The first day after retiring (again) and I was sleeping in. I didn’t have to get up at 4:30 to get ready for work.
My usual day was to be on the road by 5:30, drive 63 miles (three gallons of gasoline) along with a bunch of other folks, and open the office.
Staff began arriving at 8:00 so I had time to make a pot of coffee, sit down with a cup, and open email before anyone arrived.
Part of the ritual involved updating the time stamp and starting the daily log book. I kept a paper trail of the day’s activities and ideas (I know, computers can do a wonderful job of that but I have discovered the hard way that it pays to have a paper trail).
The day would be a series of telephone calls, letters, and email… most of which prevented me from doing any real work.
Evenings and weekends were consumed with meetings and telephone conferences.
Life was interesting, challenging, but seemed to be going the wrong direction. Hence, retirement.
Let someone else have all the fun. Put “me” back into the picture. Take some time to do some ridiculous things just because.
I think I’ll wander out to the swamp and see what kind of birds I can find.
February 28, 2009: The first field trip of 2009 and the first field trip to Catherine Creek, located near Lyle, WA. To get there we traveled through the scenic Columbia River Gorge eastbound from Troutdale, OR, using I-84.
The Gorge is common to us so the magnificent scenery tends to blend into the background as we tend to the task of traveling. But this day we were taking notice so our senses may have been raised by our first outing of spring. The wind was blasting whitecaps on the river and pushing our vehicle around on the highway, giving a bad omen for the day.
We passed Multnomah Falls (second highest in the USA but a piker in the world); Beacon Rock (second largest monolith in the Northern Hemisphere, behind Gibraltar); Bonneville Dam; and, crossed the Columbia river into Washington using the Bridge of the Gods at Cascade Locks. Fresh snow just a little higher in elevation was visible along the way yielding postal card type vistas.
On the Washington side we followed Highway 14 eastbound. Both sides of the river are hemmed in by highways. I-84 on the Oregon side and State Highway 14 on the Washington shore. Railroad tracks join the transportation routes and occasional tugboats pushing barges can be seen on the river.
We passed a slow moving train, pulled upriver by five diesel powered locomotives, so we saw an opportunity to photograph the train emerging from a tunnel. Finding a safe place to park roadside we waited patiently for the train to make its grand exit. Automobiles and trucks roared past, noise amplified by the tunnel. Some drivers were kind enough to honk and wave as they zoomed past.
BNSF Locomotive (Burlington Northern and Sante Fe); Tunnel #3
Eventually the train arrived but passed all too quickly. If we hurried we might catch it exiting other tunnels but we were satisfied with the pictures we had.
The parking lot at Catherine Creek was nearly full. It is popular as a hiking trail head as well as for its wildflower displays.The skies on the eastside of the Gorge were overcast, no wind, slightly chilly but wonderful for photography. This day we would see Grass Widows (Olsynium douglasii); three species of Lomatium (L. grayii, L. piperii, L. columbianum); Prairie Star (Lithophragma parviflorum); Western Saxifrage (Saxifraga occidentalis); and the green stuff that will support the beautiful bitterroot flower (Lewisia rediviva). A few warm days hence will cause blooms to carpet the area. It will be awesome.
We continued the trek eastbound and checked our favorite patch of Cactus (Opuntia sp. fragilis ?), not yet in bloom, then ended our easterly travel near the Maryhill Museum and the Stonehenge monument. Rather than cross the Columbia into Oregon we decided to reverse our travels on Highway 14.
August 26, 2008: Finding Badger Creek Lake, located in the southeast corner of Hood River County, Oregon, and accessed off Highway 48 (White River snow park to Wamic) is not difficult. The lake is approximately 11.2 miles from the highway. Negotiating the access road is difficult without 4WD.
The first three miles is a narrow lane and paved but it gets much worse, as in dirt road with big rocks. Trailers and buses are prohibited. The road is rough… traveling on it gave me the hiccups.
The last mile is narrow and steep… pray you don’t meet a vehicle because someone will have to back up quite a ways.
The campground at the lake is a fee site ($10.00/day) and has at least two vault toilets. Some campers leave behind their trash so it is not pretty. We recommend not going there unless you enjoy primitive camping and picking up someone’s garbage. The lake is said to be good for fishing. High clearance vehicles recommended.
Recently I bought one of the SPOT (Satellite Personal Tracker) devices. It works with low orbit satellites and sends a GPS location to selected recipients. Essentially it has four buttons: an on/off switch, an OK button that allows tracking (where’s Waldo), a HELP button that allows prerecorded emails to be sent to selected recipients, and a 911 button that will scramble the nearest emergency rescue resources to your location.
It’s a great idea but falls a little short. The next generation should allow a text message to be sent specifying in more detail what kind of help is needed and it would also be great if someone like AAA monitored the help messages (they would be available 24/7 unlike some of my friends who might be away from their computer.) A minor irritant is that you must watch the indicators to note when a message is transmitted. Usually a message is sent within three minutes so it isn’t a huge problem.
The first dozen positions reported were dead-on accurate but of the last four sent only one was received… and, all these were sent from hilltop positions that had very excellent sky coverage… that doesn’t do much for my confidence.
I travel in the boondocks quite a bit and really need some way to signal for help. In remote Oregon a cell phone is of little use as most cells concentrate on either the I-84 or I-5 traffic corridors leaving huge chunks of Oregon without cell coverage. Satellite phones are expensive and reported as unreliable so the perfect device is still waiting for development.
July 25, 2008: The wildflowers of Mount Rainier beckoned to us but when we arrived snow was still on the ground. The trails around Paradise Lodge were sloppy with melting snow and footing was treacherous. After an initial foray we met a park ranger who explained that they had 80 feet of snow during the winter and it would still be a few weeks before the trails were clear and maybe another week or two before the flowers started to bloom.
Marvin and I elected to head for lower elevation. A few thousand feet downhill we found spring and wildflowers.
Avalanche Lily (Erythronium montanum): Mount Rainier
After we stopped several other cars stopped as well, probably wondering what two guys with cameras were looking at. We met a charming couple from Washington DC who were enjoying a vacation in the Pacific Northwest.
