Pic-of-the-Month for August and September 2021

 Hello Friends,

Have you been wondering what we've been up to this summer?  Probably not, but I'm going to share with you anyhow, since if you don't follow me on Facebook, you haven't heard much since late July.  

Here it is nearing the end of September, and we are getting ready to head south, like all good snowbirds do!  Especially since we had a really nice rainstorm, and snow in the mountains this weekend.  This is the view from the "Purkey Ranch" where we spend a lot of our summers.  Last week, the Three Sisters had NO snow on them.  This covering is the result of rain and snow Friday through Sunday.  And no smoke!  The rain may have put out some of the fires, or at least helped a lot!  The temperature here this morning was 26F!  BRRRR!!!

Now I just have to remember what we've done this summer!  Thankfully, I have a few photos to help me! 

First major camping trip: Hart Mountain

We joined George and Carolyn Sackinger, and their grandson JJ for our annual trip to Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge.  Of course, we had to start out the trip with a visit to Cowboy Dinner Tree near Silver Lake.  It's always an adventure in eating when we go there; and eating and eating and eating.  The steaks we had lasted several weeks (in the freezer) for lots of meals.

The cat in the picture above ended up sitting right next to me at dinner time, waiting for a little sample.  (Fat chance, Kitty Cat.  I don't feed animals from my table!) 

We went on to Hart Mountain the next day, and set up in our "favorite" camp site.   They'd even mowed the grass for us!  

The wildflowers were blooming nicely, and there were lots of butterflies around.  The hot springs felt wonderful, as always.  See our July 2021 album for more photos of wildflowers, a blown out tire on our truck, and other sights along the way, including a cattle drive!

2nd Camping Trip: We went west for our next camping trip with Mel and Katie into the Willamette Forest near Clear Lake.  Mel spent many years working in that area, and knows it well, including where the huckleberries grow.  We spent 3 days picking huckleberries, several hours a day, and ended up with a nice supply to bring south!  We've also eaten quite a few already.  They make a nice addition to the peach pies I've been baking!  

Pictures of that trip, with many more wildflowers, and a Huckleberry Hound, are in the August 2020 album.

3rd Trip for Family and Friends:  Since we were "half way" there, we continued west to Salem and spent a couple weeks there and in Eugene visiting with friends and family.  We got to celebrate Ben's brother Greg's birthday with him and his family and Dan and Laura and visited my brother Rich.  Tom and Karan had fixed a nice new trailer spot for us next to his new pumphouse, with electrical and water hook-ups.  Only problem with this visit is that the corn wasn't quite ripe yet, but Tom still gave us a few ears that he had hunted around for!  And yes, it was delicious!

Pretty nice camping spot there!  

Fourth Camping Trip:  We went by ourselves to explore Central and Eastern Oregon.  We camped at Clyde Holliday State park near Mt. Vernon, which is a lovely place.  We took several drives up into the mountains from our camp spot and saw some beautiful country.  

On the way back to Bend, via Hwy 395, Burns and Hwy 20, we stopped at Glass Butte so Ben could get in some Obsidian Rock Hounding.  He found some nice pieces, and has been cutting some with brother Ken's rock saw.  Who knows, they might end up being a pretty piece of jewelry?!

Unfortunately, it ended up being very smokey there, as it was in the Bend area due to forest fires further west.  We had at least a week of very unhealthy smoke conditions. 

Fifth Camping Trip:

We decided to not attend the Pendleton Roundup this year, even though we had tickets that had rolled over from 2020.  But we also decided we wanted to go visit my niece Anne and her hubby Mike in Athena, and other friends in Walla Walla.  So, we went there the week before the Roundup, and had a great time. (Thanks to great-nephew Quinn, we also sold our 2020 tickets for the price on the ticket!!)   Our friends Dick and Julie invited us up on Saturday, when there was a CAR SHOW in town!  First one we've been to in several years, and it was a lot of fun.  We saw some great cars there, and were kind of sorry we couldn't display a few of ours!  See 2021-September album for some cool cars.

Anne and Mike have a new puppy, a NewfyDoodle!  His name is Samson, but he looks nothing like our old Sam!  I think he looks more like the Muppet Animal!!  Especially when he shakes that big head of his! He is huge, but  he and Zoey got along just fine, after the first day of across the fence introductions.  The only pet Zoey didn't get along with was their cat Horatio, who is the real boss of the place!  We managed to get Zoey to keep her distance from the cat, with a lot of effort. 

We left Athena on Monday, and met up with the Sackingers at Cottonwood Canyon State Park on Hwy 206, between Wasco and Condon.  What a beautiful place on the John Day River.  The river was quite low, but the scenery was great, and the hiking was great too;  mostly on one level along the river.

From here, we returned to Clyde Holliday State Park to spend a couple nights.  We explored around the area, including Thomas Condon Paleontology Center and the Cant Ranch.  Both very interesting places.  I didn't realize that most of the ranchers in the early 1900's raised sheep, not cattle.  Pictured below is Sheep Rock.  Maybe it looks like a sheep?  Or maybe because there were always sheep on it?  This was the view from the back of the ranch house.

The ranch house was closed due to COVID-19, but we could see what a beautiful place it was.  We explored the grounds and saw some typical farm implements (including a large sheep shearing section of the barn) and the original orchard (where we could pick and eat any fruit we'd like without climbing the trees).  More pictures of both places are in the 2021-September album.

So, we're back at the Purkey Ranch for the duration of our time here, getting things bought and packed and final doctor appointments.  We hope to leave October 4, and join up with friends Jill and Rudy in El Cajon on the 6th, cross the border and join up with Mel and Katie in Tecate.  Vamos!  Let's go!  Another adventure is in store!  

Zoey has had an interesting summer, with numerous vet visits early on.  She had a problem with her upper back (near her neck) and would scream (literally) whenever we picked her up to put her in our out of the trailer or truck.  She was on prednisone, muscle relaxant, and pain pills for 3 or 4 weeks.  She started doing better when we did our Willamette Forest camping trip (maybe the huckleberries did it?)  Anyhow, she's still wobbly, and always will be, but at least she's off all meds (she did like that cheese I wrapped her pills in!)  

By the way, Ben has been busy all summer with the Feeding the Hungry COVID-19 program in Baja.  So far, 80 families who have been affected by COVID in the area have been helped with food vouchers from the local grocery store in Los Barriles.  There are probably more out there, but they are hard to communicate with since the hurricane, and many don't have phones.  Ben keeps track of all the questionnaires, the various families, their problems, and approves the issuance of vouchers.  Dalia, who speaks Spanish and English, interviews all the people via telephone and lets Ben know about them.  Gordon, a friend who lives year round in LB, puts a voucher package together of 4 vouchers (worth about $50) and delivers them to a place where a representative for the family (without COVID) picks them up.  It's a well greased system, and is working well.  The good news is that several families we've checked back with say "we're fine, give the vouchers to someone who needs them worse than us".  We're hoping the number of cases is receding at this point...time will tell.  

Thanks for making it through this epic story of our summer adventures.  I promise you won't hear from us until October sometime, but we will always respond to your correspondence to us.  

Until the next time I get ambitious!

Your Snowbird amigos,

Harriet, Ben and Zoey