

We concur.  Is my joy obvious?

WoodSprite was entirely in her element. She found some bark discarded by the pervasive Ponderosa pines and we noted it looked like a computer representation of what bark should look like or maybe thick construction paper cut outs pressed together. Whoa! WoodSprite thought her selected piece would make a perfect umbrella for her miniature princess dolls.

With a nod to Dr. Seuss’ Sleep Book, I admit I didn’t quite, quite understand her vision, but she and Firebolt labored together to make it so when we returned to Davista. Exceptional engineers in the making those two…

After enjoying gourmet burgers (no burger is complete without avocado, bacon, grilled onions, cheddar or blue or goat or feta cheese, maybe some Trader Joe’s sauerkraut, or Pickapeppa sauce or homemade Guinness mustard, or any number of other less conventional condiments – we take burgers very seriously in our family) and fresh corn back at our campsite, I crawled into bed that night feeling as though all was right with the world.

The next day Bend upped the ante. We FINALLY got to float a river and our time on the Deschutes was accompanied by perfect weather and minimal crowds, save a wedding party we made it a point to paddle far enough past to not hear their boisterous renditions of Abba and the like. As he’s posted several times, Flight had been jonesing for this opportunity and I was right there with him. It was glorious to be out on the water and just simply be present while slowly taking in the passing scenery.

Still scarred by our paddle in String Lake, Firebolt announced she was going in the double kayak with Flight. Keeper went solo and I had the pleasure of toting WoodSprite and various princesses, because why wouldn’t you bring them if you have them?

I can’t remember which of the kids initiated the game of tag on the water, but Keeper was the one who became a tad too aggressive in his attempt to tag his sister and ended up capsizing. Doh! After he went in all I heard was a repetitive chorus of, “Cold. Need to get out. Really COLD water. Need. Out…” Ever the good father, Flight braced the Firefly so Keeper could climb back in it without ending up back in the water. Fresh mountain run-off, that’ll wake you up.

Up until we pulled our kayaks out of the river we weren’t exactly sure just how Flight’s retrieval of the car was going to go down as we were batting .000 in such endeavors. Fortunately a fellow who worked for the local community HOA gave him a ride to our put in spot and we were dry and happily bundled back into the Suburu in short order. Our day on the brisk water made for five hungry peeps, which brings me to our first dinner out.

The vast array of Bend’s gustatory enterprises had my inner foodie lamenting we’d only be here a few days. We had to choose very, very wisely with only two days to dine out. No pressure. Crux Fermentation Project is a brewery poised at the top of a hill and won our vote for the first dinner.

As we approached this mecca there was a wide-open field to the right that was lined by several food trucks and dotted with blankets and people enjoying picnic dinners in the retreating sunlight. This looked far too festive a venue for the everyday, so I pointed at this vision and said to Flight, “Shoot, do you think there’s an event tonight? Will we even be able to get in?” “I guess we’ll find out,” and he dropped me off to inquire within.

When asked how long the wait for a table might be, the twenty-something at the register (there’s no host podium at Crux) said, “Actually, it’s open seating, so if you find a table, you can grab it.” “Wow, okay, great. Hey, quick question, what’s going on outside?” “Oh, well, you can order here and eat out there (gesturing to the field), or you can grab anything from any of the food trucks, if you prefer.” “Seriously?” “Yep (big grin), that’s just kinda what we do here.” I love Bend.

From Crux we had a hankering for some gelato and headed downtown to Bonta Natural Artisan Gelato. As we made our way to our destination, we couldn’t help but notice yet another place festively illuminated, this one with streets open only to pedestrian traffic.  To get to our gelato required wending through Bend’s Oktoberfest.  I swear, they must have these celebrations just for us.  As we meandered, we even passed the gelateria’s kiosk, but bypassed it for the real store. Although I was disappointed they didn’t have pumpkin in the proper store (I was drawn to that flavor at the kiosk), Flight reminded me it was still summer and I shouldn’t be enjoying pumpkin flavored anything yet. Fine. Dulce de Leche & Sea Salt it is.  And it was heavenly.

Yet another blissful end to a delightful Bend day… I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings…

It seems absurd that with a year to travel we would need to make difficult choices between places we would very much like to visit.  Yet there we were looking at Bend vs Hood River / Portland, knowing that with the commitments we had already booked, we would not be able to see both, at least this go around.  Ultimately the wildfires made our decision for us, as the State Park near Hood River was still closed upon our departure from Park City.  This was fortuitous – we would not have wanted to miss Bend, as we would soon find out.

First of all, getting there – not especially nice.  No offense to Idaho, I’ve always liked it and still do, though when thinking of Idaho it’s always important to remember that there’s the mountains in the north and there’s the not-mountains in the south.  The latter half of the state is pretty in its own flat, farmy, check out our potatoes sort of way, but we didn’t navigate it especially well.

 

That’s two days of driving, to be clear.

We wanted to get at least halfway to Bend on the first day, and so we skipped what were probably some of the nicer campgrounds and hot springs along the Snake River Gorge. Evel Knievel anyone?  No?  Never mind.  Anyhow, my intended destination (pronoun intentional — I’m taking full responsibility for this) was Bruneau Dunes State Park, near Mountain Home.  Dunes, mountains, state parks… win win win, right?  Nope, not right at all.  I was already well aware that “Mountain Home” is a gross misnomer, so that part wasn’t a disappointment.  What was a disappointment was Bruneau Dunes State Park.  This is more or less what we saw when we pulled up to our destination, after driving several miles down isolated 2 lane roads.

This is one of those times when the picture, rather than not conveying the grandeur, doesn’t convey the misery.  The RV campground area looked similar, but with a smattering of gravel pads and electrical hookups, and a wayward outhouse or two.  There were probably a hundred sites, and only 3 or 4 people staying there.  Also no cell coverage.  Again.  “Sketchy” as a blanket adjective is a gross understatement, but it’s all we had to describe what we saw when we arrived.  So for the first time this trip, we turned right around out of a place we’d planned to stay and moved on.

The next area we would hit would be Boise, and I’d heard good things about the town.  Unfortunately, we chose poorly there too.  Opted for the KOA rather than one of the several other campgrounds near downtown, and it turned out to be west of Boise in Meridian, and in what amounted to a busy parking lot surrounded by construction.  Tightly packed, too.  Ah well, it was only one night, right?  At least we could dump our toilet tank.

Firebolt made friends with some girls there, as she’s wont to do, while out riding her bike around the lot with Woodsprite.  That was cool right up to the point that their new friends gave our girls unfrozen Otter Pops from their trunk and then came back to our RV and practically forced themselves into it.  I’m not necessarily anti-Otter Pop (though I kinda am — I just think it’s a little hypocritical since I had so many as a kid), but the “we’re coming into your house now” part was weird.  I slowed things down to make sure the girls were ok with these new friends invading their living space (Firebolt yes… sorta, Woodsprite no), but had to draw the line when they came straight in, went into the girls’ beds, started opening compartments, and then resisted me a little when I told them that wasn’t ok.  It was all a little funky yet at the time I couldn’t have told you how exactly.   Boundaries were crossed but I couldn’t articulate which ones.  Instead I just told the new friends that it was time for them to head back, which they did.  Fortunately the whole episode was short-lived as well, and we were off in the morning.

The drive through Eastern Oregon was bleakly pretty.  I imagine most people picture Oregon as green and wet, but of course that’s only the half on the west side of the Cascades.  The other half, with the exception of the far northeast corner, could just as aptly be called Northern Nevada.  Same dry, mountainous, and very sparsely populated terrain.  We followed the Malheur river up to near its source then continued back down toward the heart of Central Oregon.

The closer we got to Bend, the more obvious it became that we were solidly in volcano country.  The soil became deep reddish-brown with a generous smattering of pumice rock lying around.  There are perfectly symmetrical cinder cones visible in most directions.  What’s more, the pine trees started kicking in as well, likely due to the elevation gain as we approached the Cascades.  It’s gorgeous.

Unfortunately there was still lingering hazy smoke, or we’d have seen the Three Sisters and Mt. Bachelor looming behind the city with their obviously volcanic shapes and year-round snow.

I’ll dispense with my only Bend complaint from this go-around now, because everything, and I do mean everything else about it was overwhelmingly positive: there are not many options for RVs.  If I were to live there I’d probably like that fact about it, but in our current situation it was problematic.  There are two places in town, neither of which looked appealing, and then another, which we opted for, south of Sunriver.  Sunriver is basically a resort-town hybrid, though more resort than town, about 15 miles south and upriver from Bend.  Both lie on the Deschutes river.  The campground was well-wooded (though dusty), sprawling, and offered some decent privacy, but felt a bit isolated and with heavily dated facilities.  That’s it though, done semi-griping, because Bend was… awesome.

So here we were, coming off of a long Park City stay that had us talking smack about how we could certainly live in Park City, and in strolls Bend to blow our minds.

First of all, the layout and size.   It’s right about at 100K people, which is just small enough not to feel big, but just big enough to offer all of the cultural, food/drink, and retail options we appreciate.  It’s, as previously mentioned, bisected by the Deschutes, which is a clear mountain river with rapids both north and south of town, and a slow-moving part through town that people float on all summer.  It even has both a free shuttle to take you and your floating device of choice back upriver to meet your car or to float again, and a fairly new whitewater park right in the middle of town so that you can practice your river kayaking or even surfing moves.  The climate is dry, hot, and sunny in the summer, and sunny and cold in the winter, with a good bit of snow.  Mt. Bachelor’s lifts are about 20 minutes up from town.   The whole place smells like pine trees.  And there are trails EVERYWHERE.  Bike trails, walking trails, water trails…   To top it off, something like a dozen breweries and two cideries, plus a thriving food scene.

But OK, the truth is, we knew all this ahead of time and yet we were still blown away.  I’ll try to flesh it out a bit.

On our first day there we opted for a fairly slow morning followed by an afternoon hike.  Once we fought through the kid inertia (WHYYYY do we have to do a HIIIIIKE?  We ALLLLLWAYS do hikes…) they found, as they normally do, that hiking is a great idea.  In Bend it’s an especially great idea.  We chose just a short section of the Deschutes River Trail, which follows the river all the way from Sunriver to Bend I’m pretty sure, and as far I can tell, is nothing special trail-wise by Bend standards.  Yet I felt like we were hiking through a National Park.  Clear, rushing river on one side, recently (geologically speaking) cooled lava flows on the other, with huge, vividly colored Ponderosa Pines everywhere.  Everything seemed laid out just so, as if it were designed. But it wasn’t, it was just a trail – one of many in town.  And that pine/river/clean smell!  It permeates everything.

 

Afterwards we headed into town, stopped by the whitewater park and then checked out Crux Fermentation Project’s taproom / restaurant, which ups the brewpub ante by adding a sunset-behind-the-volcanoes view and a huge grass field full of cavorting kids and Portland-style food trucks.  On the way back through town (in search of good gelato, which wasn’t at all tricky to locate), we found ourselves in the middle of a block-off-the-streets Oktoberfest celebration.

The next day we floated the Deschutes in Sunriver, which was just about everything the Snake River Float should have been (though without rapids).  The kids made friends with a few ducks, who are evidently used to being fed by their human river-floating companions.  Keeper got a little too up close and personal with the river when he got over-ambitious in a game of kayak tag.  But all of them caught the river bug.  We want more!

 

 

On the penultimate day, we took a drive up along the Cascade Lakes Loop road, which appeared to offer yet another cavalcade of trails, pristine mountain lakes, campgrounds, and the like.  Once again the smoke obscured what would’ve undoubtedly been an incredible view, but also once again it didn’t really matter – we hiked around one of the many lakes and clambered all over the volcanic rocks.   The kids said it was the best hike yet.  That day we topped off with a dinner at 10 Barrel Brewing (sensing a theme?), where what appeared to be a small bluegrass band turned out to be playing ‘80s and ‘90s alternative standards on a fiddle, among other instruments.

 

 

And I haven’t even mentioned the mountain biking, which we didn’t have time to partake in, but is everywhere, world class, and easy to access.

Really though, it was more about the vibe there than anything else.  Some places you just feel. We probably all experienced it in different ways, but everybody agreed that we could very easily live there, and that it just seemed right.

But ARGH, what to make of that, though?!  All this talk about our desire for previously established connections where we move, and in Bend we really don’t have that.  We do know two families there, but nothing resembling a support system.  And the commute!  Oh man, the commute.  There’s just no getting around the fact that for me to get to work and back, I’d be flying two legs out of / into a small airport.  There’s one flight per day to LAX (as of now) – all the rest would be connecting flights.  Plus this would require me to transfer back to the Long Beach / LA domicile, where I would lose much of my relative seniority and consequently my ability to bid a desirable flight schedule.  I’m pretty sure I’ve passed the age where a two leg, cross country commute to work would be something I could do reliably.  Back in the day when I could be asleep within 15 minutes in any location and position, maybe.  But now the idea of spending 8 hours in planes that I’m neither flying nor sleeping in, just to get to and from work… well that makes me shudder.

Recapping… we have, over the last 7 weeks, decided we could easily live in, and made compelling cases for, Anacortes, Seattle, Park City, and Bend.  And we haven’t really even spent time in New England yet, which was arguably the front-runner before.  Our goal was to narrow this choice down, and we seem to be expanding it instead.  On top of that, we still have a house in Annapolis that evidently no one who can pay for it wants to buy, which may make the entire discussion moot.  We’re clearly making progress, but toward what?

Back to enjoying the journey I suppose.  Maybe that’s the point.  Maybe?

As under the radar as my time in Maryland had been, we similarly departed Park City most covertly. We packed up (Flight was well versed in doing so having moved to three campsites in as many days while I was away – !!!) and got on the road.   Our travels to Idaho provided sights unlike anything I’d ever seen before, even though I had routinely made the trek to Pocatello from the U for my NROTC Unit recruiting duties.

I mean, seriously, what is this?

There were several in caravan. Perplexed, I snapped this pic when they got off the highway. ??!!?! No idea.

Then the landscape evolved from Park City-esque to Napoleon Dynamite’s natural habitat in about 15 minutes.

Flight perfectly described how unpleasant our prospective campsite at the dunes was, but allow me to offer a few more pictures.

We tossed around the idea of getting out here and having a roll down the sand just so we could say we did, but in less than 30 seconds we thought of all the ways it could go horribly wrong (I would hate to break my coccyx) and chose to move on.

All the way to Boise.

On the way, there was even a sketchy (extremely narrow) bridge (it’s construction season in Idaho too) we had to traverse. I’m very thankful Flight was happy to drive and he even earned his Fly Ace designation while doing so (not while traversing the bridge).

Although there weren’t many, one highlight of this thankfully brief stay in the KOA was Firebolt’s reintroduction to the card game Golf. Although I’m not sure I want to play with her anymore. This picture shows the third round she managed with a perfect hand. I have never seen anyone score -10 points in a round so readily.

The other highlight was WoodSprite’s artistic endeavor. She was outside slaving away in the dark and came up with this lovely chalk drawing.

I would say that I’m sorry I missed the earlier drama with pushy children who snack on (or maybe just share) unfrozen Otter Pops, but that would be untrue. I was very thankful Keeper and I had been off to Trader Joe’s to restock the larder when all that unfolded. Flight is a rock star for deftly handling that mess.

And amidst the clamor of large pieces of construction machinery tirelessly working to build a new neighborhood, we sailed out of Boise as early as we could manage. Eventually I hope we can get back to see some of the hot springs littering Idaho. I know that the state has some beautiful places to visit, it just so happens not a single one presented itself on our transit through to Oregon.   Bummer…

 

I arrived in town to find our house exactly as we’d left it, save for the kind note from the realtor who’d hosted our most recent Open House the previous weekend.   That was weird (not the note), the way our house had seemed to stand still, patiently waiting (?), entirely untouched (indifferent even?) by our absence or the threat of a new denizen, alleged felon or no. Instead of feeling like a supportive anchor amidst all the changes we’d been experiencing, ones I was desperately trying to process in my short window of grown up alone time, the house’s nonchalance seemed to make light of my discomfort, which made me feel that much worse. Like I said, weird.

Although I was back in the place we’d made into a home for four years, it was a sterilized version of my recollection. In accordance with all the staging recommendations I’d read, nowhere did we have a family picture still adorning the walls. Most of the items that had designated it as our family’s home had either been brought with us in Davista or packed away in boxes. Yet everywhere I looked I was bombarded by poignant family memories, all of which only faintly matched the current reality. The disconnect was so overwhelming that I retreated outside to escape.

I spent the afternoon harvesting tomatoes and ground cherries from our garden gone wild in our absence. Cape gooseberries (the other name for ground cherries) are cousins to the tomatillo, with a similar dried husk indicating their ripeness but with a tangy sweet flavor. We first sampled them dipped in chocolate on our honeymoon in Venice – see, this theme was forming even before kids came into the mix. I also, for the first time ever, cleaned the pool because 1) it desperately needed it before the next Open House scheduled in two days time and 2) the mindless labor allowed me to postpone being in the house again while I tried to understand what my reaction to being in it again meant.

I think my processing went something along these lines, although maybe not necessarily in this order… Do I miss Maryland? It’s hard to say definitely yes or no with so much capturing my attention daily. Frankly I haven’t really thought much about that. Do I miss our house in Maryland? I think only the space we created in the basement, because, really, who doesn’t love a craft space steps away from the kegerator. What about the way of life we carved out? Since that’s definitely not how I want to live our next chapter, I’d have to say no. Do I skim first and then vacuum? Shoot, or should I let out some water first? I think it’s too full (apparently it’s been raining here while fires rage out West), I should probably text Flight for his recommendations. Is this overwhelming reaction because I am acutely missing my family? Hmm. I guess I really do like them and we have been together 24/7 for the last six weeks. I’m not sure when that’s ever been the case. How much was my feeling their absence compounding my reaction to being back in the house? 94%? I don’t know.

After getting briefed on Flight’s SOP for tending to the pool, I went back to harvesting more goodies from the garden while the siphon hose dumped our excess pool water under the trampoline generating the standard temporary swamp. Unless you want to buy our house, then it’s got perfect drainage…

Although it didn’t come to me until I am now typing this, the disconcerted feeling reminds me of the uncomfortable reintegration process following previous Navy deployments.   While deployed with a VP squadron you spend six months living with the ten other members of your crew. In addition to routinely flying 11-hour missions together (not including the preflight and post flight requirements), you spend much of your time traveling in a pack and there is very little alone time. I became so accustomed to living this way that returning to the quiet that comes with living solo in a small house really threw me for a loop. If memory serves (and it usually doesn’t), it took just over a week to find my stride again. Interesting parallel.

Not wanting to disturb the museum quality of our house and not having an operational refrigerator within (they’ve all been unplugged in our absence), I eagerly jumped on the opportunity to dine out.

All by myself.

That’s become sort of a joke between me and Flight.  About six months ago we went to lunch at Lures in Annapolis. They always have fresh caught goodness served a number of interesting ways and boast a solid on tap menu for beer (and cider) geeks. Happily sated by our lunch, I asked Flight when he’d come here before as he seemed to know the menu. He mentioned he’d been to Lures three times previously. I couldn’t believe this was then only my first outing here and asked him with whom he had dined. “No one. I ate by myself.” “What do you mean by yourself? Who goes to a restaurant to eat alone?” I had always considered dining out an extravagance, something I would only do with company and certainly not while I was surrounded by plenty of food at home. “I do it all the time on the road. You should try it some time.”

So I did.

I went to Paladar and ate all five of my mini tuna tacos all by myself. They were crazy good and the experience was quite liberating. I believe I’ll be doing that again as soon as I can make it work.

The morning came way too early (I was still on Mountain Time) and I powered through my Navy Reserve day, no great hardship I assure you. I was intrigued by the opportunity to once again dine alone. I tried a couple other of my nearest favorites and found them all to have ludicrous wait times (apparently other people go out to eat on Saturday nights too – a lot of them and few are parties of one), so I grabbed some dinner at Whole Foods along with simple brekkie fixings for the next morning. I had the option to go to the Navy football game and/or visit with any number of friends in the area, but I realized I needed some down time of my own and savored my brooding in solitude.

The second best part about my brief stint in Maryland was that I was able to scour our house for several elusive items, most critical of which were Firebolt’s glasses (even though they had become her second back-up pair after a visit to the optometrist in Minnesota) and more long pants for Keeper (who donned them all as highwaters when we were reunited – shoot!). Truly the best part was that I got to dine with our cousins who live 1.1 miles from our house in Maryland. Our whole family has missed their gaggle (WoodSprite and their youngest were in preschool together the last couple of years) and, as they are part of GiGi’s brood, they are some of my favorite people.

And so I departed Maryland early the next morning still not really understanding how our residence seemed to have made no imprint on the sterilized husk of our house nor how being in it again evoked so much visceral turmoil. I’m just happy to be rejoining the rest of the family on this long strange trip…

Maybe I need to dine out again all by myself to try to sort it all out…

Park City I mean, of course.  Though actually it’s more the other way around – Park City isn’t Utah.  Which is also incorrect, because it’s very much Utah, but it’s always been somewhat of a thorn in Utah proper’s side, even from its early days as a rollicking mining town rife with all the things that tend to accompany a group of isolated, mostly single, hard-laboring men who spend most of their day underground.  Today it’s known more for its ski areas, Olympic venues, and the Sundance Film Festival, but there’s still a (completely unofficial and somewhat speculative on my part) sense that the rest of Utah, Salt Lakers in particular, wish it would just go away or secede, or maybe just pretend it and Utah don’t actually know each other.

I remember when we first moved to Park City and TC was working down in Salt Lake at the University, I would get a lot of vague comments from random people down the mountain along the lines of “why on Earth would you want to live up there?”  When pressed, the reasons for the distaste were never entirely clear, and ran the gamut from “oh, the weather’s just bad” to “the roads aren’t very good” (?), and when pressed even further, I usually got something along the lines of “it just isn’t NICE up there.”

Tacco and I, on the contrary, found it very nice up there.  She lived in PC for 3 years, the last of which I joined her for after I returned from my last active duty Navy gig in The Netherlands.  This was the newlywed / no kids days, so they’re probably easy to idealize for just about anyone, but for me it was enhanced by being not yet employed (I’d interviewed with JetBlue but didn’t start for several months) and being a ski bum in a ski town with a season pass.  What a life.  That was the year I decided I’d get decent at snowboarding, and just about every day went something like this: get up, check the snow report, get my snowboarding gear together, drive Tacco to the base of Deer Valley where she sold lift tickets while finishing off her Masters degree, drive back to the coffee shop at the base of Park City mountain and have a cup of coffee while I waited for the lift to open, then “take a few runs, just to see how it is.”  In quotes because inevitably “a few runs” became the whole day on the slopes.  Why wouldn’t it?

ANYWAY… back to the present day.  Any time we’re in Park City, there’s a point during our visit when we look at each other and say “we could totally live here again.”  This time was no exception.

Our going plan, if you recall, was to stay a couple days and then move on to Oregon via Idaho.  We ended up staying just shy of two weeks, in increments of “just another day or two.”  The first few days were a fantastic blur of family and friend visits interspersed with a bit of relaxing time up at Jordanelle.  Tacco’s got a lot of extended family in Salt Lake whom we always love to visit, though it’s overwhelming when we only have a small amount of time (when we arrived we didn’t realize we’d be staying so long).  Her parents were also in town, which I already mentioned.  On top of that, I have an aunt/uncle and 3 cousins + kids who live there, and we managed to meet up with them on Labor Day evening, which was an outstanding visit.  Brisket, more garden fresh veggies than we could’ve eaten in a week, and invaluable catching-up time. When we lived in Utah 15 years ago, we completely failed to spend much time with them – huge mistake, as they’re an amazing family.

 

The next few I was away working for, but Tacco will cover that as well as the other family visits I’m sure.

We solved the “no place to stay Sat/Sun” dilemma by booking a hotel room at the base of The Canyons ski resort – correction, that should read The Canyons base area of Park City Mountain since the two merged a few years back creating one mega-resort.  I was surprised how reasonable it was, and the kids enjoyed the hotel beds / shower, as well as the live music at the base of the lifts.  Still no Wal-Mart parking lots! [knock, knock]

We also had dinner with the same friends (minus the dad, who was out stalking a deer near Moab) at a friend of theirs’ stunning house which they house-sit at times.  Check it out.

 

To be clear, we will never, ever live in a house like this in Park City or elsewhere.  This is high end, even for PC.  But there are a lot of these, some of which back up to the slopes.

After I returned from work things slowed down a bit (by necessity), and a combination of the continued burning of the Pacific Northwest fires in our desired destinations and flight convenience convinced us that we’d be better off staying in Park City all the way through the following weekend, when Tacco returned from her Navy duty back in DC.  This put us behind with respect to seeing Oregon, but felt like the right call; we sorely needed some “stop moving!” time.

Keeper broke the fishing curse with a little perch he pulled from the shore of Jordanelle.  It wasn’t the Kokanee we were hoping to pull in, but something is better than nothing.  Firebolt followed with a few even smaller ones.  The hook was almost as big as their bodies – how did they manage to snag themselves on it?  Must’ve been really really hungry.

On the second to last day, with TC still away, I decided to treat the kids to all day passes at the base of Park City Mountain, where they have an Alpine Slide, Alpine Coaster, zip lines, mini golf, etc.  I think I prefer this sort of thing to an amusement park.  Though as the sole adult it was tricky to balance the supervision needs of all the kids (and by that I mean “oh maaann, I wanted to play too!”).  I’d have liked to throw the lift-served mountain biking into the mix, but that wasn’t to be.  We did find out that Firebolt is quite the climber – she got the highest of the three kids on the climbing wall!  And Woodsprite swallowed much of her fear and jumped on the ropes course and mini-zipline, which is excellent progress.

 

 

The kids were all very positive about Park City when we dialed them into our “we could totally live here” conversations.  There is a big wild card though – they all profess to not liking skiing.  Which is completely ridiculous since none of them know how to ski yet, but much like lacrosse is a center of gravity for kids in Maryland, winter sports are the same if not more so, I would imagine, in Park City.  It would be a bit pointless to live in PC and not have a desire to get on the mountain, and beyond that I would speculate that the non-winter-sports-loving kids have a harder time fitting in there.  Tangentially but perhaps more importantly, Keeper has yet to master a skill that takes a lot of effort to conquer.  Firebolt, too, but she’s only 8 – she has time.  It took Keeper several years for the light to come on with soccer / team sports – I’m hoping it doesn’t take that long with individual sports and skills.  In his mind he tries something once and if it doesn’t come to him immediately then he’s “not good at it.”  That’s where he is with skiing (he’s tried it exactly twice for a couple hours, 2 years apart – he never had a chance).  Not that I find it necessarily important that he ends up a snow sport wizard, I just fervently want him to experience the pleasure of mastering a difficult skill.  So I guess what this all means is that we need to explore all of this a bit further.  We’re talking about taking a month or two this winter, whether or not our house sells, to park the motorhome and do a month in a ski town.  Originally we were thinking Alps, but we’re now leaning more toward a return to PC in February-March-ish.  If we end that month with 3 slopes-addicted kids, that will change our calculus quite a bit.

Which leads me to what we took most from our Park City time (other than the home-offer story, which Tacco either has already covered or will shortly) — a great set of discussions about where we want to live at the end of this.  It’s a recurring theme of course, and we only approach an end decision through the tiniest of baby steps, but we spent quite a bit of what down time we had reflecting on how much we enjoyed being in a place where we already have a few connections and people we want to be around.  Park City would be near the top of the list without any of that due to its exceptional amenities and the general vibe there, but we’ve got both family and friends nearby, and that is starting to feel like a factor we need to weight more than we have been.  We were fortunate to have family already in Annapolis when we moved there, and I think it’s easy to forget what a difference that made.  Though we’ve both moved to several places where we didn’t know anyone, this was pre-kids and often pre-marriage, and always under the auspices of a Navy squadron, where a support system is built-in.  It’s tough to envision what a move to, say, Portsmouth, NH would look like when we settle in without a name to put in the “In Case of Emergency, call _______” space in the many sign-up forms for the kids.  It’s doable, to be sure, but do we want to put ourselves through that?  I don’t have an answer yet, but we’re inching our way there.

Still trying to work out where in Oregon we go next.  We had three general areas we intended to spend time in: Bend, Hood River / Portland, and the Coast.  We’ve realized that we can’t do all three now and are going to need to pick and choose.  Plus it’s all still on fire, and the weather is taking a turn for the worse, though in some sense we’re staying just a tad ahead of it.   We just learned that it’s supposed to snow all week in the places we just left — chasing mild weather indeed!

Stay tuned.

Flight already covered our dinner at his aunt and uncle’s house, but permit me to add some family history background. Flight’s grandmother was affectionately referred to as GiGi for Great Grandmother as she met 42 of her great grandchildren before she died at 102. She was an incredible woman who raised five amazing kids who have all raised delightful children, one of whom I was fortunate enough to marry. Seriously, on all counts.

I remember telling some of my friends I was going to my husband’s family reunion to celebrate GiGi’s 95^th birthday and most replied, “Oh, geez, have fun with that.” I had to further explain how this family is very unusual in that there is not a single bad one in the bunch. Most people have families that know to avoid Uncle Fred, especially when he’s had more than three drinks, or there’s a common understanding to not get Cousin Louise talking about her religion, her cats or her corns. In contrast, every single one of GiGi’s offspring is truly delightful to be around. Each is smart, engaging, and interesting, so it’s always an enjoyable time when we connect and this dinner was no exception.

Aside from the delicious food and equally delightful company, our kids had a blast. Flight’s uncle took them to the neighborhood golf course in a golf cart. And when I say “them” I mean ALL the second cousins at once:

They loved it!

We dropped Flight off at the airport before we scooted back up to Jordanelle. In his absence we spent the day breathing easy and going to the beach with friends. Although the beach was quite rocky, much to our kids’ dismay, its proximity to where we were parked was quite a luxury.

Our girls had been invited for a sleepover (and they gleefully emphasized “with NO parents”) at my third cousin’s (the same contractor’s daughter whose house we camped in sans Davista), which afforded Keeper and me some rare mother-son time. After we dropped the girls off in the late afternoon, we ran some Keeper-centric errands and were able to check out Stanza (a delightful Italian restaurant near the University) with my folks and my godfather. Keeper swore his lasagna was “the best anybody’s ever made.” He might be right.

The following day evolved into insanity (mine) owing to a host of challenges, the greatest contributors of which were the 102^oF heat down in the valley, our real estate brush with an alleged felon and sorting out the potential consequences thereof, and my overscheduling our family. Note to my dyslexic self, there are only 24 hours in a day. Not 42. Maybe someday I’ll get that straight. Sigh…

There were two dazzling bright points among the chaos, however.   First, after we collected the girls, the kids and I enjoyed our abbreviated visit to the Utah Museum of Natural History. The family engineers delighted in building earthquake proof structures and evaluating land mass erosion across the millennia:

After that we made our way to the Viking Exhibit, which was truly fascinating. While the older kids played Hnefatafl (try saying that three times fast), WoodSprite and I admired the reconstructed ship display (those are all the iron bolts used to pin the ship together which were all found in situ in a Norwegian burial site) and the penannular broaches, of which my mom has several of the Scottish variety.

We had also hoped to make room in the day to see my late godmother’s art exhibit at the Utah Museum of Fine Art, but time got away from us. Again, I’m surprised to learn there are only 24 hours in a day. Shoot.

We had to press on for yet another Family Dinner (I may have mentioned we’re related to half the Salt Lake Valley), this one back at my cousins’ place where the girls had just slept over. On our way we stopped at Cummings Studio Chocolates (perhaps you see a theme here, as we’ve made it a point to check out local chocolatiers wherever we wander) to pick up some chocolate covered strawberries (delicious yet somewhat ubiquitous) and chocolate covered grapes. I had never heard of these before my time at the U and was so thrilled they were still making such a delicacy. Don’t love ‘em ‘til you try ‘em. Seriously.

The second highlight was this third and final Family Dinner, and a bonus was that my parents were able to join us. Although they haven’t had nearly the years of experience in hosting such gatherings as our contractor relative, my cousins set a fine table.   Dinner was scrumptious and it was especially lovely to spend some time getting to know the younger generation of cousins, one of whom is getting ready to ship to Great Lakes Naval Training Center to begin his time in the Navy – WOO HOO!

The following day was a flurry of down time, which probably makes no sense. Permit me to explain. Flight was due back in the early hours and (thankfully) decided to rent a car for a day to come back up to Jordanelle, which was perfect since the kids (and maybe I too) were DONE with going up and down Parley’s Canyon (see picture above) and I could take it back to the airport for my departure. Originally I was to head to the airport that evening to fly back east for Navy Reserve work, but Flight and I had some serious debriefing and planning to do and, aside from meeting the pool guys who were scheduled to close our pool, I had no other obligations that might necessitate the red-eye arrival early on Friday morning

After spending the day getting our ducks in a row, doing laundry, unpacking (Flight) and packing (I), we went to one of our favorite places in Park City from back in the day. Our Park City friends joined us as well, all four of them this time since they now had a freezer full of venison (in the words of Napoleon Dynamite – “Lucky!”). Loco Lizard is perched on what the outskirts of town used to be in Kimball Junction, which is now bustling with activity. Near the Olympic Park, several new commercial areas have sprung up around Kimball Junction, including the largest Whole Foods in the U.S., which unfortunately hasn’t opened yet. The old one around the corner, however, was still more than adequate and suited our needs just fine.

That evening, Flight told me he wasn’t going down in the Valley even once while I was gone, except to collect me on Monday.  He further offered he thought he might not even leave the campground. I didn’t blame him. I had overbooked us plenty in his absence and he (and the kids) could certainly use some down time while I was sporting my Navy poly-wool uniform in Maryland for the weekend.

I’ll explore my seemingly alternate-universe trip to Maryland in the next post…