Scramble and Splash

As many fun things as there are to do in southern Oregon, come summer it requires a bit of selective time management. Most any hiking has to be done in the morning, before the sun reaches it zenith, and it pays to be out of the house between 5:30 pm and 7 when it's just as hot inside as it is outside.

Wednesday we got out of the house early to tackle Pilot Rock. The guide book classifies the hike as "strenuous" and it wasn't kidding. Although it's only a mile as the crow flies, there's an 800 foot climb that's fairly vertical at times before you can stand on the top and look out at the world. This part of the trail is just to get to the base of the rock.
Carl put his predatory skills to work and caught us a lizard.
The wildflowers were in full swing, covered in butterflies.
Let the climb begin!
Up at top, Carl does his best to smile for the camera. If you look closely you can see Mt. Shasta lurking in the background.
Cheese!
Next day, we headed for the water to cool off. Carl and Bubba enjoy the view of Mt. McLoughlin from Lake Hyatt
Bubba got to try out his new life jacket. He didn't stop whining or swimming the entire time we were there.
Even the kayak got to come out and play. I cleaned it out thoroughly beforehand to remove any skulking arachnids.
Happy summer!

Dog Days of Summer

It feels like we just got back from West Virginia, but that's still too long for us to sit still. The temperatures are ramping up here in southern Oregon even though we're not nearly as bad as the rest of the country. Lucky for us we have the option of picking up and heading out to the coast where it's twenty degrees cooler and chock full of salty, sandy adventures. On Wednesday that's exactly what we did, following the gorgeous Smith River down into California and then turning north for a few more miles to Brookings, Oregon.

We rolled in just as everyone else was checking out of Harris Beach State Park and were able to nab a sweet little camping spot before heading down to the beach. Bubba discovered a new favorite past time: ripping apart the long, rubbery snakes of bull kelp washed up on shore. We can't figure out which part he likes better, the satisfying popping sound when he first tears them open or the firm yet yielding texture which allows for utter annihilation.
There were several cool rock formations to scramble over, under and around in search of hidden treasure. I think Carl is looking for whales.
My two favorite boys.
I'm still a big kid when it comes to tidepooling. There's nothing better than sticking your finger in the biggest sea anemone you can find.
We found plenty of little crabs, but this time turned up some new ones. I've never seen the ones with the bigger claws before, and so far in my internet perusals I haven't been able to come up with an identification.
This may possibly be the best picture of all time.
Watching the sun drop into the ocean, just another one of my favorite hobbies.
The next morning we headed into town for some breakfast and managed to squeeze into Mattie's Pancake House. It was bursting at the seams with families on vacation, biker gangs passing through, and locals in for their usual. Carl got the fresh crab omelette and I was almost jealous, except that my Swedish crepes with lingonberry butter kept my mouth occupied the whole time. If you're ever passing through Brookings, you should definitely stop by.

Ring Around the Valley

Now that school's out for the summer I've somehow lost track of the days. My sweetie's weekend is actually Wednesday and Thursday, while the rest of the world celebrates a more traditional respite, leaving my sense of time all topsy-turvy.

On Saturday I had the chance to attend the Siskiyou Folk and Bluegrass Festival over at Lake Selmac, about half an hour outside of Grants Pass. The incentive to leave the house was provided by Heidi, a Grants Pass resident and friend way back from my Seward, AK days. We've been living 45 minutes apart for the past eight months and finally, finally got the chance to spend some quality time together. It was a wonderfully small, relaxed venue for two such homebodies as ourselves. The stage was a semi-trailer set up at the lake's edge and Wild River Brewing Company had taken over the picnic shelter to dole out burgers and beer. Families with young kids and pairs of old fogeys populated the lawn and bobbed their heads along time with the surprisingly good music. The local talent in southern Oregon is pretty darn phenomenal.

Sunday was cool and misty as the day before. The plants are all a little confused because historically it's supposed to be in the 100s here. Personally, I have no problem with switching it up. It makes 11 mile runs so much more enjoyable. Come August I'll be running at elevations anywhere between 5,980 and 7,850 feet above sea level, so I figured I should probably start training up there. I headed up Mt. Ashland to the Pacific Crest Trail, which cuts across the mountain on its way from Mexico to Canada. I ran just a portion of that, hiking over a couple small snow banks and taking in the views of massive Mt. Shasta. While it never seems to get any easier, I'm starting to feel better afterwards, especially the long runs.

After all that I had to marshal my energy to gear up for my second musical adventure of the weekend. Carl and I packed a picnic dinner before heading over to the picturesque town of Jacksonville. The annual Britt Festival draws artists from all over the country, and we were there to see the Avett Brothers in all their exuberant glory. It was a gloriously diverse crowd, from death metal zombies and flannel-clad hipsters in skinny jeans to dread-locked hippies in organic hemp drapings. Needless to say the people watching was fantastic. As was the music; the venue is set on a hill radiating out from the stage so you can hear no matter where you're at. It was hard to sit still and luckily we didn't have to. We'll be back in September for the John Butler Trio!

It's almost enough to distract me from the fact that I'll be taking a very expensive practical exam in T-minus five days. I'm having a little trouble getting my head back in the game...what's a pectineus again?

The Round Up at Knutty Acres

Go ahead, make all the jokes you want about West Virginia and get it out of your system. Banjo music, moonshine, incest, poor dental hygiene, the works. I can assure you it's only partially true.

When Carl and I packed our bags for the family reunion at his folks' place in Harpers Ferry, I was under the impression that we'd be spending most of our time hanging out in the shade, floating down the Potomac River, and that maybe, just maybe, I'd find enough motivation to go running once or twice. Little did I know that we were to be dragooned into an animal-wrangling posse ruled by the iron fist of his mother Nancy. She's a lovely woman and was kind enough to lend me some clothes appropriate for such earthy endeavors.

Down on Knutty Acres (the affectionate name for the Kautz abode) there is a resident herd of some 70 hoofed beasts, a combination of goats and black bellied Barbados sheep (try saying that ten times fast). Our mission: to give the 40 new babies their tetanus shots. First, said wild beasts had to be extracted from the forests of sumac and Osage orange and herded into a small pen. From that pen they were pushed into an even smaller one, which then required one to wade in among the sheep and weed out the newbies, identified by small golden tags in their ears. Nancy was in charge of the shots because none of us wanted to get any closer to the needles than we had to; Carl, his sister Amy, and I were in charge of sheep-wrastling.
Here I am modeling the approved method of nabbing those fleecy buggers.
You'd think we were chopping off their ears instead of just cuddling them from the noises they made.
Nancy at work. You had to make sure you had the goats by the horns (even though they're not quite bulls they'll still do a number on you).
At the end of it all, Carl thought I looked so darn cute as a farm girl that he had to dress me up in the straw hat and shepherd's crook, and pose me with Lily Pearl on the porch swing. Lily thinks she's a dog and will follow you anywhere, even into a silly picture. Gee shucky darn!
By the close of the weekend we managed to catch 35 of our 40 targets, which isn't bad at all. We even got to spend plenty of time sitting in the shade, floating in the river, and yes, I even paddled my butt across the way to the C&O Canal trail for a couple jogs. The relatives were all convinced that I'd simply disappeared. Like any good family, this one loves to eat, so there was plenty of food all weekend long. Even when the electricity went out during the mother of all lightning storms and the hot sausages went cold in the crock pot, there wasn't even a glimmer of starvation as the tables groaned with 4 different pasta salads and 27 varieties of dessert. Good times were had by all.

And where was Bubba during all this, you may ask? He got to go on his very own vacation up to the beautiful San Juan Islands in Washington State, accompanied by my parents. He loved the swimming but wasn't so fond of the fireworks. Fun as it was, at the end of it all he, like us, was very glad to be home.