Hike/Walk – Cheadle Park

Kangaroo has been hitting it “out of the park”, ha, on the hikes she has been suggesting, and this one was no exception. While it was mostly on a paved trail, it was a lovely walk through a park around a good-sized lake in the little town of Lebanon, Oregon. Since it was spring break and Kangaroo wasn’t working, we did this hike on a Monday. Kangaroo had heard that there is a black swan at the lake, and we kept our eyes peeled for this unusual bird!

There is one paved path through the park between the lake and a canal, and then some smaller “finger” trails that go off the big path to other parts of the lake. Across the small canal you can see people’s homes and properties. As always, some of the properties are quite nice and some are full of old RVs and other dead vehicles. We saw one very loud cow as well!

We started at one end of the park where there was, unfortunately, only an unstocked Porta-Potty to use before our hike. Thankfully Kangaroo had some fast-food napkins in her glove box so we weren’t completely bereft of bathroom supplies. I carry some toilet paper in my little backpack but on this day I had decided just to take my fanny pack (or bum bag, for those of you outside of the U.S.) and left the backpack at home. I will rethink that strategy for next time, or maybe just bring a roll of TP for Kangaroo to keep in her truck!

Only slightly informative sign at the area where we parked.

There are some nice information boards along the path and we learned that the area of the park was the world’s largest forest products complex at one time! What a difference a few years makes. You can see some more history in the photo below.

The Lebanon Strawberry Festival is held here during the summer, and we saw some of the equipment and signs used at the festival. I haven’t been to the festival since I was a teenager, and it seems like it would be fun. There are a lot of summer festivals around here, I think it would be fun to spend some time at each of them — the Lebanon Strawberry Festival, Jefferson Mint Festival and Frog Jump (this is where I grew up, we won second place in the parade one year when I was a girl!), Linn County Lamb and Wool Fair held in Scio, the Aumsville Corn Festival, and the Harvest Festival in Sublimity that features a monster truck rally and tractor pull. I’m sure there are more I’m not thinking of at the moment!

Park sign with strawberries.

We walked to the end (or beginning) of the trail and started our hike. The trail is called the North Shore Trail, although I would have said it was on the east side of the lake so I’m not sure where the name comes from.

At first glimpse of the lake we saw some lily pads, and one had a flower. That’s not something we see every day so we were very interested. No frogs on the lily pads, though!

It was rather a gray and rainy day, so the water in the lake looked very dark and foreboding. I would imagine on a sunny summer day it would look much more inviting! We saw some wildlife, including ducks, a crane, and quite a few Canada geese, one of whom was limping as we walked toward it. It seemed upset and was having a hard time, so we decided to walk another way so we wouldn’t disturb it or its friends any longer.

Duck, duck, duck, geese!

We saw a man rowing a small pontoon boat, some train cars, a water tower, and even a red-winged blackbird, but no black swan was observed.

Red-winged blackbird in flight

Island perfect for a bird resting area.

Unused train cars, a perfect canvas.

Water tower with graffiti – you have to admire the grit it took to climb up there.

Kangaroo gets the shot.

Another sign said that crappies are some of the best tasting fish. If that’s so, they need to rethink the name, ha.

One of the lake paths.

We finally came to the end of the trail which is at another parking lot, with a building remnant of the old logging/mill operation. This parking lot, of course, had a nice bathroom with a flush toilet.

Remnant of old mill operation.

After walking back to the truck we had walked 5 or 6 miles, including the finger trails. Since there is no Dairy Queen in Lebanon, we ate our lunch at the Ixtapa Mexican restaurant. I didn’t get a photo of our lunches, but my fajitas were delicious!

Just keep walking!

Ninja

Happy Easter!!

Excitement at Our House

A few days back I was at home working, and the front doorbell rang. I checked the Ring doorbell camera thinking it was probably a delivery person, and what did I see but a large policeman on my front porch! I did, of course, check out the window to make sure there was a real police car there so I was sure he was a REAL policeman, and there were three police cars and a motorcycle with three other policemen, two of whom were holding rifles. A K-9 officer was also present. Eeeek! The police officer on my porch asked if they could check our backyard, because they had stopped a person driving a car who had multiple warrants and the guy had run away, and they thought they saw him go into our yard. I said they could certainly check our yard, and ran out to quickly unlock the gate in case I should get caught in a crossfire. Unfortunately, our backyard is full of all sorts of things, from pallets to barrels to cars and trucks and car and truck parts, and I’m sure the police officers were not happy to see that there were so many places their suspect could hide.

Police officers with rifles and the K-9 going into our backyard. You can see the pallets and barrels a go-go.

As the policemen were searching our backyard, The Hubs came driving in from his errand. I opened the door and rushed him inside, I didn’t want him to go investigating why the back gate was open and come upon three rifles looking back at him! The Girl and The Grandbaby came downstairs to see what was happening and we all waited to see the police come out with the suspect, but they had searched to no avail, the suspect wasn’t in our yard after all. I was sort of relieved, but also disappointed that they didn’t catch the guy, since the suspect sounded like someone I wouldn’t want to meet as I went out into my driveway! After the police came out The Hubs went out to talk to them and got a description of the suspect. The police admonished him to give them a call first if he saw the suspect, instead of trying to handle the situation himself. The Hubs said he would definitely call them first!

Hike/Walk – Canby Logging Road Trail

This last Friday Kangaroo suggested a new trail/walk for us, the Canby Logging Road Trail. (For more information about the trail, click here.) This trail is a paved walkway through the city of Canby, and used to be the old Mollalla Logging Road. The old road ended at the Willamette River where the trucks would take the logs, and the trail ends there as well. The other end (or the beginning) of the trail is near a little park, but there is no parking lot there so we left the truck at Eco Park, about a mile and a half from the river. We walked through Eco Park, then to the river, and then turned around and walked back to the other end of the trail, and then turned around again and walked back to the truck. All in all it was about 8.75 miles, which is a good day’s walk.

Eco Park was used as a set in the TV show “Grimm”, which was filmed in the Portland area and set in Portland.

Grimm was a pretty fun show, if a little scary.

There are some rules to follow when walking this trail. It’s cute that they think cyclists will “warn pedestrians before passing”, but it would be nice if they did. We saw only one cyclist and he was coming towards us, so that worked out OK. We did our best to stay to the right of the walkway, although many other pedestrians chose not to follow this rule.

The way to the river from Eco Park passes by some nice neighborhoods and the Willamette Valley Country Club golf course. The forecast was for light rain and maybe some snow, but the sun did come out occasionally, and as usual, the rain held off until we were back in the truck. 

When we got to the river we noticed some old logging equipment structures. According to one website, this is a gantry, which was used with a crane. Unfortunately there was no label or sign on the structure to tell us how it was used.

This is another structure used by the logging company, and there are some pilings in the water that were used to moor the rafts they made out of the logs to float them down the Willamette to the Columbia River, which were then floated downstream to a mill in Longview, Washington. This road and equipment were used from 1944 to 1974. It’s interesting that they were still doing this kind of log transportation so recently. (Wait…1974 was…um…50 years ago. FIFTY. I feel old.)

Across the river you can see some nice houses up on the banks. Look at those stairs! I think I would forgo having a boat if I had to use stairs like that to get to it!

When we got back to Eco Park, we took a different trail through the park and then got back to the Logging Trail and headed in the other direction. The trail goes through residential neighborhoods and many of the houses have put out fun decorations, and a couple even had lovely gardens with see-through fences so walkers could enjoy them (of course I didn’t get a photo of those, for some reason).

The gray shark has a bird’s nest in its mouth!

We did not take a book, but some of them looked interesting.

The top of this decoration is made from plates.

After the residential area, the trail goes over a 4-lane highway and railroad tracks via a good-sized bridge. The only elevation on the trail is quite a hill to get up to the bridge!

After going over the highway, we went by a Fred Meyer store and into an industrial area. On the side with the residential area there were quite a few people walking, but on the industrial side it was mostly deserted pedestrian-wise. We saw (and heard) some very loud industrial operations, and soon came to a large school, where there was, thankfully, an unlocked and fully stocked Porta-Potty. Shortly after that we reached the end of the trail and Timber Park, where there was a very nice bathroom! Oh well, when you gotta go, you gotta go, ha. 

Every quarter of a mile or so there were some helpful markers in the trail to tell you how far you’ve gone. They start from the Timber Park end of the trail.

The beginning of the trail.

On our way back we saw a couple of people walking, and then up ahead I saw a figure moving near the side of the trail. I couldn’t see if it was a person or a large dog, but I got out my pepper spray just in case because the figure was just by the side of the trail moving around and I thought it looked suspicious. The trail at that point runs next to a brushy area high over some railroad tracks, and the figure seemed to disappear into the brush. We have no idea where it went, because when we got up to the place it had been, it was nowhere to be seen. Weird. We kept expecting it to jump out at us and kept looking behind us until we were long past the area where the figure had been.

As we went back past Fred Meyer we noticed a lumber train coming by, and it was being pulled by what looked like an antique engine! There was a similar engine parked on tracks by the store’s parking lot. When we first saw that one we thought it was just for decoration, but I assume it is in use sometimes as well. I saw a train worker hop down from the engine while it was moving and change the switch so the train could go down the other set of tracks. Then the man just hopped right back on the train while it was still moving! That must be a superpower!

Antique engine after offloading the lumber cars.

Once we got to the bridge over the highway again, I saw what seemed to be another suspicious person just sort of hanging around looking over the edge of the bridge. I suppose I was still a bit spooked by the mysterious figure we saw before. I smiled and nodded at this person (I find this to be a good way to test out if someone is suspicious) and he smiled and nodded back, so I figured he wasn’t that suspicious after all and just liked to look over the side of the bridge at the cars or the trains, or something. I have to say I’m usually suspicious of someone who is just “hanging around” and doesn’t look like they’re doing anything productive.

After our hike we decided to go to Burgerville to eat, since Burgerville restaurants are few and far between around here. I got an original cheeseburger, some truffle parmesan waffle fries, and a very small chocolate hazelnut milkshake. The cheeseburger was much smaller than I expected, but since I had the fries and milkshake it was just right. I will order the same meal (with whatever seasonal fries and milkshake they are offering) the next time we go to Burgerville. Their burger sauce is amazing! Kangaroo had a fish sandwich and said the tartar sauce was quite good as well. The music in the restaurant was fun, ranging from blues to reggae to bluegrass fiddle music, among other styles. 

We enjoyed our walk, and were happy that we got home before the forecast snow. We recommend this trail!

Just keep walking!

~Ninja

Merry Christmas!!

“And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹ An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. ¹¹ Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.'” Luke 2:8-11

Thankful for God’s great love for us in sending his Son, Jesus, to save us. 

Bonus photo: The Grandbaby celebrating Christmas at his other grandparents’ house. Isn’t he the CUTEST?!

Hike/Walk — Gleneden Beach, Taft, and Road’s End

Since my ribs are still recovering from the fractures and Sweet Pea’s arm is still recovering from a break, and neither of us wanted to go on a hike where there was a danger of falling, I suggested a beach hike. Our original plan was to start at Gleneden Beach park and walk north towards Salishan resort, but when we got down to the beach we discovered that we couldn’t go that way because the tide was too high to get around a dune.

We walked the other way for a little while until we came to a deep creek going across the beach and couldn’t get around that either, so we went back to the truck and decided to try Taft, which is a beach at the south end of Lincoln City.

We couldn’t get around this creek.

Weird, what even is this?

We got to Taft and found that the tide had covered most of the beach there as well, so we followed a path that goes above the beach. If you want driftwood, Taft beach is the place to get it!

Kangaroo in a Bigfoot pose

Inn at Spanish Head. The path at the far right ends just below the hotel.

Sweet Pea watches the tide coming in.

Kangaroo gets the shot.

Finally, after having an early lunch at our favorite ’60s Diner (alas, I didn’t get a photograph of my food before I gobbled it all up, it was a delicious BLT sandwich with fries) we decided to walk off our lunch at Road’s End at the north end of Lincoln City.

Sweet Pea and Kangaroo survey the beach at Road’s End.

Road’s End

It was a relatively short hiking day as we were home by about 2:15 p.m., but it was nice to get out and get moving in the fresh sea air!

Just keep walking!

~Ninja

Project – Office Christmas Decor

Before I post about our beach “hike” on Friday, I thought I’d write something about a tiny project I did yesterday. I have a large bookshelf in my office behind where I sit at my computer, and I like to decorate it for the seasons. Since my office has a little bit of a pink theme, I like to find something pink that is appropriate for the particular season. For Fall, I decorated with this small pinky-peachy pumpkin and a flower arrangement with pink and white sunflowers. My office originally was going to have a green/brown sort of hiking or woodsy theme, but I just like pink so much I changed my mind! One wall is green, and I’m considering painting it pink to better match the theme I’m going for, but since that would involve moving furniture and taking down the bulletin board, I haven’t done it yet.

Pink Fall theme. The pumpkin is pinker than it looks in the photo.

Since Philip isn’t able to reach my decor shelf, I can decorate with faux flowers and things that he might chew on otherwise. Most decorations fit well on the shelf as long as they aren’t more than a foot tall, since each shelf is 12 inches high on this unit. Christmas is fast approaching, so I wanted to find something new to decorate my shelf for the season.

I was exploring the Michael’s store the other day and found some little foot-tall trees for 50% off. I had planned to buy only one tree for the shelf, but since they were only $5.99 to start with I thought I could afford two. The problem was that their bases were wrapped in red and white striped fabric. I went over to the fabric section and discovered that the tulle was only $1.99 a yard, so got a yard of light pink and a yard of bright pink to cover the bases of the trees. Since tulle is so sheer a store employee and I both figured it would take a lot of layers to get the effect I wanted.

When I got home I started to untie the string around the base of one of the trees and was happy to find that it was just tied on and not glued. The fabric was also not glued to the base, so it came off easily. You can see here that the bases are made of concrete or some plaster substance. (Sorry for the less-than-attractive background in the photos!)

After removing the stripes, I used the red and white fabric as a template to cut six layers of tulle (three of each color) to wrap around the bases. The fabric measured about 8″ square. I set the base in the middle of the tulle square and wrapped the fabric up around the base, and tied the original strings around the tulle to hold it securely. I found some gold stretchy ribbon in a box I took from Mom’s ribbon stash (she had a LOT of ribbon!) to finish it off.

When I was at Michael’s I had found some gold bows to decorate the little trees with. I didn’t take a photo of them in the package but you can see them on the trees. There were only six bows in the package so each tree only gets three bows, but The Hubs said that looked fine so I don’t feel the need to add anything else to my little trees. My goodness, the bows were glittery though — I had gold all over my desk, the floor, and myself when I was putting them on the trees! But that’s okay, a little glitter makes everything better 😁

Here is the project result. I think they look pretty adorable!

And with my pink gnome with gold accents on the shelf and the “Joy” sign, the trees are just right for my simple decor. Now if only the “Joy” had glitter on it…! 😀

Of course, I had to put the fall decor back up until the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when I traditionally put up my Christmas decor. The day after Thanksgiving, instead of shopping or decorating, we have a tradition of hiking. The REI company (an outdoor gear store) started an #OptOutside tradition a few years ago by closing their stores on “Black Friday” and encouraging people to spend time outdoors instead of shopping, and we took that to heart. Now we just need to decide where to hike!

Rabbit Rabbit, it’s November!

Can you BELIEVE it’s November already? Time sure flies, doesn’t it? Hope you have a wonderful November, and for my American friends, a Thanksgiving feast time full of love and celebration!

Hike – PCT and the Bridge of the Gods

It’s been a minute since I posted, much transcription work and baby cuddles have taken up a lot of my time!

We wanted to hike last Saturday since Kangaroo had to take her truck in for maintenance on Friday, and her Hubs suggested we go to Cascade Locks and hike the Pacific Crest Trail just over the border between Oregon and Washington. We thought that seemed like a fine idea and left at 7:00 a.m. for our hike.

On our way, as we did last week, we saw a number of hot air balloons in the sky near the freeway. One of them seemed dangerously low, and I thought that I wouldn’t want to be in a balloon hovering over the freeway at any time! Years ago The Boy and his Grandpa rode in a hot air balloon over the city of Salem. I was also invited, but decided that I would probably be sitting down staring through a crack in the basket instead of enjoying myself, and instead the chase van people offered to let me come along in the van. It was a lot of fun chasing that balloon around the city until the balloon master could find a place to land!

There was a neat fog effect in some fields bordering the freeway and I got this photo. Then because the main highway we would usually take is closed for a little while, we took an alternate route through the countryside for much of the way. It was a very nice drive.

When we got to Cascade Locks we planned to park under the bridge, but there were some sketchy cars and one with its windshield smashed in, so we parked on the road next to the Best Western instead. We decided to park on the Oregon side since there is just a tiny pullout next to where the PCT starts on the Washington side. This meant we had to walk over the Bridge of the Gods, which is actually part of the PCT. If you’ve never heard of the Bridge of the Gods, it looks like this:

Bridge of the Gods between Cascade Locks, Oregon and Stevenson, Washington

The Bridge of the Gods is so scary and narrow that my mom said she was white-knuckling just driving over it years ago. Kangaroo took this video of us walking over the bridge. You can see why I just kept my eyes on Kangaroo’s backpack and tried my best not to look down! The bridge is a little over a third of a mile long and seems even longer when you’re walking on it!

Bridge of the Gods, Cascade Locks, Oregon

Here is what my face looked like as I crossed the bridge…

Once we made it over the bridge we snapped a quick selfie with the bridge sign when there was no traffic coming, and did the road walk to where the PCT goes into the woods.

Bridge of the Gods selfie.

We went into the woods with Gillette Lake as our goal. We walked and walked and hiked and hiked, and I remembered a comment I had read in the AllTrails app that this hike wasn’t very interesting and was mainly just good for exercise. While it goes through a nice, lush forest, it is sort of a boring hike. A couple of views would probably open up in the winter, though. AllTrails warned of some poison oak and we did see some of that nasty plant, although it does color up nicely in the fall. There was a small amount of other fall color as well.

Kangaroo on trail.

Poison oak.

A strange little shed in the woods. A pumphouse, maybe? We did hear some water.

Um…barnacles? Wait…

This tree ate the old marker…nomnom!

We kept looking for the lake and checking our mileage, but after a total of 3-3/4 miles we decided to turn back. We had seen hardly any people hiking on our way in, but on our way back we saw many hikers and they kept asking us what the lake was like. We felt a bit sheepish telling everyone that we hadn’t gotten to the lake!

On the way back we stopped in a large clearing and had our snack. Kangaroo had a Pop Tart and I had some pumpkin seed butter I had put in a bowl to take with me. The pumpkin seed butter comes in a little packet, but last time I tried to eat it out of the packet I got it all over me and my backpack, so I thought a tiny bowl with a spoon would be better. It worked quite well.

Delicious pumpkin seed butter.

A snack.

As we continued out we met a lovely couple on the trail, Bob and Nancy. Bob had just had heart valve surgery a year ago, he said. Then he asked how old we thought his wife was, and we said, “29!” of course, ha. He said she was 84!! She looked like she was in her early 70s at most. And then he said he was 86, and he didn’t look a day over 75. They said hiking once a week is a great way to stay in shape. I wish I had gotten their photo. We hope we look that good and are that healthy when we’re in our 80s!

Just after Bob and Nancy went around the bend, my left foot hit a rock and down I went. I landed on my right chest and side and my right knee. Thankfully at this time my chest is rather…erm…cushioned, and it stopped my face from hitting the ground. Whew! It took me a minute to gather myself before I could get up and continue on. I made it just fine to the truck (after walking back over the bridge) but when I started to get into the truck I felt all the ouchies. My right front and side were not happy at all. My lower shoulder blade area hurt. The bruise on my right knee was starting to turn all sorts of colors, and I felt a bruise on my elbow. I didn’t hurt my hands or wrists though, even though I landed on them also. You can bet I was watching my feet closely the whole way back! Yeeks. Falling down is no joke.

We drove down to the East Wind Drive-In in Cascade Locks where I got a corn dog and a large cherry shake to drown my troubles. Kangaroo got a BLT and a chocolate shake. We drove back to a large restaurant that has a parking lot that looks out over the river, and sat there and had our lunch in the truck, since the bench near the drive-in was a bit too near a strange-looking character searching through the garbage. While we ate we saw a tugboat and a very large barge, and the Columbia Gorge Sternwheeler (scroll down in my PCT Days post to see more info about it).

Tugboat. Or “Push Boat” which is what it was actually doing.

Other end of the barge.

When we got home I was careful not to irritate my already hurt places. After physical therapy on Tuesday when the P.T. saw how hard it was for me to roll over to do my exercises on the other side and heard that I couldn’t get comfortable sleeping, she said I should probably go in to the doctor and get checked out. I was able to get in that afternoon, and after poking around at me the doctor ordered an x-ray. The results came back and I have two slightly fractured ribs! The doctor had placed arrows at the suspicious spots on the x-ray, but I couldn’t tell where the cracks were since I’m not a professional x-ray reader. So far the only message my primary care doctor has sent is to ask me if I need a stronger pain medicine. Thankfully Advil is working pretty well, so I will decline anything stronger. Strong pain meds usually make me so wobbly that I walk into walls — no, thank you! So I guess I just have to take it easy for awhile, but just when we were getting into doing more hiking. Rats.

All in all, we rather agreed with the comment that this hike is mainly just good for exercise, and have decided that unless we are hiking the whole PCT we won’t do it again. We have also decided not to walk across the Bridge of the Gods again (we’ve done it twice forward and back). I suggested that if we are ever hiking the whole PCT we will have someone drive us across that bridge!

Just keep walking!

Ninja

It’s Fall!

I heard some geese flying south for the winter this morning – break out the pumpkin spice lattes, Autumn is here!!