Life in Pictures

It's cold. It's misting. It's July in Oregon. It's our home; we love it here. Everyday we're reminded of what it took for people to get here, to thrive here. Oregon is not an easy place to live. Anywhere you go you see old photographs of the pioneers, the early loggers, the survivors of the Oregon Trail crawling across the vast desert that makes up most of Oregon. They broke their backs to carve out a life here. Here is how we've carved out our lives for the last few months. Admittedly, our adventures are way less intense -we managed it without dysentery, death or worse - but we still feel kindred to these people. The same thing tugged at us from 3,000 miles away and beckoned.

For the record, Eric was against this. We were on Gnat Creek. A logging road about 45 minutes from our house. Eric was sending out fear to tens of people who were in earshot of us - playing the little song from Deliverance.

When Eric's friend was here we walked to the East Mooring Basin dock at dusk to visit the sea lions - who weren't there of course - but at least the boats were pretty. (Below)

One day we took a drive to Vernonia and Mist. We love this drive, or at least I do. This church is in Mist, Oregon. A hive of bees seemed to have made the church's eaves their home, so it took a lot of convincing to get Eric to stand here for this picture. (Above) We traveled East to Columbia Gorge. The Gorge is gateway to the desert. But we stopped before we entered the desert, this time. We were traveling with Eric's parents. The Hood River/Gorge experienced, what I can remember, (we visited quite a few breweries) was successful. (Above)

Eric stole a wild foxglove from a national park. We were hiking. I wanted one. Now it's in a big pot on the back porch. I don't deserve him. That's what he's doing in that ominous picture above.
We also made a few day trip East to the desert. It's wild out there. This is White River. We were looking for the Deschutes. The land just stretches on and on. We barely saw any people.

This is the view from the tree in our backyard. I just like it. Can you see Eric in this picture? He is fishing, chest-deep, in the Nehalem River. This river is my favorite. It's also the site of our disastrous 8 hour kayak trip last year. But normally is warm, and quiet. I just sit on the bank and watch Eric catch Cut Throat Trout.

Eric has been Salmon fishing like mad lately. He usually goes inland a bit to a place on the Columbia we like to call Thunderdome. The "bank" of the enormous Columbia River at this place is about an acre wide and all sand. ATV and motorbike enthusiasts flock here. I feel like I should wear sun goggles and conserve water. Anyway, he hasn't caught one yet, but he will. Eric has recently been going to Jiu Jitsu classes. He's learning new ways to take people down. He likes to show me these moves; they're pretty formidable. Pictures of him in a Gi to come soon. We had an eventful Fourth of July. I'm not going to talk about it here because it involves the roof of the Hotel Eliot downtown, Eric and Jason Jiu Jitsu-ing each other on the roof floor, and somebody stealing a tourists picnic basket. I've started volunteering at the hospital here in Astoria (pictures to come soon.) I'm the youngest volunteer by about 30 years, but so far so good. If you can't learn from 95 year olds who have been donating free time for longer than you've been alive, who can you learn from? I also got my stupid wisdom teeth cut out of my mouth. No pictures exist of my chipmunk face, but you can see the holes if you want. Anyway, I just dumped a ton more pictures onto photobucket so go over there and check them out. There are some of us riding bikes around, more fishing pictures, Nehalem pictures, me wielding a firearm, uh-huh, a few more from Gnat Creek, more from the desert, funny pictures of me on the beach back in April - hint, I have a rain jacket on - also some pictures from our latest trip back here from Georgia I didn't post earlier - including a nice picture of Eric and a cactus. That's it for now. CLICK HERE to see the photobucket with lots more pictures!