After John Day…

Didn’t take long after leaving John Day to arrive in Milton Freewater and my home base RV park. But first, leaving John Day…lots of water here too this year…

I’m kinda happy that I missed all those days of rain. A few miles on, it was slowly turning into an overcast dark day.

But then, crested the hills and started dropping into the big valleys. This steep section must drop over 1,000 feet in elevation as I’m heading north. But at least it’s starting to get bright and sunny.

Took the time to stop and enjoy nature a bit. Few vehicles on the road. Quiet except for the bubbling stream passing by. The next shot is looking south.

Noticed that road? path? bike lane? over on the other side of the river? Probably leads to private property. Musta cost a fortune. And it sits so low, seems it would be at a flood stage level for the river.

Anywho…I was soon set up at the RV park and the next day, headed downtown Walla Walla.

So that was fun. Sorta. What I was looking for as I went from shop to shop was a light weight polo shirt, a summer weight shirt. I thought I’d finally spotted one in the window of one of the shops, zipped inside to check it out, and it was standard normal quality, nothing special, not a brand name either. Then I found the price tag: $124.50. WTF!???? So I backed out there real slow like.

Walla Walla has become a mecca for wine lovers. That of course attracts all sorts of unsavory upscale rich people. Which drives prices through the roof. Here’s a one example of exotic extra virgin olive oil from around the world. I pay an already outrageous $19 – $24 for California 1.4 liter EVOO (47.3 FlOz) but here their typical oil is $45/750ml (25.4 oz). So nearly 4X as much as what I pay as the California brand converts to $0.40/oz vs this shops $1.77/oz ($83.72/1.4L jug).

BTW, EVOO is the most often faked product around the world. It’s controlled by drug cartels or the Mafia in much of the world. A big company like WM buys millions of gallons per year and seldom checks it for purity. What I do is run a simple test. If I buy a 1.4 L jug of the California EVOO, I’ll put it inside the freezer overnight. When I get up the next day, when I get around to checking it, if there are any wisps of white in the oil, I know it’s a BLEND and not the real thing. If it’s all cloudy white, I know that it’s not even OO but some other vegetable oil. In other words, fake. If it’s clear? And the California brand always seems to be, then it’s true EVOO, good for eating. I must have tested 25 brands from various stores on my travels around the country and it’s maddening how many fakes are out there. In Safeway’s and Albertson’s and yes, even Dollar Stores and Walmarts. I always crack the cap and return them for a full refund when I find them. Eventually, I got tired of that, did some research and found that California brand insisted their oils were the real deal. And they’re based here in the US so less likelihood that a Cartel was doctoring their oils. So I started buying their brand and after a few years of buying and testing their products, I was convinced they weren’t kidding. They’ve always passed the test.

Anyway, I sniffed a few of these EVOO blends here in this specialty shop and did find some interesting types from all over the world with interesting infusions. But couldn’t bring myself to buy any as I don’t often have any garden parties at my RV where we’d wear formal clothes and dip our Italian bread into bowls of fancy OOs with our oh so elegant fondue forks, donchaknow.

And then next door was a bar. Not much to recommend it but it did have this display with a few hundred microbrew beers available. And many featured brews in their large coolers too.

My brother used to collect microbrews around the country as he traveled and had a huge collection of empty cans after drinking them, and then later on he’d save cans of full brews. This display would have caused him to spend hundreds back in the day. But that was back when microbrews were hard to find. Now there are millions of them. See what Oregon has wrought? Anyway, I’m not that crazy to waste my money that way. I have slowly over the years shifted to buying and drinking IPAs and they are often from microbreweries as the industrial brews are rather boring, but well, whatever. I buy what I like now, but I don’t collect the cans or paraphernalia. My brother eventually gave up his collecting habits and collections when he moved from Rosamond CA up to Lynnwood, WA.

Then the rest of the place was crowded with bottles of wine. Meanwhile, some wine lovers were holding court on the couches sipping some local wines. All so upscale and elegant. Meanwhile, I suffered through a not very good IPA at the bar where they told me it was a local, Walla Walla made IPA.

Yuk. Anyway, left after one 12 oz, and bumped into this guy on the street. Lookie here, a poet! Available for all your poetry needs right on the street!

“Roses are red, violets are purple, leave me alone or I’d give you a nerple”. HA! I’m a poet.

And dropped in on the son. This is his gramma’s home. He lives in the MIL apartment on the left side of the house, then there’s a detached garage I helped build back when I was married to his mom.

Over there is the piece of land they bought back in the ’80’s so they wouldn’t be crowded as the neighborhood grew. There had been an old ramshackled home on that property at one time but it had been in a fire and then started being neglected and then abandoned so Les bought the property. The owners had cleared the lot before they bought it and it was perfect as an additional extension to their yard and they soon had a nice big garden in the back of that piece. Anyway, they own those two big lots outright now. The one with their house on it, and the empty lot next door.   

I did some research on their house years ago and it was on the original Walla Walla city plat. Nothing around it for miles. I was an original homestead at one time that existed before the city became a recognized town or even before it had a post office. Pretty cool.

Another shot of the garage I helped build back in the ’80’s. Les (my ex-FIL, now passed on) was the town building inspector so he got first choice of building materials when something in town got torn down, and when an old school gym was torn down, he grabbed enough of the rafters, 2″ X 24″ rough hewn, to build this garage. They are that big in order to span the space so there’s no need for pillars inside messing up the open space. Originally the were from old growth timber from the Oregon coast so they were like 75 feet long. And there had been hundreds of them used in the gym. Les cut them before bringing them here. Things are huge and heavy and takes big muscles to drive a nail into them they’re so dry from age. I got the job of lifting them one by one on my shoulder, climb the ladder, and arranging it on the wall sill, then pounding the nails to hold them upright. Tough work. Things weire amazingly heavy for their size. Well, anyway, we got it done and I’m proud of my work. Building is very stout.

So that takes us through May and June. During that time I had a VA hearing test and it’s looking like I’ll have a fancy set of hearing aids here in a couple weeks. So that’s good. I kept putting it off because veterans have to wait months for an appointment and I missed at least 4 over the years because of being a full time RV’er. This time, last year in August, I made an appointment for July because I was pretty sure I’d been in the Walla Walla Valley and it worked out finally. So test is over, I go in for a fitting in 6 days and I hope to be able to hear better finally.

Thanks for reading! Come back next time.