Road Trip! Oregon! Newport! Glass Blowing!

I don't know how well these came out - but if you didn't know, glass-blowing is a pretty popular art here on the Oregon coast.  There are glass blowing shops all up and down the coast with quite a few exotic wares being sold here and there - many of them making exotic glass floats.   Anyways, I managed to get some pictures of a glass-blower doing his work at a shop on the far side of Yaquina bay.  Depending on Google's settings, previously you used to be able to get a higher resolution picture of these and click them and open them in a separate window - but I don't know if you can do that now anymore.  Anyways, these pictures are in reverse - from finished product at top to the near start at the bottom.

Anyways - you can see the glass glowing pink-hot from the kiln/forge/furnace - whatever it's called.  I've learned to do a lot of things in life - including blacksmithing and stained glass windows - but blowing glass isn't something I ever learned how to do.

Below are some pictures of the storm I wrote about in the earlier blog entry.  The camera is trained/programmed to let in more light on dark days.  And it was a DARK day - so this is about ten shades lighter than it was.  Not bad for a cell phone camera.  The winds here were about 40mph or so.   Here the waves were coming up into the river and headed up to the sidewalk under the bridge on the far side.  Normally the surf is like 500 feet to the left.

If you didn't know, something unique to Oregon Architecture is the concept of arches.  Most of the bridges going up and down our coastline and even inland have deliberately integrated the arches as part of our regional architecture.  It was strange in my travels overseas in the military how many people knew Oregon just from our scenery - and how much I could see the architecture styles when I came home - I still notice it today.  There's a quasi federalist-empire-classic style of architecture here in Oregon that's pretty unique - most notably on our bridges usually.  Speaking of bridges, Portland Oregon, in addition to being the City of Roses is the City of Bridges as well.  Sometime I might have to do a photo essay of all of them, beginning south in Oregon City there's the pioneer bridge that was originally built in the 1800's (Yes, new for you Europeans but old over here) then up to Sellwood, Ross Island, Freemont, Marqham, Steele, Broadway, Burnside, Morrison, Hawthorne, Saint John's, Abernathy, Glenn Jackson and Interstate Bridges and you can see at least one other one from any  one of them.

 

Here's a nice shot of where the sidewalk ends - or "Land's End" headed off into the Pacific - pacific.....meaning peaceful.....mmmmm no.   It doesn't look too bad in the pictures but this is after it was settling down anyways - I've seen worse - been out at sea on a Navy Fastboat in 20 foot waves or whatever picking someone up out at sea with sea spouts coming down on us - yadda yadda - it's all true - uphill both ways in the snow.....blah blah.

 

 Here's Yaquina bay - my friend Mike - when he gets his Seaplane license we're going to go get a seaplane and I want to fly under the Yaquina Bay Bridge and land in the harbor on the other side and tie up and go to dinner.  Just....something I want to do. 

Anyways, this is a picture of "trouble" camping - having way too much fun - and already filling her dad with horror as to what kind of guys shes going to attract with that pretty face some day and she's only four....hopefully someday she brings me a good son in law - not some douchebag who's ears I have to box for being a deadbeat husband.  I don't have any pictures of Matthew this trip - him and I were too busy sparring with me showing him how to knock a knife out of someone's hands with your feet and how to keep your eyes on your opponent through your roundhouse kicks.  OH!  At one point though - we're all camped out and "roughing it" and Rachel suddenly says ".....I wanna go to the mall.....can we go to the mall?"    Yeahhh....I hope not too high maintenance.

Sunday Musings......ROAD TRIP! OREGON! Saint Helens! Portland! Train Tunnel!

Today the Kidlets sang and spoke in their Primary Program at church.  Matthew about blasted the congregation out because he put the microphone in his mouth to speak (or it sounded like it) and Rachel was the loudest singer in the congregation just singing at the top of her lungs - it was cute.

So anyways, after a very personal spiritual experience today that made me think of my standing before God and really left me speechless - I decided to gather what I could together and take the kids down to the river to go throw rocks and dig and go metal detecting. 

I'm not sure that metal detecting is an appropriate Sabbath activity, but then I'm not Puritan so, for now it gives me time to think. 

Anyways, I found that metal detecting on a rocky beach is pretty much impossible given the tools that I have.  I have a small hand rake, two hand spades, my sifter and even a half-shovel - but for someplace rocky I'd actually need a probe.

But meanwhile I did get to look cool showing my kids how to skip rocks and how to skip three and four at a time and such. 

I did get to drool a bit as a Sherrif's Patrol Boat went by a couple times as we sat on the shore of the Willamette (Wih-LAM-et).  I spent a LOT of time on fast boats in the Navy.  So anyways, when I finish my Ph.D. I get a North Shore or Alumaweld Jet Boat.  It was a nice piece of equipment, though from the way it was moving I could tell it didn't have any special modifications to it.  Our boat in the navy had a nice .50 Cal on the front of it.   Actually, to go back to memories, have you ever seen translucence at sea on a pitch black night?  Where the algae emits light when you touch it?  You swirl your fingers through the water and it leaves glowing trails in the water that fade away quickly.  Under the boats at night the light was so bright at night it looks like you have a light system running under the boat - it's that bright.  I could read by it if I leaned over the side on a pitch black night and could keep from bouncing overboard and my book from getting wet.

Actual Light at the End of the Tunnel (1/2

 mile)

Sand Island Marina

Sellwood Bridge at Dusk

Sellwood Bridge

My helper

Willamette at Dusk

Anyways, yesterday, Rachel and I went out for a while and explored a tunnel on a railroad track that I've always wanted to look at that runs near Cornelius Pass.  It's kinda creepy going in - honestly though - I'm still paranoid from the military that I do pack everywhere I go.  So I walk into this tunnel in the middle of a forest and there's gang-banger graffiti on the walls all the way in until it gets dark and they can't see anymore to graffiti (wusses) and I find myself listening and watching and tensing up like I'm clearing a building or something again.....I just marvel that I can be on such high alert all the fricking time.  I swear I'll be dead by forty due to heart strain.  I even saw a man pull his wallet out the other day at the fall festival through a crowd and I honed in on it was assessing to prepare to draw because it looked like he was pulling a gun at the angle he was holding it.   I'm only glad I'm not like some veterans who do lose it and don't take the time to assess.  I'm also grateful that my assignment required perfection in the execution of my duties because my assignments were high profile and required me to make sure of everything before I act - never mind I can feel fuses blowing at times trying to hold it together when people get "up on me" like the not-so-nice gentleman at the WinCo yesterday who was in a hurry because it was half-time which makes him the most important person in the world automatically and entitles him to ride my rear like some gay guy trying to hit on me in a bar with body language and let me know how special I am while he goes after the cashier and harps on old people for being too slow.  Anyways, I didn't go too far through the tunnel because tunnels are damp and the ties had mud coming up in between them and with Rachel coming with me it was getting to where I was worried she would slip in something and we'd have a train come along and not be able to get out of the way in time or see to get out of the way (That'd be my luck)

Then we made it out to Saint Helens and went to a small park long enough to do some metal detecting on the river.  It was a small beach -I just covered the sandy area and found a dime and saw some nice boats there.

Rachel's first find

I'm so desperate for a boat I might actually just for the heck of it buy a raft - something I can go paddle around in the off-season and go out to some of these islands. Of course then I'll need a life preserver for the kidlets and if I take my minelab something waterproof and floatable to keep it in because I'm not about to just ditch a thousand plus dollars piece of equpment into the drink due to something idiotic happening.

Anyways, here's a picture of Rachel - I'd given up digging something and she continued on and found a pipe!  Her first find!  The Minelab does good but I think it could use a software upgrade because the places I search have so much debris and trash it's hard to sort through it all - though it does way better than my Garrett Metal Detector.  Whatever it is - it is cool to find things - although after two wedding rings and a lot of money I'm kind of spoiled. All I want is more!  That's all.  Is that too much to ask?

You'll have to forgive the formatting of the google blog - not sure what's up with it but - well it is what it is.  Simply because it is.

Road Trip! Oregon! Vernonia! Nehalem River! Roy! Idiotville!



If you can't figure out what this is you need help.

Well another road trip for the day!   Today (Actually a few days ago - been sick - and started this but just finished it today) I went to the Vernonia Pioneer Museum to see what I could find on a stagecoach route through the region.  Why?  My family owns property where the route used to run by and I'd be interested to go scope it out and see what I can find.

Today? Not a whole lot as it turns out.  Not much at all except there was one and the trip from Cornelius to Vernonia by stagecoach took 11 hours and 30 minutes. Its 27 miles by today's highway so it would have been approximately a 4mph journey at the MOST back then at any given point.  The only reason I found it out was someone in re-furbishing a home in downtown Vernonia found a newspaper in the walls from 1887 that actually on the front page had the stage coach route on it. Notice there is a town called "Idiotville" on the map.  Yes, its a real town but a ghost town.  A jumping off point for loggers in the forest where it was so isolated, "only an idiot would go out there."

Cobalt Blue Bottle Collection at the museum.  Every

pioneer museum needs a cobalt blue bottle display!

Vernonia's such an isolated community - you wouldn't even know it was there or how to get to it, or to Jewell or Mist or the Nehalem River unless there was the huge sign on the side of 26 pointing you that way.  There's really not much there.  In one of the floods back in 1996, the town is so isolated, it was actually forgotten while they were underwater. Literally - forgotten.  Good thing Bush wasn't president and it wasn't a black community.  Just a bunch of white loggers - we all know they deserve to be flooded out of their trailers and pickup trucks because they are so rich so it serves them right for being white. Their population wasn't even 2,000 then.  If God was truly just he would smite them with a 747 crashed into the side of the high school to punish them for their evil in cutting down trees while they should be converting to sharia jihadi militant Islam Oh, here's a link to a full episode of Ax Men - one of the stars of the show owns a logging company out of there, Mike Pihl - who everybody knows in town and even came up in the subject of talking with the ladies at the Museum.  Vernonia=loggers=logging.

Anyways, the Pioneer Museum is the old Mill Office of Oregon America Logging Company.  I was going to ask if I could take my metal detector to the grounds around the mill office but don't really want to deal with the Vernonia Thug Mafia Drug Dealer Police Department blowing a fuse over someone doing something without specifically asking them. (They have a reputation for dishonesty and corruption in the city - is it true?  I talked with a state trooper once who made a comment to the same effect while we chatted as he passed through Vernonia - so - I guess there's something to it - at any rate they do NOT have a reputation for being honest and as an ex-cop....well...I would rather not tangle with a corrupt PD). 

Nehalem River looking south under Bridge Street.  The salmon were

thrashing under the bridge on their way towards me.

So we finally headed down to the river and I did some metal detecting IN the river itself and just found the usual pennies.  However, the salmon are spawning and I saw something I've never seen before in my life: Steelhead Salmon, exhausted from their trip from the Pacific working their way up river in water that's almost too shallow for them.  They were HUGE!  Well over 3 feet and approaching four in many instances.  But they were thrashing through the shallows.  I had 90% of a mind to jump in and tackle one except for the Vernonia thug gang-rape drug-dealing police department was not something I cared to deal with that day as they have a reputation for enforcing rules they make up on the spot or that nobody's heard of - and more than that - I hate getting my shoes wet and I don't even like eating fish.  But it'd have been a scream to catch one!

Nehalem River looking north, the Salmon were thrashing in the
shallows there too on the right side just before the stillwater.

Another Magic Carpet Made of Steel from the Oregon American Logging Company

Formerly the brig of the USS Oregon (BB-3) - that for a time ended up as Vernonia's Jail.  Nobody knows how it got there but that's what it was.  Now it's on display in Vernonia.  Yet another scattered piece of Battleship Oregon around the state.

Interior view of the big.

At any rate, we had a good time.  A search of downtown located an old logging train, another Magic Carpet Made of Steel.

Strangely the brig off Battleship Oregon was in the park near the train  I hadn't thought much of it until I was reading the signs in the park tellng me what it was. Since I walked a beat in a brig and spent some time around them, I thought it'd be neat to put a picture of an old one from the 1800's up.

But the day couldn't start without Rachel getting a toy electric motor caught in her hair.

Rachel, demonstrating the fashionability of a toy motor in here hair

After all this we went to Mariolino's in downtown Vernonia for the two-for-one special and had four hamburgers for $2.00.   They really are good.

Finally, we ended up in Roy, Oregon, where my family lived back before the depression - German Immigrants and farmers.  There's not a lot to see there, small town....okay....exceptionally small town.  Makes Vernonia look huge.  Wide spot in the road.  But here's a few photos from playing around on the railroad tracks where the station used to be way-back when. Notice the grey skies.....yes....it's started again.  Rainy season....until next July pretty much.

Found a Gold Wedding Band Metal Detecting! Minelab Explorer II

I had my kids out at a park tonight where they played with the obnoxious only child (HEY! I'm an only child!  Wait.  Am I an only child if I'm an adult? Now what if I'm married?)

Anyways, after a while I finally found a gold wedding band about 4 inches down near an oak tree.

At least this time I didn't get skunked like I did at the beach.  I'm getting better at digging in the dirt.  My handy-dandy sifter was really nice as it allowed me to put the dirt in it and then put it back in the hole without leaving a bunch of tore up grass at the park. 

On another note - I really hate it when I go to the park and my kids play with other kids.  My daughter's a cutie but a hellion.  No fear.  Going to get hurt someday if she doesn't put the brakes on this stuff.  Easily taken advantage of - but way too outgoing for a four year old.  Anyways, it's enough to manage my kids when they are at their rowdiest and most rambunctious - never mind doing managing someone elses' kids while they are rambunctious.  And THEN having to deal with other parents as well.  I actually got after the mom who tried to get after me for getting after her daughter for throwing sticks at my daughter.  Stupid stupid drama on a playground.  Too much drama.  Too much.

Pictures - Some Mine - Some Others

I took a few of these with my camera - I took the others from the web