Arrgh, sorry, everyone, my photos seem to have disappeared from the last couple of posts. I’m pretty sure the problem is with my photo hosting, so I’m working on it.
Valentine
Happy Valentine’s Day! You are loved!!
Hike – Yaquina Bay Area
On Friday we decided to go to the Yaquina Bay area in Newport, Oregon to do a beach walk hike. We parked at the South Jetty and started off on the beach with the Yaquina Bay Bridge behind us.
Last time we were at South Beach we walked out onto the jetty, but this time we just walked south on the beach. Kangaroo had seen a warning about sneaker waves, so we were careful not to let the water get us as the tide came in. We walked along looking for rocks and things, and guess what? I found this large agate! It’s even big enough for me to see in the sand, haha! (Usually Kangaroo finds all the treasures, I seldom wear my glasses on the beach.) There is a crack in the agate where some little plain rocks are stuck. I tried to get them out with a skewer, but I think I will have to use a toothpick.
Kangaroo found some nifty fossils. This is my favorite.
We walked aways down the beach. The sun was out and it felt quite warm, and the wind was at our back so we hardly noticed it. I started to get too hot in my beanie and fleece, because I had expected temps in the 40s F and a 10-15 mile per hour wind!
Once we turned around and started back there was a nice breeze to cool us off a little. We went off at the South Beach day use area instead of walking the beach all the way back to the truck. There was a convenient restroom there, and outside of it in the sidewalk we found this survey marker. A strange place for one, we thought!
We decided to walk along the Old South Jetty Trail and see where that took us, so we headed north-ish on that trail.
The Old South Jetty Trail led up to a paved trail, which we followed all the way back to the parking lot at the South Jetty itself. Once we got back to the truck we decided to go over to the north side of the bay and see the lighthouse. We drove back over the bridge and to the Yaquina Bay State Recreation Site in front of the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse.
At the recreation site there are some things of interest, including this compass with signs marking various points on the coast and an informative sign listing the Lighthouses of the Oregon Coast.
The beach access at the parking area was closed, so we walked up the road toward the north beach access. The lighthouse sits up high on a hill, of course, and the parking lot is high up overlooking the bay.
We found this survey marker in the sidewalk near this Fisherman’s Memorial Sanctuary pavilion. I had no idea so many people had been lost at sea in the area.
Next we went down the long path and stairs to the beach. The Oregon Coast Trail goes this way. When we got to this beach on this side I was glad I had my fleece and beanie on, it was chilly and the wind was blowing!
Kangaroo brings along some of her dad’s ashes and a yoga-ing Bigfoot to photograph wherever we go.
We saw a lovely full rainbow, it was sunny and cloudy at the same time and sprinkled on us as we were going back to the truck.
After we finished at the beach, we had our traditional lunch at the Dairy Queen in Toledo, a small town just east of Newport. For some reason Newport doesn’t have a Dairy Queen, but Toledo does. We ate our $7 lunches of chicken strips, fries, root beer, and caramel sundaes while we watched some people get out of their fancy cars to come in the restaurant. The people were not as fancy as their cars were, ha!
On the way home Kangaroo asked if I wanted to stop at the Beazell Memorial Forest to do a quick loop hike, but I felt like I was done hiking for the day. I am sort of regretting that now, it is a pretty hike and it wouldn’t have been too bad to get some more miles in. All in all my Garmin watch showed 6.6 miles for the day.
Just keep walking!
~Ninja
Flea Market
On Sunday we went to the Polk Flea Market at the Polk County Fairgrounds. The flea market is held on the first Sunday of the month, and we hadn’t ever been to this one until now.
The market opened at 9:00 a.m. for general admission ($1.00) and we got there around 9:12. You can pay $5.00 admission to go to the early bird times on the Saturday and early Sunday morning. Obviously many people had done that, because the parking lot was quite full by the time we got there! We went inside and started at the far end.
Whenever we go to estate sales or flea markets there is always a theme — some item we see over and over. This day’s theme was dark red dishes and corn-shaped cast iron cornbread pans. I didn’t get a photo of any of the cornbread pans at the market, so I’ll put on one from Etsy so you’ll know what I mean. We saw so many of those I even exclaimed to one of the sellers about it.
I saw this deer head on the wall and had to look at it more closely, it has a weird antler. The seller there had a taxidermy business advertised on his shirt said said his son had mounted the head. There was another head that the man informed me was the three-point buck he had shot on his son’s third birthday. He said his son had passed away and he had no room to keep all his things. That interaction was rather sad all around. I’m not a fan of hunting but I understand it’s important to some people.
In one of the side rooms of the main building I found this vintage “Sift-Chine” sifter. The seller said it had been in their kitchen for years. I asked was he downsizing then, and he said yes, most of the people in the place were! I already have one of these sifters with the green stripes, but the price was so good I couldn’t pass it up.
We made our way to the other building and found all sorts of goodies! At the antique mall last week I had seen a vintage melon baller with a green handle, and from what I could see it was priced at $10 or $12. In that booth there were a number of green-handled kitchen gadgets, but they were attached to a board on the highest shelf. It would have been hard to get it down anyway. At the flea market we headed into Building “C” and I found this for just $1.00!
The lady that sold me the melon baller also had this in her booth — haha! It’s an egg baby! Well, it’s really just an extremely weird pincushion. I wouldn’t want to put pins in something with a head! She also sold me an old photo dated Easter 1946, which I bought just because 1946 was the year our house was built.
Why do people not print the names clearly and put last names on the backs of photos? Let that be a lesson to you!
Here are all the other nifty things I got at the market. The ambulance is a Fisher Price Adventure People toy from the 1970s, we played with the same one at the neighbors’ when we were kids, My sis had the Adventure People medical people but not the ambulance, and I had a hiker set with backpacks and a rock climbing rope. Fun! The green bed and yellow chair are Weebles accessories from the 1970s, the stretchers, bed with white figure, and wheelchair with yellow figure are Playmobil toys also from the 1970s, as are the cow and dog. The little white vehicle is a gurney from a Tonka Toddlers set (and the nurse cap in the back may be as well). I don’t know where the brown rubber broom came from. The two nurses are also Adventure People. The things that attracted me first to the box of goodies were the 1970s Fisher Price Little People sinks, chair, suitcases, and scale! I have been looking for the suitcases for a good price, and the furniture is always welcome into my collection. 😀
But the most important thing (besides the FP Little People things) was that the lady who sold me the melon baller and the photo told us about Google Lens, which is an app where you can take a photo of a thing and Google will tell you what it is. It’s unbelievable how much research that will save when I’m looking to list things on Etsy! It brought up the Tonka Toddlers item right away. I might never have figured that one out if it hadn’t been for Google Lens. What a blessing!
Here are some other things I saw that I hadn’t seen before:
After the flea market we decided to stop in West Salem to get a pizza at Walery’s Pizza. We are very partial to their pizza! While we were waiting for the pizza, I noticed this over by the game room. I hadn’t seen one of these since I was a kid!
I decided I needed to get an egg. It was 50 cents. You put your money in and the chicken clucks and “lays” an egg.
Inside my egg was a strange temporary tattoo. I used to love those when I was a kid, but I don’t know if I would have liked this one, ha!
We had a fun time on Sunday and it was nice to spend some time with The Hubs, who has been working quite a lot lately. I’m looking forward to the next market when I think I will try to get in on the early bird time on the Saturday!
Hike – Miller Woods Conservation Area – Part 2
Here is part 2 of our hike to the Miller Woods Conservation Area near McMinnville, Oregon. Don’t forget to read Part 1 first!
After exploring the pond and field areas, we continued on to the forested areas. The trail was sticky mud in many places and I was glad I had on my waterproof boots!
On the way to see a stream, we found this small plant with a protective fence around it — can you see the plant?
The plant had this label. Neither of us had heard of a Western Wahoo. Sounds like it should get to be rather a large shrub.
There were these nice benches scattered along the trail, and I thought those people knew how to build a trail right! Oh, how we wished for benches when we were hiking the PCT!
We reached this summit…
But this was the view…
In one area some trees had signs. We admitted we would have a difficult time telling the conifers apart without the labels!
This little guy was on the trail, quite aways up from the stream. We wondered how long it took him to climb all that way, and Kangaroo suggested he might be on a thru-hike 😃
This is actually a data collection site for snow. Considering that we seldom have snow here, I thought it was a strange location for it.
After the hike we planed to go to the little town of Lafayette, a few miles away, and go to the antique mall there. We didn’t find anything at the antique mall we couldn’t live without, but there were some interesting items. One was a giant buffalo head that was positioned next to the entry door (I believe they were asking $2700 for it!). Because of the moisture in the air, the poor buffalo smelled like wet dog, ugh! There was also a wonderful secretary desk with supports that automatically came out when you opened the door of the desk. So neat! I didn’t get photos of either of those, unfortunately!
Before we went in to the antique mall we walked a couple of blocks down to get some lunch. We went into the little “Cafeyette” and noticed a sign that said they were serving soup, but no other signs of food except pastries and coffee. I asked the lady what they had for lunch and she said they had sandwiches, ham and turkey. She suggested that olives on the sandwich would be delicious, so I chose to have everything except onions on my sandwich, and Kangaroo chose everything as well and did add onions. As they were making the sandwiches, the lady asked if we would like jalapenos, but we both declined. I got an Italian soda to drink and Kangaroo got a berry smoothie, and we sat down to wait for our sandwiches.
The lady brought our sandwiches, and they were BIG and very yummy! While we were eating we noticed a man come in and look around. He asked us if there was a menu, and I replied, no, but there are sandwiches. He went up and put his order in and left the building, and when he came back he had an armful of yardsticks. I was about to comment on his yardstick haul when he said that he was going to be using them for projects, and that the man he got them from had only wanted 50 cents each for them so he bought them all. I said they were nice yardsticks too, and he asked us if WE wanted yardsticks, and we said sure, we’d love one, and he gave us each one. It’s a very nice, strong yardstick from the Power and Telephone Supply Company.
On the way home we came through Dayton towards West Salem, and I suggested we take the Wheatland Ferry since it would give us a straight shot home instead of going around through West Salem. The Boy works in the McMinnville area and takes the ferry home to Keizer most days. I hadn’t ridden the Wheatland Ferry since The Boy’s first ferry ride when he was a tiny baby! It was a nice adventure to end our day 😊
We enjoyed our hike and decided that we will go back to visit Miller Woods in the spring sometime when the birds and other critters will be out.
Just keep walking!
~Ninja
Hike – Miller Woods Conservation Area – Part 1
Yesterday we hiked at the Miller Woods Conservation Area near McMinnville, Oregon. Kangaroo had discovered it on Google Maps and we hadn’t been there, so we wanted to check it out. The conservation area was donated to the Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District in 2004 by Frieda Miller, who along with her husband had settled the 130 acres in 1967. They wanted the property to be used for nature education. Rain was forecast, and it was indeed raining when we got there. I got a lot of photos so this will be a bit of a long post!
The first thing we noticed when we drove in was this display of different kinds of nesting boxes for birds, bats, and bees. The one at the bottom middle of the photo above is a bat box. There is a small space between the front and back of the box, and the bats go up in there and nest. The photo below is the bee block for mason bees, which are great pollinators.
When we got to the trailhead, there was a group of elementary and middle school aged kids waiting to go on a nature hike. There were probably 13-15 kiddos and just a couple of adults to wrangle them. I thought they needed more adults, but we didn’t volunteer, ha.
We checked the maps and decided to go down to the pond on the Discovery Loop. It was about 0.3 of a mile and went around the pond.
We got down to the pond and saw a few interesting things, but no riparian wildlife. We assumed all the frogs and other pond-dwellers were hibernating.
We (I should say Kangaroo) lifted up the wildlife cover boards we found around the pond and didn’t find any creatures hiding. I was uncomfortable thinking about what we might find (snakes!) but no snakes were found. Along the trail there were more cover boards, and under the last one we did find this guy!
Across from the pond there is a large field that is being restored as a native prairie. They have even resorted to hand-pulling to remove blackberries and daisies and other plants that are invasive.
See Part 2 for the rest of the hike!
Allergy
I went to the pulmonary doctor this week because my primary care doctor is concerned that my asthma isn’t well controlled. She prescribed the Trelegy inhaler, which has another medicine in it compared to my other inhaler. The Trelegy inhaler is just one puff once a day, which is better than the 2 puffs twice a day the other one required.
They asked what respiratory allergies I have, and I’ve always known cat dander is one of them, along with grass, trees, mold, etc. The doctor ordered a blood allergy test and the results are a bit surprising. The normal range for cat dander is <=0.34 kU/L. Guess where my results landed? 19.40. That means I’m a bazillion times over the normal range for allergy to cat dander. Next was birch tree, at 15.00 (normal range <=0.34). Alder tree, grass, and oak tree also play a big part in causing my allergy problems. I grew up in an oak savannah surrounded by fields of grass, and we had 20 cats (outdoor) at one point and I enjoyed spending time with them. I mean, I’ve known I was allergic to cats and grass since I was a little girl (funny nobody ever said anything about the trees) but no wonder I’ve always been a mess of allergies! The asthma came along when I was 7 years old, about a year after we moved out to the country full of all the allergens. When I was young there were no asthma inhalers, and no helpful allergy meds that didn’t cause me to sleep all day. If I had an asthma attack I just had to suffer through it, until I was 11 or 12 years old and they invented albuterol rescue inhalers. Then they invented Seldane allergy pills in the late ’80s or so, and those were awesome. They took it off the market for some reason, which is too bad.
We had an aspen tree out in the front yard here for many years until half of it fell down. It was sort of two trees growing out of the same spot and the other one was leaning toward the neighbor’s, so The Hubs cut it down a couple of years ago. Aspen and birch are in the same family so it’s good that that tree is gone now. We also live in what used to be a walnut orchard with some really big walnut trees, but I am only at 0.10 kU/L (normal range <=0.34) for walnut, thank goodness, and the same for maple tree. Our neighbor has a huge maple tree that is on our side of his yard and it drops pollen like crazy all over our cars during the pollen season.
Other surprises included that I didn’t show as much of an allergy to dust mites as I thought I would, and that most of the mold allergens didn’t show much of a reaction. Whatever A. Alternata mold is showed up the highest at 6.87 kU/L (standard range <=0.34). Our valley is a fairly humid environment so fungi/mold is to be expected, but thankfully God has blessed us with a dry house. I’m concerned there may be mold in my office ceiling because of the roof leak above, but I haven’t seen any mold so far.
I had my tonsils and adenoids out when I was 5 years old because of chronic ear infections. I don’t know if those were caused by allergies or not. I remember being in the hospital eating grape Popsicles, and a lady from church brought me a Fisher Price Little People circus set. They wanted me to let a little girl with a broken arm play with some of the pieces and I remember not wanting to share, ha!
A really annoying thing about having allergies (other than, you know, not being able to breathe and stuff) is that my eyes are constantly itchy so I want to rub them. This causes bags under my eyes. My nose and the face around it is also always itchy. I have in the past gotten hives (urticaria) which caused my lip to swell up in a very strange manner. It happened at work when I was in my early 20s, and I actually walked a mile in the snow to go to the allergy doctor (I walked to work so didn’t have my car with me, and wanted to make sure the doctor saw my swollen lip before it went away). The result of that appointment was that my hives had “no known cause”. Hmph.
So unfortunately my allergies will have to stay around for awhile, specifically the cat dander allergy. Philip isn’t going anywhere that we know of, and we love him so. He is especially a daddy’s boy and would be sad if he had to go to a new home, and I wouldn’t want to put him through that. <Ahchoo! Snif> excuse me — I might just have to find a way to keep him out of our bedroom though. And I should set the Roomba to vacuum more. I do take an allergy pill (Xyzal) and that keeps some of the allergies at bay.
Also, Happy Groundhog Day! I’m up too early to know if Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow, but I hope spring is just around the corner!
Rest
Today’s devotion from the Girlfriends in God website was all about rest, and today I feel like God is telling me I should rest. The only problem is that this is usually me:
And also this:
But, I have been in those modes so long that my brain just won’t work anymore, it’s just running around in circles and I’m not actually accomplishing anything. I have two businesses and also my transcription work and the responsibilities of taking care of a husband and household, so there all those things to do daily. Add to that the other important things I would like to do (Bible study! Visit Mom and Dad! Serve at church! Hike! Lose weight! Read a book! WRITE a book! Declutter the house! Do the taxes!! Etc., etc.!) and my head is spinning with all of it. I’ve already scaled back my Mary Kay business because it just hasn’t been profitable for awhile, and I think for it to be profitable it would be a full-time job for me. I’d rather concentrate on my transcription work because it is profitable and a guaranteed income for the work that I do, whereas in sales you can put in a lot of work with little reward, it just depends on the day. And I have decided that I am just not that into meeting people and trying to sell them something. The Etsy store is easier because people come to me instead of me going out to people, but I’m also considering putting my Etsy store on hiatus. It really doesn’t need a lot of work though, so I’m waffling about that. I need to take about three days to list everything I have so I can just sit back and not think about it much.
I enjoy my transcription work and it is restful for me (not the subject matter necessarily, I type mostly criminal trial stuff, but I really enjoy the typing itself). It is very interesting and I hope to be able to continue it for many years to come.
On Day 7 of the week of Creation, God rested. If God rested, who are we to say we should just keep going no matter what? So today I am going to be still, and know that He is God (and I am not).
Squirrel
I bought this shepherd’s hook and suet cage at an estate sale awhile back, and the birds have been enjoying the suet blocks I put out for a few weeks now. Unfortunately the squirrels have finally found it, and this is the result:
The squirrels have knocked the suet cage off the hook a few times so the birds can’t get to it very well, and I don’t like that much. I did get this cute photo of two squirrels sitting close together though. I hadn’t seen them do that before. I’m not sure if these are the ones getting into the suet block, there were two others around the fence as well. I think they are happy with the sunny weather we are having for a couple of days!
Words
I showed this lovely watercolor print from Etsy on my last post, and decided to go ahead and purchase the digital files. It printed out perfectly on white cardstock paper and I put it in this frame I already had on the wall that originally had a different verse in it. The colors match my office decor and the 4:5 print size fit just right in the frame. Now I have two things at my desk to remind me of my word of the year. You can never have too many reminders!
I also have this verse excerpt up on the wall across from my computer so I can see it every day. It was a digital download from Etsy as well. There was this pink one and also a more masculine version in blue and brown. You can really find just about anything you want on Etsy and the prices are so reasonable for the digital downloads, and you usually get a variety of sizes for printing, I have just a regular printer (not photo-specific) and the designs come out looking great.
You may have seen this picture of my desk in one of my recent posts, I am a “word person” so I have a lot of words on my desk to bring things to my remembrance. Mom bought the little verse “box” at the left of the photo for many of us for Christmas, it contains a number of cards with scripture verses on them that you can change from day to day. The hand-lettered “chalkboard” verse is Isaiah 43:18-19a from The Message paraphrase Bible, and says “Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new.” I actually found this at a thrift store right at a time that I needed to know that God was going to do something new in my life 😊 Words are important to God, and I am glad He gave us so many of them!
every day's just like starting over 