The Windows of Heaven

 

Amen and Amen.

I really should leave well enough alone and close with that. The Oregon coast needs no commentary! (or exclamation points, so I'll re-word that "The Oregon coast needs no commentary." No, never mind, the Oregon coast doesn't need exclamation points, but I DO!!

Following are a few thoughts on our visit, along with photos; plus an aside: Being retired, I can get up in the morning and read the Book of Mormon for as long as I want to. If I have to be somewhere first thing in the morning, then I generally don't read. But it's been a distinct blessing to be able to read for a half hour or more if I am so inclined. 2nd Nephi is such a powerful book! Where have you been all my life?

One of the other highlights of being retired is that we can do things on the spur of the moment. We recently finished teaching our latest Marriage and Family Relations class and don't have a new group yet, so we are really free and easy right now. Dennis was looking online at the 5-day forecast for the coast, and said on Saturday night, "Let's go!" so we threw a couple of sets of clothes into our suitcases and off we went.

La Grande lost some of its luster when Richard and Shirley Hiatt moved away. But oh my, it's still La Grande. Whenever I'm in the northwest I feel so John Denver-ish. It fills up my senses. I love the yellow lab colors of the underbrush, the ancient vibrating pine trees. It's a softly sueded place like moccasins. People there are softer too. Earthier. They smell like wood chips.....and now, possibly..... marijuana.

 Our iconic "Mount Emily."

I used to get sick with excitement when we'd come home to La Grande to visit and I saw Mount Emily.


We stayed over night in La Grande, ate at Grizzley Bear Pizza, then drove from the motherland (La Grande) through outer darkness (Pendleton) just kidding Andrea. Pendleton always beat us in football so they were the hated enemy when I was a teenager. I even used to have nightmares after we were first married that Dennis and I moved to Pendleton! Now it seems absurd, but it was a bitter rivalry.
We also stopped in Baker City on this trip. I don't know if I've EVER been to Baker City. It is a big part of Grandpa Hiatt's youth and his history mentions it a lot. It was merely "Baker" when I was growing up. Funny  name for a town. Beautiful little historic downtown though. Then we were off to the Pacific Northwest.

 

First stop - Multnomah Falls outside Portland.

We have a routine when we take a trip. We stop every morning and buy adolescent junk food. I buy two newspapers. The local paper and USA Today. I learned from one of the local papers that the reason we grind pepper on the spot (or at least waiters do in some restaurants) is because once peppercorns are ground they soon lose their flavor. So we're basically shaking black dust when we use Schilling pepper. You never know what you're going to learn. This trip I bought a Puzzle book. Holy COW! It was so hard I couldn't believe it. Most of the puzzles made my head spin. Like when I'd give Andrew puzzles when he was a little boy and he finally said "This gives me a headache." Some of them were logic problems, like Leslie the genius file clerk did back in the day at Valley Mental Health when she was studying for the LSAT. You know, the ones where George has three goldfish and eats lobster and crab; Mary doesn't eat shrimp; and Sam went to bed at 10:00. Then you have to figure out what everybody keeps as a pet, eats and when they go to bed. I actually solved one of them. I was ecstatic. I tried to do others along the way but that was my one and only claim to getting into Stanford law.

Here is our first sighting of the ocean, although you'd never know it. The vanishing point is the sky meeting the sea. The first time I saw the Pacific ocean, it was so overpowering to me, talk about filling up my senses. It was like everything I'd ever encountered in my life to that point had had boundaries (I don't know how old I was - possibly 12?). Nothing prepared me for the unlimited boundaries of the mighty Pacific. I dreamed about the ocean for years after that. They were good dreams.

We stayed at a beach house in Lincoln City called "George's Place" which we found online. The view? Unrivaled.

Our first Pacific sunset was at this fine restaurant. It took me a few years to realize that I could walk along the beach of the Atlantic seacoast every night at sunset and I was never going to see the sun go down...(another reason why I won't be accepted into Stanford Law School).

Dennis in "Dennis pose." I believe he is planning our next trip.

The kitchen. Although this place had a great view, the rest of it was kinda pookie. We had to get some Honey Smacks and Skittles and EL Fudge scattered around before I felt the love. Seriously, it helped to go grocery shopping and get some food in the place. We ended up bonding with it, but it was not somewhere I'd ever go again. The drawbacks being: IT STUNK! IT SMELLED LIKE DRY ROT. Day Murray Music has that same smell. REEKED! And it was utterly lacking in charm. See the door and walls? They were like made out of 1960's paneling and well, dry. And the furniture in the bedrooms looked like someone was getting ready to set up a haunted house.

The kinda pookie stairs.

AND the house was on a slant!! We read that comment online and when I woke up each morning, my blankets had slid onto the floor. Maybe the builder old George was in cahoots with Jake, the guy who built the funny little house .....they both had been drinking.

But, it didn't matter a bit because we spent our days and nights out and about drinking in the bounties of the Oregon coast.

We decided to take a harbor cruise and knew we had to buy our tickets a day in advance because they sell out early, and we don't exactly get up first thing in the morning when we're on vacation. We were at the cash register buying the tickets when an employee at the next cash register piped up and asked if we could drop everything and join the "Ramblin' Rovers" for their cruise because two people had just dropped out (died?). They called us their "Stow Aways." We also got a BOX LUNCH! So we dropped everything and joined their cruise. Dennis was two times bigger than anyone on this tour. As we were waiting to board he said "I think I can take 'em." They were a delightful group of 70-80-year-old retirees from the Tri-Cities in Washington. They travel four or fives times a year as a group and always take the Coast trip in the fall. In chatting with one of them, she told me she grew up in Starkey, Oregon. She said she went to elementary school in a boxcar in Starkey. All you ever need to know about Starkey courtesy of Wikipedia:
"Starkey is an unincorporated community in Union County, Oregon, United States, about 26 miles southwest of La Grande.Starkey was the headquarters of the Mount Emily Lumber CompanyThe population was 50 in 1919 and 75 in 1931. Today Starkey has a store and a cemetery."

Small world.

They also went crabbing and their crabs were much more meaty than the ones Dennis and I caught last year. Plus they gave us lots of tips on handling them. It was really fun to watch. AND they had a mechanical hoist to pull in the pots instead of poor little Barbie Hiatt!

While we were "out to sea" we had some fantastic rolling swells come through. Even the Captain was remarking on how big they were. I got tons of photos.

Gorgeous!

Can't miss the sea lions either. We learned that the reason they bark incessantly is because when they bark the hump on the top of their head grows and females pick a mate with the biggest bump on the top of his head! Crazy! They also said these guys are males who can withstand the cold Pacific waters. They are from a sea lion polygamist sect in Southern California and are kinda kicked out and swim up here until it's time to head back to sunny California during mating season and let the females scan the bumps on their heads.

I love this photo because you can see one of the majesties of the Oregon coast - lush mountains full of healthy pine trees sloping right to the seashore.

a close-up of the same.

We ate dinner in Newport at Mo's after the harbor cruise.

I had their dreamy Cioppino soup.

There was a little bit of a wait so I walked next door to the taffy shop. I took a photo of the "Chipotle" taffy and texted it to Forrest because that reminds me of him. He asked me who "Mango" would be and I immediately texted back "REAGAN!" and he texted back and said that was exactly his thought too. Then he said I should pick a flavor for each member of our family and I DID! I took 26 photos of different taffy but gave myself permission not to exert the mental energy to actually do it after all. It did help pass the time while waiting for dinner.

Second night's sunset.

Four years ago we took a wonderful vacation to the Oregon Coast with Tony and Cindy and stayed at the "Jetty House." This is the "Jetty House" and yes, that is the back of our Camry. It was ACROSS THE STREET from old George's pookie house.

We took two unforgettable hikes while we were there.

This one was inland a bit and called "Drift Creek." We took a loooong, winding road to the tip tops of the forest and then headed out on a gorgeous hike.

The forest primevil.

The Dennis primevil.

We had to cross this suspension bridge to reach our destination waterfall. I was able to do it only because as you can see, there were no gaps in the wood so I didn't see what I was going across prior to crossing, (although some people who were crossing before us had a little dog that had looked through one little gap in the wood and froze in fear, trembling)...and I could grip the handrails with a death grip and follow slowly behind Dennis. I only swore once. I asked his permission before I swore. It helped tremendously.

Unfortunately, once we got to the destination and I saw what I'd actually crossed, I was horrified! I told Dennis we had to hurry back immediately so I could get it over with. I think I was more scared going back than going across the first time. When Dennis said "We're a third finished" I was shocked. I thought we were almost done.

Thumbs up! My nose is bigger than I remember it.

Might as well be in the tropics.

One thing I noticed each evening after our hikes, was I was bushed! It really took it out of me. We didn't do one iota of shopping in the little shops because we'd head home in the late afternoon and the last thing I wanted to do was...........well,..............anything except this!

and gazing upon this......

They had Papa Bear and Mama Bear rocking chairs. There was a piece wood you can barely see between the chairs that was a perfect footrest. We stayed up late one night and watched a movie about a multi-powerful agent who is undercover, I can't think of what it was called. But we both thought Tom Cruise would be showing up at some point. Turns out it was Matt Damon we should have been looking for, but he wasn't in the movie either. I like watching movies when I'm out of town. I never forget it in that context.

Our second hike was the same one we took last year! We were trying to find the place and had given up and decided to try this hike instead and it was the one we were looking for.

This year my pictures came out really dark for some reason.

You can get a feel for how high up we were while hiking. It always feels safe to me though so no swearing ensued.

We worked up a sweat on both hikes. It made me want to spend lots of time hiking for the next 20 years.

We also drove past the actual bay where we crab fished last year. This time there was not a breath of wind and no current. But we weren't about to do it again.

Drove to Tillamook. Lucky cows.

Then headed home through Sisters. The leaves were changing and I took a tremendous number of blurry photos. Here are a couple of them.

The town of Sisters is so awesome. I could shop there for a whole entire day and some day I will.

Buttons for sale at the bookstore.

And then we drove home. The speed limit in Utah is 80 mph. I am not a fan. Here are the oil refineries outside Salt Lake City. They remind me of being a little girl and driving to Salt Lake from La Grande and when I'd see those gas flames in the distance I'd be sick with excitement. We're here! We're almost to Grandmother's house!

But this time I'M the Grandma and we were at OUR house. And all was well and it was good to be home again.

.....except that before we left I'd decided to strip my bed down to the nubbins and left everything out because someone posted something on Facebook about 1.5 million bedbugs or some deranged thing and it got to me! And so we had to remake my bed from scratch and that's never what you want to come home to. Although it sure did feel good when I went to bed that night.
XO Mom