Posted inRecreation

Photos of Whychus Creek trail near Sisters, Oregon

If you're looking for a beautiful, easily accessible, moderately challenging, six mile round trip hike through a variety of riverside terrain in central Oregon, check out the recently opened Whychus Creek trail.  My wife and I learned about it through an informative article in the Sisters weekly newspaper, the Nugget. Craig F. Eisenbeis got us enthused about the trail in his "Experience the 'wild' at the edge of town." After we took his advice, we were way more enthused. Here's some photos of what we saw. The northern trailhead is reached from Highway 20 by driving 4.2 miles south on…
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Posted inRecreation

Shadow Lake firefighters with BIG trucks get lost

I greatly admire forest firefighters. Watching four or five large semis filled with equipment take a wrong turn in Camp Sherman, Oregon a few days ago doesn't lessen my admiration for them in the slightest. It just shows that they're human. (Maybe these guys hated to stop and ask someone for directions, like me; or the government needs to fork out a few bucks to get them a GPS app like Navigon for their iPhones, which I have -- and love.) Tuesday my wife and I were at our co-owned forest service cabin in Tract C along the Metolius River,…
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“Into the Wild” — a great Oregon horse adventure

My wife and I can't stand "nose to tail" trail rides where the horses are on automatic pilot and walking is the only equestrian gait we get to experience. But Jahn and Sheila Hoover's Into the Wild Equine Adventures are, well, a whole other animal. They offer real horse rides in the Monument Peak trail system in the Santiam State Forest near Gates (a few miles north of Mill City), which is about an hour from our home in Salem, Oregon. Today we took advantage of a Groupon deal and went on a 2 1/2 hour ride with two women…
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Camp Sherman and Sisters: I love these Oregon towns

From seven to seventeen, formative years, I grew up in a small town nestled in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Three Rivers had about 900 people back then. It was the sort of close-knit community where, during the winter when tourists weren't around, if someone unfamiliar was shopping in one of the two small grocery stores, locals would ask each other "Who was that?" when the person left. It was more than just a gateway to Sequoia National Park. There were quite a few artists, drawn, I suppose, by the beautiful natural landscape: three forks of the Kaweah…
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Posted inRecreation

Wow, I learn to saddle up a horse!

Who says you can't teach an old dog (or guy) new tricks? After sixty-two years of riding horses off and on throughout my life, somehow I'd never learned how to saddle up a horse. Today, thanks to expert teacher Mike Myers (no, not the comedian), I demolished my false belief that putting on a saddle and bridle required some sort of mysterious skills. All it took was Mike showing me some tricks of the saddling trade in a simple, supportive fashion. Mike is a wrangler/instructor for the FlySpur Ranch Equishare program that's run out of three locations in the Bend,…
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Photos of human beach life on Maui

On the first day of our Maui vacation my wife asked me if I was going snorkeling. This is her favorite ocean activity. I hate it. "No," I said. "Snorkeling is a been there, done that thing for me. Water gets in my mask because I have a beard. The fish all look the same after a while. I'd rather sit on the beach and observe the varieties of humans. That's more interesting to me." So when I wasn't boogie boarding or sidestroke swimming, I had my camera at the ready, prepared to snap some shots of the various sorts…
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Posted inRecreation

Eating vegetarian on Maui — our favorite dining spots

My wife and I have come to Maui almost every year for several decades. Being vegetarians (but not vegans), naturally the many seafood and steak restaurants don't interest us. Good veggie food does, particularly if it is local and organic. Since we always stay on Napili Bay, we're most familiar with vegetarian dining on the Lahaina side of Maui. Which, sadly, isn't as veggie-friendly as the funkier areas of the island such as Paia. Here's some of our favorite places to eat vegetarian on Maui: -- Whole Foods Market and Down to Earth Natural Foods, Kahalui. These are our first…
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Posted inRecreation

Maui’s Napili Bay is my “On Golden Pond”

I don't remember a whole lot of specifics about "On Golden Pond." The basics of the movie remain with me, though: every year an aging couple returns to the same vacation spot, a house on a lake. My wife and I don't have a lakeside home. But over the past twenty years we've made almost annual visits to Maui's Napili Bay, renting a condo for ten days or so. I understand the allure of going to different places. However, I'm more of an "On Golden Pond" guy. Nothing stays the same -- not us, not a place, nothing in the…
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Posted inRecreation

Photos of our Hollywood Hills weekend

We Oregonians enjoy putting down southern California: so crowded, the freeways!, smog, too many people. Etc, etc. But whenever my wife and I visit my daughter and her family, who live at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills, I realize how much there is to like about this area. I wouldn't want to live there permanently, but for a weekend... delightful. This time we were fortunate to be able to stay nearby in a cute, quirky, "bungalow" owned by friends of my daughter. They gave us a discount on the usual rental price, which was much appreciated. So for a…
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Photos of Camp Sherman’s new Lake Creek Trail

Laurel and I had read in the Sisters Nugget weekly about the opening of a hike/bike/ride trail that goes from Camp Sherman to Suttle Lake. On Labor Day we decided to give it a try, starting from the Camp Sherman end. Wisely. Also, necessarily, because we were staying at our co-owned forest service cabin along the Metolius River and didn't have an extra car for a shuttle. I say "wisely" because on this trail we had to break our usual rule of mountain biking: namely, don't bike up any mountains. Or even steep hills. So it was good that we…
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Posted inRecreation

“Into the Wild” — best trail ride in western Oregon

My wife loves horses, but we don't have one. So she's always on the lookout for good trail rides. We've paid our money and taken our chances with quite a few stables in the Willamette Valley and central Oregon. Almost always, we've been disappointed. Laurel is a very good rider; I'm a decent rider. We don't enjoy plodding along with a rules-obsessed guide who is taking out a bunch of inexperienced riders, because if one person can't handle a trot or canter everybody is forced to walk their horse the whole time. Yesterday we had a wonderfully different experience with…
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Posted inRecreation

Photos of 2010 Portland Street of Dreams

Today Laurel and I, along with neighbors Tim and Jan, trekked up I-5 to Portland to pursue a dream. More accurately, six of them -- the new homes featured in the 2010 NW Natural Street of Dreams. We enjoy looking at fancier houses than ours, as do many other people, judging from the crowded Street of Dreams parking lot, even on a Monday. This seems to be partly a lifestyles of the rich and famous sort of voyeurism, and partly a desire to get ideas for fulfilling homeowner desires. (Guess that's why this is called a Street of Dreams.) As…
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Posted inRecreation

Photos of Lake Louise gondola & Moraine Lake trail

Well, after three previous photo posts of our Banff (Canada) trip you knew the big finale was coming -- a grizzly bear shot! I mean, a shot of a grizzly bear, not a photo of a grizzly bear that's been shot. Laurel had been hoping to see a grizzly bear the six days we'd been in the Banff area prior to heading to the Lake Louise gondola on our last full vacation day. The gondola folks claim they offer the best grizzly bear viewing in the Canadian Rockies. We could only hope as I leaned around in the ski area…
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Photos of Banff: Sunshine Meadows

OK, this is my third blog post in a row about our trip to Banff, Canada. But hey -- when my wife and I spend a bunch of money and time venturing out of Oregon to sightsee, I want to share my photo souvenirs as widely as possible. These are of a hiking excursion at Sunshine Meadows, only twenty minutes or so from Banff. In the winter Sunshine Village Ski Resort worships the white stuff. In summer, flowers rule on the high mountain meadows. After forking over $52 for two tickets, a bus took us from the lower reaches of…
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Photos of Banff: Johnston Canyon & Lake Louise

As shown in my Day 1 report of our first-time visit to Banff, Canada, we rain-habituated Oregonians hit a semi-wet period north of the border -- which made us feel right at home. Day 2 we headed to Johnston Canyon for a creekside hike, figuring that if we were going to get rained on it'd be better to be viewing close-in scenery rather than distant cloud-cloaked mountains. When we got to the Johnston Canyon parking area, we found that lots of other people were on the same wavelength. One guidebook says this is the most popular hike in the Banff…
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Photos of Banff: Day 1 of our first-time visit

Our vacation in Banff (Alberta, Canada) went great after a rocky start checking in with United Airlines/Air Canada at the Portland airport. Remember the good old days when, even though you were traveling in coach, you were checked in by a real live person who could deal with problems and questions on the spot? Those days are gone if you're traveling United/Air Canada out of PDX. We were forced to use an annoying electronic kiosk prior to checking our bags. It recognized my passport, but was clueless about my wife's reservation. The machine told her to pick up a phone…
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Posted inRecreation Sustainability

Metolius trash spill makes me empathize with Gulf Coast

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Sometimes the morality of a situation is stunningly simple. Only one word kept echoing in my head after I spotted some out-of-place debris as I was walking along the Metolius River in central Oregon, past the Riverside campground near the headwaters. There's very little litter along the Metolius. People visiting the Camp Sherman area respect this marvelously beautiful spring-fed river, which I believe has an official Wild and Scenic designation.So this trash was out of place. Unusual. Unexpected. And wrong. We usually come to the Metolius once a month from April through October, being 1/4 owners of a…
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Posted inRecreation Sustainability

Camp Sherman forest thinning project — my photo tour

I felt some trepidation when my wife and I saw this sign as we got to Camp Sherman (central Oregon) last weekend. We're part owners of a cabin along the Metolius River that sits on leased Forest Service land. Forest fires are an ever-present danger. Several have burnt large acreages in the Camp Sherman, Black Butte Ranch, and Sisters areas in recent years. Wildfires used to naturally control the density of vegetation, but now that humans control fires, the forests are way overgrown. We know this. But when we heard rumbling early Monday morning and went out to the edge…
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October beauty (and dog fun) on the Oregon coast

We were ready to head to central Oregon last weekend. But the weather report showed cold. And Laurel was getting a cold. The sunny, balmier Oregon coast seemed more appealing.Good choice.  We had our peanut butter sandwich lunch at Neskowin, north of Lincoln City. The beach is a short walk from the parking area. Walking toward the ocean, a large rock that's often surrounded by water looks like an island in the sand. Damn! I hate the crowded Oregon beaches! Laurel and Serena can barely move without stepping on a... Seagull. God, I love the powerful zoom lens and image…
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Posted inRecreation

Hawk attacks on Portland swifts captured on video

Last Tuesday Laurel and I journeyed to northwest Portland to be part of September's daily swift watch -- when many thousands of Vaux's Swifts circle the large chimney at Chapman Elementary School before darting down it in a marvelous display of aerial avian acrobatics. My You Tube video won't make it on the Discovery Channel, but I got some good shots of a couple of hawk attacks. Kind of sad, but part of the balance of nature. In addition to the swifts, who naturally are the main attraction, I show the happy crowd of swift watchers perched on the grassy knoll…
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