July 2014. Time to travel North…

After resting up at my brother’s house just a couple weeks, I was surprisingly ready to travel again. At least in my comfortable RV. Pretty happy I wouldn’t have to live out of a carry on bag for a long while. I was ready to head north to avoid the heat of the desert. Off I went on June 30th. By July 1st, was enjoying the cool air of the Mt. Shasta area and later that day, I was all set up at Rolling Hills RV Park in Fairview, Oregon. Not my favorite RV park in the country, but it’s just so damned conveniently placed near my friends.

Here in Oregon, with the fine weather, I just relaxed and periodically enjoyed the company of my friends at the nearby Stagecoach Saloon. It wasn’t until 18 days later that a family that owns this neat old RV parked across the road from me and I took a couple pictures.

Oh, and they had this ‘unsafe at any speed’ Corvair.

The RV is only a 24 footer but it has a 2nd axle in the rear…so it’s hitch and frame is strong enough to pull that heavy trailer and car. Wondered about the engine though. Kept missing the guy who owned it so I didn’t get to talk to him. He and his family, wife and 2 pre-teenaged kids, stayed pretty busy going places.

Mines pretty nice looking too.

A week later and it was too hot for me here in PDX so off I went to Seaside to take advantage of the nice weather there. And the cooling ocean breeze. It was up to 90°F in Portland, but only 65°F in Seaside. Plus I like it there.

There was a big ass volleyball tourney going on in Seaside. Place was packed over a 4 day weekend. I ride my bike practically every day here and this is the most people I’d seen here in years. So, kind of a big deal.

But just down the seaside bike/walking path it’s fairly quiet.Someday, I’m going to ride over there and up that road on that hill to see what’s over there. That would be a neat place for a summer cottage wouldn’t it? There were just a couple places over there when I first started coming to Seaside in the early ’70’s. Oh, yeah, a little history. This is the place, just a few steps from the bike path, where part of the Lewis and Clark gang set up to make salt from seawater while the main crew stayed up near Astoria. I have no idea why they didn’t just set it up near Astoria. It’s about 20 miles from here to Fort Clatsop where L&C holed up for the winter and there’s a huge estuary filled with seawater there near the fort. Better trees for firewood here in Seaside? I don’t know. Here’s a reproduction, based on archeological information, of the ‘Salt Works’. They’re not exactly sure of the spot, an old Indian woman had pointed it out as having been right here back in the 1800’s, but they are pretty sure this is what the setup mostly looked like. Just a big oven with pots on top that they poured seawater in and boiled down to salt. They got several hundred pounds of salt this way. The crew picked this spot after asking the local Indians if it was OK to be here for months, and because of the nearby supply of lots of burnable wood. Remember this is the Oregon coast in winter so finding lots of seasoned wood would be difficult because of the near constant rain. Collected dead wood would be stacked near the ovens to further dry it out before burning.Seaside has it’s own indoor carousel. And an ice cream store nearby so that’s why I’m here. Late in August it was time to visit the VA clinic and get my prescriptions renewed so I headed on back to Portland for a few days. Too hot over there so I didn’t stay long, just a couple days. During my VA appointment, my new Doctor pointed out that I hadn’t been there in two years. WHAT! That’s crazy talk you ignorant bitch. How could I have spaced it out a whole year. But she showed me the chart and I had to admit that yes, I’d apparently forgotten to come in August of 2013. Huh. The doctor was impressed that I’d been busy preparing for a couple months in Europe and then that I’d actually gone. A little envious too.

Anyway, I got my prescriptions and she didn’t feel the need to do a rectal exam so that made me happy. And then off I went back to Seaside. Gah, who would want to stay in Portland when it’s 90°F everyday? On the trip back, I stopped at this roadside, private museum in the hills outside of Seaside in the Coast Range. That’s their restaurant in the below picture, and scattered all over the property are these antiques related to the forestry industry.

An old skidder with a steam engine attached. They would pull this to a work area and use it for power. It once had a thick wire rope used to pull huge trees up hills. This is the name of the place. Need water for your steam powered tractor or other equipment? Here’s where you got it.

Look at the size of this band saw. Wouldn’t take much, based on the absence of any safety features, to lose an arm, or worse.

What type of Rube Goldberg contraption is this???Here’s a stradler. It would roll over a log, or two if they were small diameter, and lift it up so to carry it to the bandsaw table. It was made by Hyster (the fork lift inventor and manufacturer). And I worked for Hyster for 9 years in Engineering. So…I think this is very cool. This was made during WWII I believe. A very early steam tractor. Look at how you would steer. With chains. Like a kids home made cart racer that used ropes to steer. This was very cool. It’s a reproduction of the paddle wheel used on a nearby property. The paddle wheel powered a home made electric generating system that supplied a homesteading family with electric power from the 1920’s up until the late 1950’s as I recall. The plaque said it was still working when the family finally shut it down and started paying the local electric company for power. My guess is they were forced to join that monopoly. Here’s a nice place to relax out back. There’s a creek and a little pond just beyond this. This was part of the original logging camp. Then there was this steam powered rail crane. Smelled strongly of grease still.

This old stiff guards the place.

That log up there is a monster. Said to be the largest, longest, heaviest or something-est ridge pole in the USA. Enough wood there to build a bajillion homes or some such. This building has a pretty interesting history too. You’ll have to go visit. Chainsaw carved bear right there on the counter. After a mighty fine lunch, back to browsing the grounds. Ran into this nice sculpture leaning up against a train car. Oh, hey, a very early powered wood saw.  Another engine on skids. These pole structures were put up on hilltops and were used to quickly skid huge logs around the work site as loggers deforested entire mountains.This structure is a quick and dirty wooden crane used to lift logs onto rail cars for transport to the mill. These are the sized logs that crane could handle. An old timey grader. Used this if you needed to drag a huge log any distance at all.  Isn’t that a neat place to wander around? It’s free too. I’ve stopped here 10’s of times over the years and usually had a snack in the restaurant. They keep adding to their collection as it’s become locally renown so companies and individuals now call them and ask them if they would like an old antique that’s just sitting on some property somewhere. So the collection is changing all the time. Well worth the visit.

But soon it was time to wander on to Seaside, and an hour later and I’m all set up at the RV park and relaxing.

A day later, I ride my bike downtown because I hankered for some ice cream. I found a place right next to the turnabout on Broadway and enjoyed myself a cone. Time to leave, I reach in my pants and, NO KEY to unlock my bike. Damn. See that bike in the link? That’s right where my bike was locked up. So I search all around inside the store, then up and down the street and on the bike itself. Twenty minutes later after searching everywhere (I thought), I spot the keys right under the bike on the ground. Ahhh. Whew. So off I go on my errand at a hardware store clear over on highway 101.

Now here’s the funny part…I sort of knew how I’d dropped my keys and tried to avoid putting them in my pockets in a sloppy way, but a week later, I head back to that hardware store, lock my bike up outside, do my shopping, unlock my bike, ride downtown to that same ice cream store, lock my bike up, and then discover I’ve dropped my keys again. Not here this time but somewhere between where I’d unlocked it at the hardware store, and here at the ice cream store. Around 3 miles distance. Damnit! Crap!

So I search the area around the bike again, nothing, then call a taxi. He takes me to the RV park, I ask the maintenance guy for help and he uses his front loader to lift me up enough to crawl through a window into the RV. I get my spare set of keys, call for the taxi, ride back downtown, and after unlocking my bike, slowly retrace my bike path all the way to the hardware store. Stopped at the police station to see if anyone had turned in a set of keys. Nope. Noticed a keysmith store.

Wait a week, try the police station again, still nothing, then go to the keymaker and have them make me up 2 full sets of spare keys plus this and that. Cost was $32 freaking dollars. They also lubed my bike chain lock. Meh. I already had bought some colored key cosies, a couple quick clips, and a nice chain from the Ace hardware store so I wouldn’t lose them again. So almost $40 for that little problem.

And that’s the story of why I now have a chain clipped to my belt loop and attached to my set of keys that reside in my pocket.

A couple weeks later I needed to take my bike in to have the front brake adjusted at the Prom Bike store. I just had them go through everything. As you’d expect in a small touristy town, they are quite expensive on their new bikes and bike accessories but the repairs didn’t cost me much. That’s due to the fact that I pointed out I’m a repeat customer. Even my fenders were bought here. Oh, and they had a bunch of used bikes they picked up somewhere that weren’t that expensive.

After getting all situated with my bike, off I went for a ride about. Beautiful day it was. There’s an ocean chicken right there. This shot is looking due south… This one looking due north… Due east… And due west towards the Pacific Ocean just at the end of this street.Oh, hey, it’s the Seaside museum. I’ve passed it a million times and never stopped in. So I parked and wandered around the property while the place was closed but had a be-right-back sign in the window. This old house is part of the museum.Pretty. And then I saw they were open, paid the measly $1 entrance fee and pretty soon I was looking at a thousand year old basket.  Not a very big museum, but interesting. The first telephone exchange in town. The first newspaper. Stayed in business for decades. Got sold a couple times. Pretty cool that the whole press room was donated to the museum. And then it was time to visit that cottage. It’s part of your entrance fee, and I like old houses as long as I don’t have to live in them so why not visit? How about that stove. That would sure as hell heat up the whole house now wouldn’t it? Here’s how you’d wash your clothes if you had money. Most just did them in the sink, couldn’t afford no fancy schmancy dedicated wash tubs with fancy sloshers. Still a nice working kitchen. The volunteers still cook here for meetings. This is a seashell sculpture.  After that nice break in a nice afternoon, started to head for home and spied this cormorant sitting on a log in the estuary. Tried for a telephoto shot. Came out pretty well. There he is on his log. Can’t really make out what he is in this long shot. Wind started to pick up. Refreshing. Went by that bike shop again and stopped in to look for a bike carrier that might work on my articulated bike. Didn’t buy one, just wanted a picture so I could check on Amazon when I got home. Hehehe.

Soon enough it was the end of September. Seaside was getting coolish and rain was becoming an incessant bother so I headed east to Walla Walla to visit my son James, and my sister Terri and BIL Gary. Here’s a shot of the Columbia gorge just past Portland on a coolish day. That’s Crown Point off in the distance on the right.

Four hours later, I’m at my sisters house. Opps, caught my sister in a rare display of bitchface. She’s got a big smile 99% of the time. And my son makes it over to Terri’s to visit. So they have room out in front of their house, on the street, where I can park my big assed RV. I could even plug into a 15 Amp outlet that was in their front yard. Stuck around for a couple days I believe, planned the rest of my journey to visit my daughter Michelle and her new boyfriend outside of St. Louis.

So that’s enough for today. See you next time.