Month: August 2018

Donya lived in the Seattle area for many years, so we had dinner with her dear friends Scott & Brenda whom she’d known for 25 years. Their triplets were heading off for their first year of college, so I’m glad that Donya was able to see two of them before they left for school and to spend a fun evening reminiscing with friends.

While we were in Seattle we were also able to get together with my husband’s daughter Joyce, who lives in Gig Harbor part of the year. We met her at the Electric Boat Company and motored around Lake Union for a couple of hours. The weather was gorgeous (for a change) and it was so much fun looking at the myriad of house boats on the lake and catching up with Joyce. Donya brought Monty along as her co-pilot.

Although I’ve been to Seattle many times, the last time I went up the Space Needle was in 1962 when I was at the Seattle World’s Fair, so Donya and I decided it was high time for me to see it again. The Space Needle had recently undergone a major renovation with glass walls replacing the metal railing and the revolving restaurant was now a revolving glass floor loop. The view from atop the Space Needle was awesome! Really enjoyed the visit.

The RV park that we stayed at was in Everett, so Donya drove me by the Boeing plant located there. I’ve never seen a building so large. The hangar doors were immense! I just wish that I’d had time to take a tour.

Rogue River fun

Our first stop in Oregon was Medford near the Rogue River recreational area. While there we took a jet boat excursion out of Grants Pass. We zoomed up the river 16 miles into Hellgate Canyon where scenes of the movie River Wild were filmed, doing thrilling spins along the way.  We sat in the front row and were somewhat protected by the windshield, but everyone got wet. What a blast!

Crater Lake

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the U.S., and is a vibrant blue. However, smoke from nearby wildfires unfortunately obscured our view of the lake. The scenic drive from Roseburg to Crater Lake along the Umpqua Rogue rivers made up for it though.

Oregon Coast

The Oregon coast has so much to offer – cooler weather, beautiful giant evergreen trees and great beaches. The beach at Cape Lookout was extra special – we let the dogs off the leash and Monty zoomed up and down the beach chasing shore birds and splashing in the surf. Allie tried to keep up with him, but he was just too fast. Lexi did her thing – just sat and watched.

We also went to Cannon Beach, which we really liked. The town is cute and the beach was very wide. The tide was out while we were there, so the dogs romped in the shallow water and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Tillamook Creamery

Donya and I had discovered and fallen in love with Tillamook ice cream, so we were really excited when we learned that they had a factory that we could tour. We drove to Tillamook and as we approached the factory, we were shocked to see that the huge parking lot was jammed packed with cars. Evidently this is a very popular tourist stop. Upstairs at the visitor’s center we followed signs that explained the cheese making process and watched factory workers below us cutting and packaging blocks of cheese. We tasted several kinds of cheese before going downstairs to the store where we bought packages of smoked and white cheddar. On our way back to the RV park we stopped to buy a carton of salted caramel Tillamook ice cream – delicious!

Oregon Wineries

The Willamette Valley near Portland contains hundreds of wineries, producing mainly pinot noirs. We did wine tasting at two vineyards – Erath and Alexana. Alexana is the sister winery of Revana in Napa, which was recommended by Thomas Arvid’s assistant. Although we enjoyed two of the pinots, we didn’t buy any wine.

 

 

The enormous, devastating Mendocino Complex fire in Northern California caused us to change our plans, so instead of staying in Nice, CA on Clear Lake we went to Vacaville and Oroville near Sacramento. While in Vacaville we visited Bodega Bay and did some wine tasting at a few wineries in Napa Valley.

Bodega Bay is located just north of San Francisco and the tiny town of Bodega is where Alfred Hitchcock filmed some scenes of his scary movie “The Birds”.  While there we went to nearby Dillon Beach where dogs are allowed off the leash.

We visited a few wineries in Napa, including Castello di Amorosa where we toured this Medieval castle that took 15 years to build. The owner imported labor and materials from Europe to make it as authentic as possible. We visited the chapel, grand hall and cellars before tasting some of their wines. Donya and I are red wine drinkers, but we so enjoyed the Pinot Blanca that we bought a bottle.

We also attended the “Life is a Cabernet” release party at Silver Oak Winery where we met the artist Thomas Arvid.  His amazing paintings look like photographs. Donya owns two of his artist’s proofs, so we were thrilled to be able to meet him in person. Such a nice man!

The release party was to introduce their 2014 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, which was quite tasty but didn’t make it home with us.

From Vacaville (Cowtown) we went northeast to Oroville (Goldtown) and stayed at a beautiful, new RV park with the cleanest, nicest showers of any park we’d stayed at, and all sites were concrete pads with grass separating each site. We had grown weary of battling dust and dirt, as most RV parks have gravel or dirt sites, so this was a nice change. The week we spent here was downtime, which gave Donya an opportunity to get lots of work done.

We did drive around Lake Oroville, whose dam made headlines last year when the spillway split open. Water was diverted to the emergency spillway, but it wasn’t designed to handle this much water so the earth around the concrete structure began to erode, threatening to undermine the earthen dam. Fortunately, the rain let up and they were able to lower the lake to a safe level. Both spillways are being repaired and are expected to be ready for the winter rains.

I guess one cannot visit Oroville without mentioning Mother Orange Tree, the oldest orange tree in California and was the beginnings of the citrus industry.