Military Romance Author
When bad things happen to people and animals in our country, we respond. One fine feathered example is little Pinecone, a baby Screech owl who needed a helping hand after a bad rain storm.
Staff at the Cascades Raptor Center made sure he grew up strong. Now he has a new home at the Oregon Zoo.
How cute is this little guy?
Take care of each other and have a safe weekend. Happy Quirky Friday!
Is it just me or is it time for an off-season? From life! Watching two of my three NFL teams get beat this past Sunday, I pondered their talk about the off-season. When do we get an off-season? Between the news, bad weather and the major construction outside my front door, I need to re-stock the chocolate shelf. Might fill up the downstairs shower too. Can’t be too careful.
But a lovely escape did happen last week, celebrating my sister’s birthday. We motored across the Columbia River to wonderful Vancouver, Washington to see the new river walk area that opened up.
Had a lip smacking lunch at the Wildfin restaurant, super tasty. Only been open a week, but the place was jam-packed. Try visiting off-hours between lunch and dinner. The industrial vibe can get a tad noisy when the place is full. But the food is great and the prices reasonable for a river front view.
After lunch we walked outside to experience the over the water suspended walk way along the Columbia River. Very cool. Great view of the Interstate Bridge and the river traffic.
They are still finishing final art and landscape installations along the river walk, but you can wander at will and enjoy the view. Mega condos and apartments are also still under construction. Walkers, runners, wanderers and doggies on the prowl were all in evidence.
Sometimes a small escape from an ordinary day gives one a whole new perspective. There is another restaurant open, Twigs, so we must go back and explore that one too.
Never underestimate the power of a lunch date escape out-of-town. The sanity you save may be your own!
Obviously I’m not the only one starting early to celebrate Fall. Fufu, the hedgehog from the Oregon Zoo, had herself a wonderful time chowing down on grubs in Fall gourds. How cute is she?
So stock up on supplies of your choice, grubs or pumpkin, and get ready for winter. Don’t let Fufu get all the gourds!
Have a great, safe, weekend and Happy Quirky Friday!
Huge Harvest Moon last night. Which partly explains my urges to nap or eat. Or eat and nap. With the golden light of Fall turning the leaves red, orange and dead, time to conserve energy.
We are having glorious eighty degree weather right now here in Oregon, so no need to hibernate. But I want to. Is it the pumpkins in the store? The Halloween candy stocked in all the aisles? The sun setting at seven p.m.? Yes.
Then that true sign of winter appeared on tv; Hallmark Christmas movies start on Oct. 26! My intent is to read, write and craft this winter. Seems I went down the rabbit hole this year and started collecting card crafting items. Swore I would not go there, but I did. (Gemini Junior! Diamond Press! Anna Griffin! Stop me now….. )
However, I will not be making my Christmas cards. Really. I send fun cards and I have a ton of those from last year’s clearance sales. I try to be cheap, er thrifty. But notice I did not say never. I’ve eaten that word so many times it’s not funny. So now I avoid it.
The harvest festivals are starting and the farmer’s markets are closing. Can snow be far behind? Let’s get ahold of ourselves. Stop that. Time to go fondle my craft supplies. Paper therapy.
Spring will come again. Right after I eat myself into a stupor this holiday season. Time to go fire up the treadmill; for Spec Ops Cat.
Might be time to start hoarding cans of Libby’s pumpkin pie mix. Just to be safe…….
Bugged out last week and took off on a research vacation. Stayed at Alpaca Country Estates Ranch and B&B in Terrebonne, Oregon. More than a thousand alpacas. And new babies. I know. So exciting!
Needless to say, I used two cameras, the video camera and the video on one of my cameras. I have so many pictures and digital video I don’t know where to start. Learned so much about alpacas from our airbnb hosts Nancy and Art.
This one-hundred-thirty-four acre working alpaca ranch is one of the largest in the United States. We got to see the alpacas up close and personal. We even got kisses from one of the alpha males, Classy. Yes, I have pictures taken by Gate Girl.
Our room was on the second floor almost directly over the barn and right across from the nursery. I actually bounced out of bed at dawn to take alpaca pictures and watch them rotate the alpacas from pasture to pasture. Breakfast was at a civilized 8:30 a.m. Pumpkin pancakes!
Many of the alpaca facts I learned are going into one of the fiction books I’m working on right now. While I write fiction, I want to make sure my facts are correct. Never a good idea to upset the alpacas. Or readers.
Spent two nights on the ranch, then headed into Sisters to stay, shop and eat. What I do best. Also hiked along the Metolius River, a favorite walk, due to the eating thing I mentioned earlier. (Peach pie, bread pudding)
Of course, any trip has its hiccups, which included the check engine light coming on as I started the drive over the Santiam Pass. At 4,600 feet elevation and no cell service, we pulled over and I reset the gas cap, a common Subaru cause. Decided to go for it and keep driving until we got cell bars, then called the Bend Subaru dealer.
They said we should be okay to keep driving to Bend since the check engine light wasn’t flashing. Good to know. Would have been nice to have that in the manual instead of having an ongoing pre-stroke waiting for the engine to blow up on me.
So we tacked on an extra twenty-two mile drive at the beginning of the trip to the dealer and it turned out to be the gas cap as I suspected. It was fine then, but I didn’t trust it. So the first thing I bought on vacation was a new gas cap, just in case. Every girl’s dream is to buy a gas cap on vacation.
So we arrived at the ranch later than expected but all was well when we saw the baby alpacas. Gate Girl and I were trying to figure out how many we could stuff in the back of the Subaru, but we would need to take their mom’s too, so that became a logistics packing problem. We took pictures instead.
Later when we couldn’t visit Suttle Lake due to an algae bloom and the hotel hot tub broke, we were still good. Cranky, but good. We’d been up close and personal with baby alpacas. That beats gas caps, algae bloom and broken hot tubs any day.
Make the most of the last days of summer here in Oregon!
Check out the ranch:
https://www.alpacacountryestates.com/
If you’re one of the four people who have not seen this video this week, you’re in for a treat. How cute is this little lamb? Proves the adage good and fierce things come in small packages.
Where do we buy the designer lamb sweaters? Get patterns? Anybody know?
Have a great weekend and Happy Quirky Friday!
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