Winter wonderland

We awoke on Monday morning to find that a couple of inches of snow had fallen overnight. It's been a while since Nate and I have lived in a place that gets this sort of accumulation!
The temperatures haven't gotten out of the 20s this week, and the roads are pretty slick, with a thick layer of icy snow. Still, I braved the roads yesterday afternoon to mail our Christmas packages and get more birdseed for our feeders. It was sort of fun practicing "winter driving" again! We're due for more snowfall on Wed/Thurs and again this coming weekend. Here's the view from Nate's building on campus, looking west toward Mary's Peak in the coastal range.
A beautiful winter sunset behind Mary's Peak.

Holiday spirit

Happy holidays everyone! We've decorated our little Norfolk Island Pine and it serves as the perfect miniature Christmas tree in our living room. As we decorated the tree last week, Nate did his best to get excited as I recalled where each and every ornament came from (for example, the kimono hanging next to Nate's head was given to us last year by our good friend Zoe - she got it at a crafts fair in Prince George, BC). And, as is our tradition, we added our own new Oregon ornament to the tree this year to commemorate our first west-coast Christmas.
And for added flair, I even decorated up our fireplace mantle.

ho, ho, ho!!!!

Thanksgiving and football

Our first Thanksgiving on our own....We had a great time hosting holiday festivities at our house with Mandy, Dave and Phoebe, who made the trip up again from Klamath Falls. I enjoyed setting the table with all sorts of nice things we've not had a chance to use too much until now: napkins and tablecloth given to us by Nate's Aunt Mary, to match our complete set of Stangl pottery (a Bacheler family tradition for special occasions), morning mimosas in antique champagne glasses from my Nana, and beautiful cut-glass candle holders that were given to me by my Grandma.

Nate was the "Turkey-master" and he lived up to the title. Having done lots of research and soliciting plenty of advice from his dad, Nate decided to cook the bird the way Christopher Kimball and the folks at Cooks Illustrated magazine recommended - cut up into separate pieces before roasting. He also went the entra step of brining it the night before. It turned out beautifully browned and crispy on the outside, moist and tender on the inside: rave reviews all around. Nothing got wasted, as Nate made stock out of the whole carcass. Our Thanksgiving menu was enhance by Mandy's cornbread dressing and delicious pecan pie. We also had Bing Cherry salad (a holiday tradition from my Mom), mashed potatoes, sauteed green beans, rolls, gravy, cranberry relish, and pumpkin pie.

On Saturday, Nate and I were lucky enough to get a call from our friend Todd, manager of the OSU marching band - who offered us 2 free tickets to the "Civil War" game that afternoon, the annual throw-down between OSU and U of O. A lot was riding on the game, as a win for OSU would have ensured them a spot in the Rosebowl against Penn State (which would have pitted me against my sister Rosie, who's a die-hard Nittany Lion alum and fan).

The tailgaters were in full force in our neighborhood, many having arrived at least a day early to start their celebrations. We donned all the orange we could find, enjoyed some light mid-afternoon tailgating of our own (albeit in our living room) with Todd's wife Cory and our friend Laura. Then we headed down to the stadium, amidst throngs of other fans... and proceeded to watch the Beavers get demolished by the Ducks. I think the Ducks earned some new record for total yards earned in a game - nearly 700 against the virtually non-existent Beavers defense. We spent the first half of the game up in seats with the general ticket holders (fairly mild mannered), and joined Cory and Laura in the student section for the second half (mayhem and madness!). Oh well, they probably would have gotten destroyed even worse at the Rose Bowl. Now it looks like they'll earn a Sun Bowl bid (El Paso, TX)....

Seattle

Nate had work-related meetings in Seattle for a couple of days early this week, so we decided to extend the travel into a long-weekend trip and drove up on Saturday. Nate's advisor Lorenzo and his wife Meta and son Luca also made a weekend of it; having lived in Seattle for 5 year, they were great tour guides. We even lucked into a few rain-free days! Seattle is a city of neighborhoods, nestled among hills and lakes. Upon arrival, we drove straight to the Fremont neighborhood and got a great lunch at a fun vegetarian restaurant, then walked around to visit some of the famous Fremont street art. We took in the sites at the Pike Street Market, went on the Seattle Underground tour and had a great meal at Wild Ginger, a well-regarded Asian restaurant in the downtown area. On Sunday morning, we were the lone tourists at the Space Needle/Seattle Worlds Fair grounds. We also took in some beautiful views of the Olympic Peninsula from high up on Queen Anne hill and of snow-capped Mt. Ranier from the UW campus. And we ate some delicious food- sushi, asian bbq, Pagliacci's pizza and french pastry were some of the highlights!

Flyfishing in the rain

Despite the continual rain, Nate and I decided to try and flyfish for steelhead on the Alsea River on Sunday, mostly just to get out and practice technique. After reading over the thick OR fishing regulations to make sure we found a legal stretch of water to fish, we headed out. I fished just upriver of Nate and we enjoyed our time in the mist; we even spotted a few coho salmon jumping in nearby rapids. No bites, but that was no surprise, considering that skilled fisherman (and women) can spend hours and hours on a river before catching one. Nate subsequently learned that many folks around here tend to use spinning rods for winter run steelhead because of the speed of the water.

Last night, we headed to the Mid-Willamette Fly Fishers group to meet some local flyfishers and learn more about west-coast fly fishing. It was an entertaining evening, mostly because of one old guy named Dick Turner, easily in his early 80s. Every time someone paused during the reading of the chapter business and announcements, Dick would pipe up with a comment, always completely unrelated to the business at hand. For example, a woman from the OR Council of the Fly Fisher Federation got up to talk about the group and her work. When she was finished, she asked if there were any questions. Dick raised his hand, and then proceeded to talk for a long while about a favorite Chinook hole that no one seems to fish any more. Another time, he told the group about a bunch of high school kids he once took out to the coast to plant trees (?). At one point, he started telling me all about the chickens he used to raise, until feed got too expensive. What a character! The folks in the group seemed to tolerate his random interjections just fine, and it’s probably a nice thing that he has an outlet for his stories. We also got some hands-on instruction about tying a few steelhead flies: The Undertaker, The Boss, and the Silver Hilton. We plan to set up our own vices and equipment soon and settle in for the long dark winter by tying some of our own.

November rain

Nate and I invited our Norwegian friend Kjell over to carve pumpkins on Halloween. When Nate asked Kjell if he'd ever carved a pumpkin before, he replied, "I've never touched a pumpkin." He actually said that one of his friends won a pumpkin in a lottery in Norway, and his mother made 10 lbs of pumpkin jam. Some of the conversation may have been lost in translation, but you get the point. Attached are pictures of the results of our carving, including one of the crazy Norwegian (Nate's phrasing) in a mask he purchased at the store earlier in the day. You may also notice that Kjell's preference for american beer is Natural Ice - "high school beer" as he termed it.

We only ended up getting 4 trick-or-treaters, which was far fewer than I anticipated. At one point, Kjell started literally pouring candy into one little boy's bag while his mother looked on in disbelief, but the boy stopped him quickly - "That's enough". Kjell was in disbelief that a 6-year old (dressed up as an army ranger) would ever turn down more candy! Needless to say, we had lots of left-over candy, most of which I made Nate take into his lab.

The start of November seems to have brought the anticipated rains -- we've had gray skies and on-and-off rain since Halloween. But that's to be expected and the weather doesn't seem to impact the number of people out biking or walking. Everyone is commenting that this year's fall colors are spectacular compared to last year, when they seemed to turn and fall very quickly - must have been a good spring 2008.

We attended our first OSU football game, against Arizona State, on Sat night (OSU won!) As luck would have it, Cory and Todd, the first couple that we've become good friends with here, have some connections. Todd is the manager of the OSU marching band, so he offered us free complimentary tickets to a game and we took him up on it. We had great seats under the overhang at Reser Stadium, which came in handy when it started raining during the second half.

Yesterday, I had to bring our car (Nate's Honda Civic) in to have a tune-up and a loose belt tightened. I must have mentioned something about it being our only car on the phone, because the woman at the fix-it shop offered that they'd be happy to give me a lift home, and then back when it was fixed. Since it was raining pretty hard, I took them up on their offer and ditched my plan to ride my bike. So, to and fro, Bob (the owner) chatted to me about the niceties of Corvallis, road trips to take in OR, his wife (who also happens to have grown up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan), etc...What service! Clayton's Auto Shop has earned my repeat business for sure (though I hope we don't need it too much...)

Seabirds, pumpkins and Phoebe

Our friends Dave and Mandy Hewitt visited us this past weekend with their 7 month old daughter, Phoebe. They made the trek up from Klamath Falls, where they’ve lived since May. (Side note – what are the odds that the four of us, who all met in graduate school in Raleigh, would now live in the same state on the opposite coast; it’s all due to the small world of fisheries work…).

The Hewitt clan arrived around dinner time on Friday night. After oogling over Phoebe for a little while and then putting her to bed, we ate some dinner and the guys got prepared for an off-shore birding trip out of Newport the following day. They were up and out of the house by 5:15am.

Mandy, Phoebe and I had a very relaxing Saturday and I learned the schedule of a 7 month old, namely: sleep, play, eat, repeat. After Phoebe woke up from her mid-morning nap, we jumped into their van and headed downtown to the Farmers Market, where we took in the sights for a while and I purchased some chanterelle mushrooms (yum!) and some end-of-the-season tomatoes. We grabbed lunch at a local bakery and were home in time to get Phoebe back down for her afternoon nap. When the guys returned home that night, they seemed pretty battered, and after hearing about their day, I can see why….Here’s Nate’s report from their trip –

“Dave Hewitt and I braved the ominous offshore forecast on Saturday and took a pelagic trip out of Newport, Oregon. Within a mile from the beach we were cresting 15' rolling swell from the west, but very little wind and thus small chop early on. Within a mile from the beach we saw all three scoters, common murres, pelagic and brandt's cormorants, and western, california, and heerman's gulls. A couple hours later and further offshore, the wind freshened from the north (to 25-30 knots), and soon we were battling 8' waves from the north (on top of the 15' swell from the west). Given our primarily east-west motoring all day, we were broadside to these steep, fierce, and cold waves all day. I was suddenly in the worst offshore conditions I've ever dealt with. Multiple times I thought the boat was going to roll over sideways.

The surprising thing was that only 1 person – Dave - was noticeably sick on board. I was feeling off, which almost never happens, at least not in Atlantic seas. We eventually made our way about 30 miles offshore, where we saw pink-footed, sooty, buller's, and flesh-footed shearwaters, northern fulmar, cassin's auklets, ancient murrelets, black-legged kittiwakes, glaucous-winged gulls, and finally black-footed albatross. This crew had found a wandering albatross in these waters 5 weeks earlier, but we didn't have that kind of luck, unfortunately. I took my camera out for 5 tense minutes or so, until a wave smashed over the back of the boat, drenching those poor suckers and their camera equipment back there (I was luckily at the front when that happened). Attached are my quick attempts at pelagic avian photography in 8' seas (mostly of albatross, except for 1 fulmar).

We also saw some likely Baird's Beaked Whales, some distant Humpbacks, a Northern Elephant Seal, Steller's Sea Lions, and Dall's Porpoise.”

Poor Dave learned that even a Scopolamine patch couldn’t save him from sea-sickness…

On Sunday, we headed to a local farm, where we rode the “Pumpkin Express” tractor out to a 5-acre pumpkin patch to select our Halloween carving specimens. After a photo-shoot for Phoebe (which was only partially successful, since she was way more interested in the pumpkin vines within reach at her feet than she was in our waving hands and attempts to distract her to look up), we all selected our pumpkins. Nate picked the biggest, lumpiest, green pumpkin he could find and will no-doubt turn it into some sort of grotesque face. I found a cute short and squat pumpkin. Mandy and Dave took home a picture-perfect big one. Phoebe gummed it during our return tractor ride with her toothless mouth.

We’ll introduce our friend Kjell to the art of pumpkin carving and to the tradition of kids trick-or-treating on Friday night. He knows of a similar tradition in Norway, but tells me that it’s adults going door-to-door, asking for beer. Interesting. I’ll be sure to post our finished works-of-art…As for the foliage shot, I've watched this small maple tree turn color from our upstairs office window for the past few weeks.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Camping in the Cascades

Our latest OR adventure took us down-state for a weekend of camping (and elk hunting for the men-folk) in a section of the Cascade Mountains northwest of Crater Lake National Park. We were joined by our friends Jack and Kelly from Portland, and Summer and Nolan (and their black lab, Chetko) from Klamath Falls. Summer and Nolan, having done some preliminary scouting in the area the week prior, were kind enough to get to our campsight early to reserve spaces for the rest of us.

Our drive took us down I-5 to Roseburg, then due east along the North Umpqua River for some 65 miles or so. The North Umpqua is a beautiful river that flows out of the high Cascades - we happened to time our camping trip with the fall spawning run of Chinook (King) Salmon, fish that return from the ocean to the very same stretch of river that they were spawned in some 3-5 years prior, to spawn and then die.

There are campgrounds aplenty along OR 138, but those at lower elevations were all closed due to a recent wildfire that had come through the area. We camped at around 3500 feet in elevation and I was expecting pretty cold conditions, but we stayed comfortable with temps ranging from the 60s to the low 40s at night. And our camping spot couldn't have been any better - our tents were set up under huge Western Red Cedars, right next to the Clearwater River (really more of a wide creek), just upstream of a pretty waterfall it makes as it heads downstream toward the N. Umpqua.

Us ladies had a pretty relaxing weekend overall - breakfast at camp, then a day spent visiting different waterfalls and other sites with Chetko in tow. We had dinner ready and waiting when the guys returned from their day, which was anything but relaxing. They were up before light both Sat and Sun mornings, to be out in the woods and ready to go by sunrise. They spent each day walking through very rugged terrain, up and down ravines and high ridges, watching and listening for the elk herds. And elk were taken in the nearby area, but though Nate, Nolan and Jack heard a few different groups and saw elk sign (prints, droppings, bedding areas) everywhere, they never got close enough to see any. No matter, these guys were excited just to be out in the woods in search.

So, no photos of the hunters, as they were out before dawn and back after dark. But I took a few photos of the waterfalls and other stuff. Pretty country, for sure!

Mule Deer '08

The first weekend in October marks the start of the mule deer hunting season in Oregon - a 12 day season in which you're allowed 1 buck. For the second year in a row, we were invited back to hunt mule deer on our friend Kelly Laugle's family ranch in north-central OR - a stretch of high, dry range land along the John Day River, just east of Wasco. They farm a lot of wheat out there, but these days, the biggest "crop" appears to be wind -- everywhere you look, you see giant windmills spinning. Kelly's great aunt Millie, who owns the ranch, doesn't have any on her property yet, but more than 20 are slated to be erected this coming spring. As we drove out toward the ranch on Friday night, it felt like we were driving around a giant airport, with the red lights of each windmill blinking in unison along the horizon.

Jack, Kelly, Nate and I left from Portland around 5pm to make the 2 hour drive to Wasco. After one last calorie-laden meal at the Goose Pit Saloon in Wasco, where we met Kelly's dad, Tom, and her brother Neal, we all headed out to the ranch to set up camp at the "Rock-pit" - literally, an acre-sized pit dug out of a small hillside....the benefits of a slight wind-break outweigh the costs of sleeping on gravel!

We were up at 5:30am on Saturday morning to begin the weekend hunt by first light. Neal and Tom know the ranch well and have names for all the different areas: Four-corners, The Horseshoe, The Dickman tract, The Ross Field, The Shop Draw, The Point....To the outsider, it looks like one giant landscape of brown fields and hills, but when you start walking around the property, you find massive canyons, thick draws full of sagebrush and rabbit bush, canyon rim rock that looks fit for only mountain goats, and beautiful views of the river valley far, far below. On a clear day, from a high spot, you can see see both Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams (WA) looming in the far distance with their snow-covered peaks.

Kelly and I were along for every hunt, as two extra pairs of eyes. Every clump of sagebrush looks like a potential deer, so binoculars are a must. At one point, we spotted a large dark object making its way across a wheat field - for its size, we thought it might be a person, or a small truck? It was an elk - a male with a beautiful rack, just meandering along the field. We laughed to think that it might know it was mule deer season, so decided to take a walk and see where the action was...

The Saturday afternoon hunt proved to be a productive one. Neal and Tom decided we should hunt the Shop Draw - a long and fairly shallow canyon with a lot of sagebrush cover, so named because it ends at the ranch shop, a dilapidated metal shed. The plan was that Tom would stay up at the shop and the rest of us would walk to the end of the draw along the high field edge, then head down the hillside and walk back up the draw. It was a beautiful afternoon with moderate winds that would be in our favor as we walked back up the draw. After we got past the "Guzzler" - a watering station near the edge of Millie's property, we started to walk down the hillside - Kelly and I behind and slightly to the left of Nate, Jack and Neal. All of a sudden, Kelly stopped - "deer! get down!". ..I saw them right away, too and as we found them in our binoculars, we saw that there were 4 antlered bucks, standing in a tight group low on the opposite canyon. All the guys were looking higher and as we quickly tried to describe their location, the deer perked up and started to move slowly to the right. The guys found them, but hesitated - still not knowing who would take the first shot (which was sure to startle all four bucks into a full run). In the end, all three guys focused on one buck but no one is sure whose shot made the first good hit out of many that were fired; Kelly's brother Neal made a second and the deer dropped a short distance later. It was a beautiful 9 point (5x4 as they'd say in OR) buck, estimated at 200-220 lbs before field dressing. A lot of good meat to share, for sure!

Beyond the many deer and the lone elk, we also saw a lot of other wildlife - coyote, Golden Eagle, Pheasant, Chuckar, Hungarian Partridge, Western Meadowlark, American Pipet, and a Bald Eagle over the Columbia River on our drive home.