First Snow!

9th September.
Enough said.

Morning on the balcony...

I'm not too upset though, because it snowed in Bondi around the same time!

Roadtrip - The Road Home - Day 3

After the huge fun of the gig, all that remained was the final push home, through the rest of Washington State, across the border (much easier this time) and through the Okanagan Valley to the cabin. I hadn't realised it before, but Washington State is famous for its apples, and this was pretty clear as we drove past orchard after orchard laden with lots of juicy fruit. It's not all there naturally though, irrigation from the Columbia being a huge factor in whether a farm will survive or not.


Where's the water being used?


Washington (and also Oregon although to a lesser extent) have one of the more bizarre farming practices I've seen which is heating the crop to prevent damage from frosts. Apparently this is a pretty old practice and used to be done with smokepots and windmills leading to a whole bunch of smog and unpleasantness during the cold winters. These days the heat comes from gas but the windmills are still used to push the heated air over the crop and keep it from snapping frozen.


Windmill heaters...

The Okanagan Valley (we're back in Canada now) is a pretty little area that produces a huge amount of Canadian wine that we've been appreciating over the past few months as we make an effort to try out the local stuff (we're spoiled from all the good Australian wines I guess). Lots of fun twisty little roads through this part of the world and I think we'll be back for sure to take a little closer look at the place and possibly even go on a winery tour or four...

So we finally made it back to the cabin after two weeks of road tripping, worn out but excited about all the new stuff we'd seen, the experiences we'd had and the chance to spend some time with the southern arm of the family. In the meantime, Ken and Bonnie had been busy at Adams Lake and the biffy was almost totally finished. And it's pretty luxurious too for an outhouse.


Fancy new biffy...


The finished product...

The only thing left was to build a retaining wall around the high side which Col and I managed to pull off in a really fun afternoon of Tetris with logs!

Solid - I think you'll agree...

On the way out we even managed to spot some sockeye salmon spawning in the creek near the marina where the boat is kept. These are really really good eating (especially when smoked on a cedar plank on the barbie) and the colours are just insane! But when they're flashing the crazy colours, only the ravenous bears and cougars feast on their flesh because after the whole spawning process - swimming in from the coast, putting on the pretty colours for the mating ceremony, etc. - their flesh becomes mushy and not-so-delicious.


Sockeye salmon spawning...

So all in all a pretty extensive trip, lots of good times and some cool photos to bring back with us...we'll have to do this again some time!

Roadtrip - The Road Home - Day 2

Day 2 of the road home was the unexpected gem in the trip and that was because we had booked tickets to the Dave Matthews Band concert at the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Washington (cool name hey?). We'd originally planned to do this stopover on the way home because Jason Mraz was the support act and since we're big fans, and it was on the way home why not? What we didn't realise was that Dave Matthews has been running this concert at around the same time every year at the same place and it's become a sort of pilgrimage for the hardcore DMB fans. Some of the people we met there had been to over 70 or 80 DMB gigs over the years and had been back to the Gorge 3 or 4 times. We just rocked up in the minivan with some groceries from a supermarket down the road a ways but there were people there with huge RVs, tents, generators, full on stereo systems, the works.


DMB campground...

The concert runs over the course of 3 days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights and we could only stay the one night, but would have definitely stayed longer if we'd had the time. The Amphitheatre is truly spectacular, being cut out of the side of the Columbia River Gorge with the stage on the very edge so when you're sitting on your little terraced piece of grass on your blankets and lawn chairs you just have this amazing panorama of the sun going down over the Gorge and the stage right there in the midst of it all with this amazing music being played with huge amounts of enthusiasm and passion. Truly truly a great time. Sadly cameras weren't allowed into the venue itself, but this picture taken just down the road gives an idea of the sort of landscape that was the natural backdrop to the gig.


Columbia Gorge...

Roadtrip - The Road Home - Day 1

Having sorted out our travelling speeds and how often we needed to fill up with gas on the way down we had this whole road tripping gig down to a fine art when we bade Kerstie and Thom farewell and started north (coincidentally driving past where we had kayaked on the Rogue and also very close to Crater Lake). We made time. Good time. In fact on the first day of travelling north we covered the entire state of Oregon from south to north. Arriving at the Columbia River again (this time east of Portland) we cast around for a campground. The drive through interior Oregon was a little bit more depressing than the coast drive due to the number of ghost towns, the generally run down roads and houses and the enormous number of prefab homes or trailers on the farms as the homesteads. Obviously the economy of the interior is not nearly as lucrative as closer to the coast. Most of the land is dry and arid and the farming is heavily dependant on irrigation.


Irrigation in the Columbia River Valley...

Of course with not as much wealth in the area and not as much tourist flow through, there aren't as many campsites. In fact there were only about a tenth of the numbers on the coast and our search for somewhere to stay for the night had started a little late. It was pitch black, raining (we'd crossed over into Washington State again remember?), everything was full and we were dog tired after a long long day in the car. Eventually as we'd almost decided to drive to the tri-city area of Richmond, Kennewick and Pasco and try to find a motel or something equally unsatisfying we tried one last possibility and managed to sqeauk through the gates 5 minutes before they closed for the night. We soon realised our mistake and the reason for no openings in any of the other potential layover spots when we saw all the reserved tags on the campsites for the long weekend. Every man and their dog was heading out of the cities and into our countryside, filling up our highways and camp spots! Very rude. Thankfully the masses weren't starting to exodus until the day after, but we did meet one stinky resident already enjoying the action (namely garbage): a skunk. Parking well away from the black and white scavenger, amidst the sprinklers (irrigation is huge in the interior...) we crashed out for the night.


Army Corps of Engineers campsite...

Waking up again the next morning to find ourselves in a campground full of RVs and huge trucks that was run by the Army Corps of Engineers. They sure do run a tight ship and it was a pretty nice little spot, but across the small lake next to it was some sort of huge cement processing plant, the highway crossed the lake just next to the campground across two bridges (built by the Engineers no less). And this campground was fully booked out. People were paying to stay on a man made lake, next to a humming highway bridge across from a rumbling cement plant. It just makes you realise how lucky you really are in Canada to have access to recreation areas so much better than that.


Army Corps of Engineers bridges...(campground just before the bridge, factory on the right)