The Painted Hills, Oregon

Finally the weather has broken and it's worth going outside. It has been my wish to show Brenda some of the splendors of Oregon . It has been a long long winter and now we seem to be going from nasty to full summer. 

The first on my list of Brenda's introduction to Oregon, was to visit the Painted Hills in the central part of the state. I have never gotten around to going there, so this was a trip for me as well. The area is about 250 miles North, so we planned to spend three days total. I looked it up on the web and found that there were really no RV camps close to where we wanted to be, but a nice couple had visited the area and told of a chunk of ground owned by the Forest Service that was open to camping and unregulated.  Sounded good to me!

There were two ways to get there so I intended to go one way and back the other. The first leg of our trip went from Burns Or, to John Day, then West to Mitchell. John day is at a much lower elevation than here at the house, so we dropped off down a long steep Canyon about 20-30 miles in length. As we came around a sharp curve, near Canyonville, a tree weakened by all the recent run off of melted winter snow had fallen across the road. The signs were plentiful that the water had been over the road in many places. It was still quite a surprise and I had an interesting time getting all that weight stopped. We sat there as traffic built up in both directions, (Probably 5 cars either direction. Its kinda of remote) before someone with a chainsaw came by and cut it out of the road.

Once past John Day, it was about 77 miles to our turn off. Winding roads, through a narrow sliver of a Canyon, eventually coming to the town of Mitchell. The turn off is about 5 miles past the town.

We found the camping spot with no trouble at all. At the time there were only cows there and it took us no time to get set up. We spent the evening checking out the scenery and even though it was still raining lightly I made a couple of short trail hikes and took a lot of pictures.It had been really pouring the rain, so everything was muddy, as well as water over the road in a few places. The mud was what I call "tallmud", the more you walk in it, the taller you get.

In the four days that we were there we had about 15 different campers stay there. We had a parade every morning when the cows came out of the hills to drink.

I took a LOT of pictures on this trip and have included all of them worth seeing, in an attempt to give you some idea of what the place is about. So this will be short on narration. 

The area is actually pretty small as far as Parks go, but long on beauty. Almost all the hiking trails are about 1/2 mile. It is a lesson and view of time and the changes that have and will occur, apparently quite naturally. Unless the Neanderthals were much more destructive than we thought.

This is the end of the public road. The area beyond this and the lake in the background are all private.

I took a few pictures of the rocks, as all of them were different.

The signage was a bit hard to see, but there was a lot of information on them.

While it rained often the drops were not thick, but they wee big!

The Painted Lady of the Painted Hills!

I let Brick out of the truck to pee while I looked at this large boulder. I was amazed to find that there was a Cholla, "Jumping Cactus", at the base of it. True to its name, a chunk of it managed to get in the hair of Bricks leg. It was only stuck in the hair, so I managed to get it out with a stick.

And last but not least was an outcropping of Rhyolite ( Such as occurs at the Pillars of Rome. just down the road here at the house.)

After all the scenery we decided to do a little scouting around and of course went into the town of Mitchell to see what was there. I neglected to take pictures, but there was a General Store and a Gift shop there. Brenda cannot go past a store without searching it for things she cannot do without, and the little "country Store" in Mitchell is a treasure trove. I saw things in there that I had been searching for, for years. This is a little town serving probably less than a 1000 people within a 50 mile radius. If they didn't have it you didn't need it. Great people too. Brenda found some Strawberries that were almost as big as apples. She made me go back the next day to buy some more.

We stayed a total of four days, and just relaxed. Brenda loved the area, much different from what she is used to. The "park" is small by most standards, but well worth the visit.

All the pictures are shown small in the body of the story, but if you click on one of them it will open up full screen and you can scroll through them.

Adjustments

 I am not sure just why, but several (2 or 3 ) people have encouraged me to continue to post to my blog. However, exciting adventures, and wonderful scenic trips have been in pretty short supply recently. I could fill the pages with how well Brenda and I are adapting to a "postponed" relationship, but I have shied away from that in an attempt to be circumspect. I wanted to at least give her some time to at least make sure that she understood my humour. 

In the first place I have had difficulty believing that we could be so compatible. All of the important things that are needed to make a sustainable relationship with someone, are there. We fit together so completely that I am amazed. I keep checking to make sure that my personality is not overriding hers. I like to think that I am secure enough that I am able to allow her to be herself and for the most part I have succeeded. She smokes, I do not! It doesn't bother me at all. She is a night owl, I use the time to get to sleep before she comes to bed. She sleeps late, I don't mind the alone time. the only fly in the ointment, the only contention, is shopping!

I took a pretty good cut in available funds when Karen died. I learned in short order to be frugal with the funds that I did have. I make a grocery list throughout the month on the things that I need. Its a four hour round trip to the grocery store, so fooling around only gets you stuck in Boise rush hour traffic, plus the dogs should be getting to the point that their legs are crossed pretty hard. So its get in- get out.

I understand that the little town that she lived near was a bit more rural as well as possibly a bit limited in selection, and it is possible that her feelings about Costco with all of its tempting goodies might just have the same effect on her as a trip to Cabela's would for me. 

Our first restocking trip was an eye opener. She doesn't walk that fast any way, so I had to throttle back quite a lot. I know where everything is, and I kept finding that I left her a couple of aisles back. ( She just came in to make sure that I didn't call her "gimpy", she is just cautious! ) 

My house is actually pretty small, 1470 sq feet, but I have a cool room dug into the ground off the back porch, that I am able to store some groceries, canned goods mostly, but storage in the house is limited. 

When we began we agreed that she would buy the groceries, and I would handle the rest of the living expenses. That way we should both be able to put a little money aside each month. I figured it would be about $400 bucks a month.  To make a long complaint manageable, I went down one aisle, she went the other way and I didn't find her for about an hour. She had in the meantime got another cart and mostly filled it up.  The car looked like the beverly hillbillies going home. the next trip she took off somewhere around the frozen foods and I didn't find her till I got to the checkouts.

I was in a bit of a dilemma, She was spending her money on stuff for us, and I was bitching because we didn't need it., so I resolved to bring a book and sit in the car. ( and try to keep my mouth shut) Suuuuuure, that's gonna happen! 

We finally got the paperwork back that would allow her to buy Oregon vehicle license plates for her car, but we had to go to Burns, which has a DMV office. I had gone through all the stuff here at the house to see what we needed to replenish our stock, and could only come up with Mustard. She needed some Flonase, so I decided to stay in the car and take a nap. Now the grocery store in Burns is a Safeway and isn't all that big, so I reminded her again that all we needed was Mustard, and that we still had enough to probably last us for a month or more at home. I dropped her at the door and went out in the parking lot to wait. She has a handicapped tag, since she is gimpy, or rather careful!, but since I was going to stay in the car I left it open for someone who might be handicapped. I took a nice long nap, eventually waking up, amazed at how long she had been in there, and sat for at least 15 minutes more when she called me to pick her up. I drive up to the door and here she comes with a cart stacked to the top and overflowing, and even had some poor stock boy, ( about 50 years old, and obviously wrapped around her finger) Saying "Thank you for helping me, sugar! in that WVa drawl, pushing her cart for her. I was speechless, if you could believe that! This was after two hours in Big R, a ranch store. Then she wanted to go into Big lots! Strangely enough by that time I had lost my hearing and managed to miss the turn off to get there.

I realize that I tend towards impatience, and I do try to curb that as much as I can. I have always maintained that if I was supposed to have patients I would have studied to be a Gynecologist.

I realize that if that is all I have to complain about, and it is, I am a very lucky man. We are still in that "pinch me" state that is quite rare in this world, and I believe that we both have seen enough in our lives to be able to appreciate what can and is another chance at having a true caring relationship for the rest of our lives. When I touch her, no matter where, she turns to me, never away!  ( Think about that for a bit ) 

The dreaded Christmas letter!

 

Since I am too anal and lazy to send Christmas cards, this is my contribution to the season.

While the year has been challenging, it has all been worth it and positive in the extreme. The end of last year began with Cataract surgery, followed by more eye surgery in the spring to remove a long string of junk floating in my left eye. That had me scared. My right eye is improved to 20/50 vision following the cataract surgery, but the left eye developed a lot of floaters that insisted on being to the forefront of all my vision. I am amazed that someone could actually go into the eye and suck out all the garbage, and still give my 20/20 vision back. I am now able to function without glasses except of course for reading. Grocery store cheaters manages that quite nicely.

During that period, Brenda contacted me. Our parents had been friends, and Brends and I have known each other since the 50's. Imagine that! I left WVa in 1963 right after graduation from High School. We didn't meet again until 1968 at my fathers funeral. We were both married by then. We had corresponded several times through the years,  but I had lost track of her in the 80's. I had attempted to find her again after Karen died, but had no luck. She had divorced her first husband, eventually marrying her second who had died about 13 years ago.

To say that I was very surprised would be an understatement. I had found that I didn't want to live alone. I had had a good marriage, and wanted to regain what ever of that feeling that I could. After a year of searching dating sites I met Connie. While she wasn't interested in melding our lifestyles, she was a lovely lady, and lots of fun to be around.

Brenda expressed interest in renewing our acquaintance, so I invited her to visit for a couple of weeks to see just how bad her memory was and if it matched reality. When she got on the plane to go back to her home, I asked her if she would like to come back. She did, finally arriving at the end of August with a trailer full of stuff. We have been sorting ever since.

There is no doubt that if she had not been so young when I left, (15 ) I would have never left WVa. We are doing our best to enjoy the rest of the lives allotted to us. I am extremely pleased that we have this time together. 

Falconry was a total bust this year. The Rabbits are so scarce that I really never started hunting this year. We did put in a couple of weeks, but have given it up as a waste of time, and possible breeding stock for next year.

The Ducks are infected with a "Bird Flu" this year that is fatal to Raptors, so Bud only had "bagged" birds to fly and other than being alive still, has gained nothing towards to being a falconry bird.

While it has been a challenging year, I am glad to be alive, and looking forward to the coming year. I wish you all a Merry Christmas , and a Happy New year!