Summer Vacation 2015

Summer Vacation 2015

July was the month of the travel vacation for me starting on the first day of the month.  I left for Cove, Oregon from the South Lake Tahoe foothills.  It was 104 degrees when I left.  I covered my garden with some lacy fabric  to act as shade cloth so that, hopefully, something would still be alive when I returned back home and it did all survive nicely.

The first leg of my trip took me through the back country of where I live.  It was a fantastic unfoldment of farms and woods winding northward over rivers and gaining in altitude until I turned onto the major freeway taking me over the top of the majestic Sierras and down and through Reno, Nevada on my way to my evening destination of Winnemucca.

The weather was in the triple digits everywhere except the highest elevations.  I had packed snacks in a large cooler and would move some foot out of it and next to the drivers seat at each baking rest stop that I frequently stopped at.

In about four hours I was checking into my motel room.  At the time three planets were snuggled in the twilight together; the moon, Venus and Neptune.  I went across the street to a casino and won $20, had dinner and came back to soak in the tub and relax.  It had been a hot day and the air conditioners were humming in all the rooms.

The next morning I filled my thermos up with hot coffee and took off with a full tank of gas and drove directly north to cross into southern Oregon and head n/e into Idaho.  Leaving Winnemucca, until I reached Jordan, Oregon, I was driving up a valley floor between two long mountain ranges that seemed about twenty miles away on either side. 

The road was well-paved but a small two-lane highway without any curb area or pull-outs.  Cars had to pass one another.  There were wide farms all along the way until we hit the Oregon border.  Then it was unmarred by man, excepting the road, until the outskirts of Jordan, where I again filled up the gas tank. 

Being from California I’m used to filling my own gas tank so it took me by surprise that an attendant helped me out. 

I put some new snacks in the front seat and took off to soon enter an isolate Idaho with wonderful hill formations and then a long curve ride down, down the hills into Idaho farmland surrounding Boise.  From there I found the freeway taking me back up to the east side of Oregon. The weather outside was 104 degrees and I passed a road crew resurfacing part of the freeway.  Somehow that seemed inhumane.  Hope they got extra pay for that. 

 I was getting really sleepy and watching for signs for food and lodging and pulled off the freeway to find a real coffee shop.  I had a vanilla latte and was ready to finish the drive which was actually about to happen after driving five hours already. 

I had seen a lot of countryside that day that was mostly blond with dry grass but had just driven up a steep grade of pine covered mountains, and now was in a large valley of farmland.  The GPS lady guided me off the freeway and through the farmland toward the mountains in the east.

As I saw the town of Cove, population 552, I was in wonder as it looked like a German village snug up against and in the shadow of 7,150 foot Mt. Fanny and built into it’s lower curving base on the eastern slope of the Grand Ronde Valley.  The houses had pointed roofs and many streets were covered with gravel.  It had a charming air about it.

I finally pulled into my brothers driveway and was able to stretch and give and get hugs.  Two days and ten hours of driving was a lot for me to do by myself and I was very happy to be there to finally see my brother Dan and sister-in-law Maureen’s house and small farm.

Cove is where cherry trees grow and I have arrived to help pick the trees.  Each tree has to be cleaned of the succulent fruit or the authorities ask that you cut the tree down to prevent infestation affecting the other orchards.  Dan has six trees, three large Lambert cherry trees, a Queen Anne tree and a couple of smaller trees, one with sour cherries for making pies.  We picked the sour cherry tree first and Maureen made the most delicious cherry pie made perfect with a touch of almond extract.

Last year was a much larger harvest than this year.  Two hundred and fifty gallons of cherries were picked as compared to fifty gallons this year.  We even helped a neighbor pick a tree to get that many.

We used tall ladders that were shaped like little Eiffel Towers that had a third pole to keep it steady.  I made it up to the fourth rung while Maureen was on the top if not in the tree itself.  We put the cherries in cut-off plastic milk jugs and then dumped them into a large cooler.

We used a pitting device on many of the cherries so that we could dry them in a couple of dehydrators.  I was given a couple of huge bags of fresh cherries and dehydrated cherries to take home and share.

Another highlight of my trip was suiting up and helping Maureen check on her bees.  I was wearing a hat with netting that tucked inside my clothing, gloves, and socks over my pant legs while timidly standing beside Maureen while she pulled out slabs of honeycombs stacked sideways in the boxes.  She showed me the queen and the larvae, as without gloves on her hands.

Maureen will be selling her bee’s honey at the next Cherry Festival in Cove this August.  She is going to have Dan help her build a shack beside the gravel road to sell jars of honey as well.  We visited a nearby shack that sold vegetables and spruce tip salt and vinegar.  I bought some of the flavored salt and put my money in the slot of a mailbox-like box with a locked lid.

There were also a couple of apple trees that were covered in clusters of small fruits.  We filled a bucket of apples we thinned out of a tree for the resident critters:  two alpacas, two furry goats, two sheep and several chickens.

Maureen had planned several outings for us.  The first was going to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center to see a concert and a museum.  The concert was amazing with historical references and information.  Did you know that cowboys sang to the sheep so they would stay calm and not stampede, which could be deadly?

Then we had a picnic at Anthony Lakes high up in the Malheur National Forest where Dan had taught beginning skiing for awhile.  Nearby Grande Lake was smaller and encircled by fishermen on outcrops.  It was an image that made me smile and one that I would see at other lakes we visited.

Another day we went to the farmers market in Le Grande and then had a picnic lunch by nearby Morgan Lake.  Food tastes better when you eat it outside.

We also went to Joseph City in Wallowa County.  I have always like Chief Joseph from the Nez Perce tribe and was happy to be in the valley that they had lived in before they were forced off the land illegally by the American government.    We visited a memorial of Chief Joseph’s father who died there and was touched by the simple items that people placed around the decorative tombstone.

We went to artisanal stores in Joseph’s quaint downtown and then on to Wallowa Lake.  We took a tram up to the top of Mount Howard and looked down on the lake and the valley below.  It was less scary going down in the tram after having a champagne mimosa to relax while on top.

All in all, during my stay in Cove, we had good food, played board games, drank iced-coffee and homemade currant wine, watched the distant fireworks show across the valley at sunset (which took place at 10:00 PM), watched my brother build a foundation for a pool/spa, helped work around the farm and went on great field trips.  Not bad for a wannabe farmer.

It was time for me to leave and go back to California and I wanted to go a different route in order to see more of the countryside.  I drove through the middle of Oregon and then down toward California.  After driving on a curvy mountain road for a couple of hours through the Whitman National Forrest I thought I was getting a little dizzy as the fallen logs between the majestic trees began to resemble large lizards and dragons.

I decided to pull over to a café and have some coffee and spice cake and rest a bit before taking off again through a high valley to my evening destination at a hotel in Lakeside, Oregon.  While driving through the valley I was mystified by the small clouds that seemed to be dancing around distant volcanoes.  Then there was the hugest, darkest black cloud that I called the “mother ship” that I had to drive beneath.  I was really hoping it wouldn’t decide to dump it’s load of rain on me when I felt a hundred miles away from anywhere, by myself.  I probably only saw four cars pass me in this long highway so far. 

In the distance I could see streaks of rain falling at the edge of the large cloud and it made it look like an underwater scene with sun streaks pouring through.  I half expected to see some fish flying by in the sky.  (What was in that spice cake???)

Just before arriving at Lakeside I drove beside a beautiful lake.  It looked so beautiful I had to stop and take pictures.

After spending the night at Lakeside I re-entered California and continued enjoying the mountains and valleys until I reached another brother’s home high up in Quincy.  I spent a few days there enjoying his family and left to visit another brother at the bottom of the mountain in Oroville, following the magnificent Feather River all the way down.  It was by far the best river of the many that the highways I traveled seemed to run along.

Finally I drove up the Sacramento Valley to home, feeling quite happy inside, like a special flavor that I have been savoring ever since.