by Sharon O | Sep 4, 2016 | Uncategorized
My favorite time of the year is fall. I love the colors of the trees, the coolness of the air, I love sweaters and boots.
We even got married in the fall, so we could enjoy the season and also get the discount for fall/winter.
Soon the season will be here for hot teas, and soups. Raincoats and umbrella’s and flannel sheets.
I don’t so much like winter other than the Christmas season but fall…brings many warm feelings for me.
This November we will be married 43 years. As I look back and reminisce about all the years. It is good.
I am not much of a baker but I do love to create soups and sometimes chicken pot pies.
Oh I also remember making applesauce with my oldest grand daughter, she loved helping me out as we stood by the stove smelling apples and cinnamon.
Warm fuzzy memories hoping she will remember it too, as something special.
Oh and when the children were in school fall was always a beginning point of the new year.
They would get new clothes, shoes, notebooks and coats. So much newness and fun anticipation of what was to come for them.
Fall is always a time to decorate with colors of the season, I bring out leaves and flowers in oranges and browns changing the roses to leaves.
It is fun to rearrange and re-do the house. If only for a few months. I am anticipating a good fall season this year.
My husband is home now and we can travel or do nothing. It doesn’t matter what we choose since we are in our retirement.
A season of change is good.
I hope for you a wonderful fall. A time for reflection and for taking the time to be ‘thankful’ as we begin to move in this ‘season of change.’
by Sharon O | Aug 23, 2016 | Uncategorized
In the middle of the blogging and sharing our trip we took off for another one and the story got sidelined. So now I am back to finishing the vacation story.
We left Idaho and headed to Oregon one more time as we were heading home.
One more time through Baker and then one more time through North Powder which is where my grandma’s restaurant used to be.
We had the opportunity to see beautiful birds, beautiful wild life and beautiful scenery and of course it is always nice to come home.
It was so hot even the birds knew how to get into the shade to cool off.
At the Powder River we found a spot to remember our parents, my sister had purchased a bag of fresh flowers, she sprinkled into the water in honor of them.
We watched as they fell and then moved into the rivers edge, and some downstream.
It has been hard and sad to have our parents gone. In memory of them, the flowers fell and danced among the ripples and waves. It was a peaceful setting.
We then spent the day finding the old homes we used to live in, as little girls.
I remembered one, the rest of them I didn’t remember.
We found our grandma’s old run down restaurant. The powder club.
As little girls we spent a lot of days and nights in this place, grandma would make us many meals and we would sit in the round bar stools and twirl them around till we got dizzy… I can almost still hear her say, “You girls go play.”
The building across and down the street used to be some store.
The post office is still the same as I remembered it.
The next day we found a few of the old houses we used to live in as well as the houses in Haines and Baker. That night we had dinner at the Haines street steak house.
It was wonderful. Good food and great atmosphere.
The next day after doing a lot of sight seeing and memory making we ate at the historic Baker hotel. It was very good too.
The vacation was ending and soon we would begin to head home.
The next day we would meet very harsh winds through The Dalles and Hood River areas and also we heard later, there was a wild fire following us on both sides of the freeway which my sister and her husband drove near. It was a long and scary trip home.
It was a good trip and one we will remember for a very long time.
I hope it was a good ‘retelling of the story’ for you who have stayed with me on this journey. We travelled almost 2800 miles and through three states.
The miraculous part of it all, was when we got things all put away at home, we headed to the store for groceries and our car blew up. Yes we were 6 minutes from our house within range of AAA and cell service. You ask me if I believe in angels who watch over us?
Yes absolutely. The car is fine now and running better than when we left.
Thank God we were home. Thank God we were safe. Thank God our neighbor is a mechanic.
by Sharon O | Aug 12, 2016 | Uncategorized
We had many good times on our two week vacation.
Took lots of beautiful photographs and shared our experiences on facebook and with each other. We tried to find small ‘mom and pop’ type restaurants and most were very good. Our favorite was run by a Mennonite couple in Buhl Idaho. It was clean and quaint with lots of cars in the front of it, which is always a good sign. The food was very good and I would definitely go back in there if we lived closer.
We saw beautiful landscapes and many old barns as we drove from Oregon to Idaho and even into Montana. The areas were parched and dry most of the time, but also green and full of life depending on where we went, it was amazing to see the difference.
As we headed to Baker before going home we stayed at Farewell Bend state park for two nights, it was a very nice place but very hot outside and there were a lot of flies. We could not enjoy ourselves sitting outside so we dropped the trailer off and went site seeing in the truck, that was air conditioned. The best way to beat the heat is to find air.
That is when we saw the Four Rivers cultural center in Baker.
It was very interesting full of old artifacts and information just like the Big Hole museum in Wyoming.
A statue at the Indian museum. I so enjoyed the beauty of it along with the other one
We headed up the mountain to see Hell’s canyon recreational area.
It was a long road full of curves and switch backs and up to a height of I am not sure, very high and very beautiful once we got up there.
We have a picture of my husband and I sitting near that brick wall facing the valley below and as we were getting our picture taken I said to him, “why am I smiling no one can see me?” we had a great laugh about that one!
This is also the country road we saw the old ‘cow’ walking with a few of his buddies in the middle of the road. He didn’t bother to move either and was not bothered by our car.
After we settled into Oregon again and stayed at a park called Mt View Rv park.
We connected up with my sister and her husband to see some of the Baker area together, she is older than I am and could remember some of the places we used to live in as little girls, many years ago.
We went to a Hotel that one can stay in now, Larry had seen it on Oregon art beat show and he wanted to see it in person. The history of it is interesting as it used to be the a very well known place in Baker county in the 40’s then they made it into a sanitarium for those who ‘could not’ live in the outside world. After that it became a hotel people can stay at now.
It was very pretty but a bit creepy at the same time. (just my opinion)
Our next days adventures would include walking down memory lane in Baker and then back into North Powder where our grandma had a restaurant. Stay with me as we travel down through some years of my childhood.
by Sharon O | Aug 9, 2016 | Uncategorized
After we left Montana area we headed back down the road towards Baker, Oregon.
We had already gone through part of the way on the way towards Idaho, but we didn’t stay long since we knew we were going to return there on our way home.
We found ourselves one night not knowing where to stay for the night, it was a bit unnerving to not find a ‘secure sight’. We drove through a few campsites and none of them felt ‘good to us’. They were small and kind of creepy.
Finally we saw a small forest service sight with park hosts and only three camps sites in the campground, one was filled with college kids doing a freshman adventure course.
We stopped and set up camp not even unhooking the trailer from the car. It was that short of a trip. The guys leveled it and we set up our ‘chairs’ and found some water to play in across the street. As I said before it had been a ongoing 95-102 temperature and we were anticipating a HOT camp night.
In the morning we decided to head down the road to Wagonhammer Rv park in Salmon Idaho. It as by far the best place we stayed at the whole time we were gone.
We unhooked our trailer and set up camp for three nights.
At this site we were able to do some laundry, do more sight seeing adventures while leaving our trailer and tent there, knowing it was protected and watched.
It was a good place to stay in fact we met people there who were staying a month at a time there. It was very nice and peaceful there. Very watched and we highly recommend this Rv park for anyone going that direction. They even had a small store.
On one of our day trips we actually drove pretty high into the mountains and saw these wonderful creatures. I was so excited. We took pictures and stopped our car and watched them until the dad started to stomp his feet and it seemed he was becoming a bit agitated so our best thought was to move on and enjoy them as we drove away.
I think seeing these majestic animals was the highlight of our vacation for me.
They were beautiful, and so graceful on the rocks.
Reminded me of my favorite book called Hinds feet on high places…by Hannah Hurnard.
After our relaxing stay at Wagonhammer we had to move on. We were heading to Baker and back to the North Powder area where my grandma had a restaurant.
by Sharon O | Aug 8, 2016 | Uncategorized
We were so close to the Montana border we felt we had to get there at some point in our trip just so we could say, “‘we did it.”
The landscape was not too much different than Idaho, and we actually would have gone further into the state, but time was an issue, we had to get back to Baker in a few days.
We found a great little meal in a small restaurant in the town of wisdom Montana.
The town itself was a post office, a general store that sold assorted goods.
A gas station which we needed, and a cute little church where we found a geocache, inside the bathroom. That was a strange place I thought, but I guess that is part of the hunt.
(In strange places which includes bathrooms)
Wonder who ever thought of that one?
Not far from this restaurant was the Big hole monument site where there was a big fight between the Indians and the white man. We drove to that site and explored the history within it’s walls and watched the movie provided with great information.
I always love to look at the detail of the blankets made by hand.
In the same time frame as this little trip, we were trying to get a night or two at red fish lake area but that was very full. There are few sites in each campground and they are taken very quickly according to those who we talked to.
So we found a spot down the road to camp and decided the water would be our play day.
We had spent a lot of time driving and site seeing and sometimes one has to just stop and play as we picnicked along the waters edge. Most of our team got into the water because the temperature was in the 90’s. ‘I’ just sat and enjoyed the beauty around us.
Along the country roads we would often find interesting signs.
Of course I would often read them out loud, which is why ‘we had the nickname’ Gabby.
It didn’t make me feel too excited to be camping in bear country or even cougar country but unless you are in a city, that is the way it is most of the time.
Sharing ‘their space’…without their consent.
Tomorrow we will journey onward as we move from Idaho back into Oregon.
