I know I’m posting a bunch of photos of the wildflowers, but gosh, they’re so pretty! Nolemana and I get our second vaccines this Saturday, April 3rd, and after two weeks, I’d love for us to be able to take an overnight road trip. We can get someone to feed the kitties, and it’d be wonderful to see the wildflowers in person, maybe a bit further away this time. We’ll see.
I thought I’d post more photos (and even videos!) of our Dalles Mountain Road trip. I’d like to make that drive again this year; after being cooped up for so long, it’d be wonderful to see those wildflowers again. So to whet my appetite, here goes. (We get our second Covid vaccinations in just five days, so more road trips would be fabulous…still staying safe and maintaining protocols, of course.)
We headed up the Columbia River Gorge, heading mauka (towards the mountains).
To keep myself busy during this time of grieving for my Noelani girl, I’ve been downloading all my photos from PictureTrail. Now I have plenty of food for my posts. Here’s the continuation of our trip up and down Dalles Mountain Road, which I’d mostly finished before Noelani went over the Rainbow Bridge.
After we drove down to Horsethief Lake and were astounded to learn that there were many ancient Indian petroglyphs set up in a long, walk-through display. The stones were brought here from an island that was being covered by water, so this is not their original site. I found out that Horsethief Lake is part of Columbia Hills State Park. It’s a 3,338-acre camping park with 7,500 feet of freshwater shoreline on the Columbia River. Horsethief Butte dominates the skyline. It stands over the lake like an ancient castle. The lake itself is about 90 acres in size and is actually an impoundment of the Columbia River. The lake was flooded into existence by the reservoir created by The Dalles Dam.
Continue readingLast Wednesday I had to say goodbye to my special girl, Noelani, whose name means ‘heavenly mist’ in Hawaiian. She’d been diagnosed with yet another mammary tumor and as she’d already had two cancer surgeries, I opted against a complete mastectomy. At age 13 I felt it’d just be too much for her. Our wonderful vet, Cinda Scott, DVM, at Springwater Veterinary Wellness Center put Noelani on some natural, herbal, supplements, and by doing so, I really feel she was able to extend my girl’s life by three months past the cancer specialist’s worst case scenario prognosis.
Continue readingPictureTrail is going bye bye. PictureTrail, where I store ukubillion photos, even paying for additional storage that would be there “forever”. I even took the time to write captions on my photos. Shoots. So I’ll transfer everything over here to my blog and make albums in my computer. Twice the work, but then I’ll have them archived here and there.
Nolemana and I took this drive in May, 2005, and it was wonderful. So hold on…we go!
Highway 141 Towards Trout Lake
Nolemana and I had been doing our walk in Boring and Gresham, and this day we decided to walk at Red Sunset Park, also in Gresham. I’m glad we did, because that’s where I’ve been walking ever since. (Nolemana goes with me on Sundays.) This is what the entrance looked like.
I don’t get it. I’m at home more, and have been writing less. It doesn’t make sense, does it? I’m doing different things…like being part of a team that delivers food boxes to farm workers and needy people. How that blesses me to be able to participate in this! And I’m running all the errands now so that Nolemana doesn’t have to go out. And in November I had to take him to the retinologist several times a week because of an infection. (He’s doing better now but it was a scary time.) I’ve also gone back to work part-time, though not too part-time. And cooking. Laundry. I’ve managed to do some knitting and spinning during the Zoom calls that I’m hosting. Oh yeah, and WordPress redesigned how my blog works, so I’ve had to learn all the new da kine with that. I’ve had six friends come down with Covid, which weighed heavy on my mind, and thankfully, all are recovered. Still yet…
Continue readingWell, back in 2003 I wrote this post:
Anden in 2008, this one:
You really need to read those ones first before I tell you the latest. I’ll wait.
Continue readingLest you think that just because the smoke was gone the excitement ended. And silly me. Why would I think it would? Just because my heart rate had slowed down did that mean our worries were over for the time being? Apparently not. Because on September 18th, six days after we’d gotten home, we had a major windstorm, complete with hour-long rolls of thunder, during which, this happened:
We had listened to music all the way home, and were relieved, oh, so relieved, to be home and to see it still standing. I cried driving up our little gravel road. I was so glad we’d left the hummingbird feeders completely full, but I worried about all the tiny birds breathing in all the smoke. The Rufous Hummingbirds had left, and the Annas took their places.
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