Okay, so yeah, it's been a while .... again

It's not that nothing is happening over here when time lapses between posts ...... it's just that sometimes the motivation level drops off.  But there was this:

In April we headed to the eastern edge of our state to help Favorite(s) Daughter and S-I-L, with their remodeling job of their current new-to-them house.   As sad as it is to have them move five hours away (as opposed to the previous three), it is parentally gratifying to see them in a situation better suited to their needs.  And who knew how pretty this portion of our state could actually be?  When you've spent your entire life only zipping through on the freeway, it never occurred to me to that there'd be any reason to ever move there.  But after living in the "high desert" (see previous post), my perspective has shifted.  They definitely found *pretty*.

From there we spent a couple of weeks southward in search of warmth and (not necessarily in the following order) finally found it in Death Valley, one of our favorite haunts .... although I'm not totally sure why.  It could be that these are the actual colors, or that they sell humongous ice cream cones, scooped right out of the hill in the lower picture .....

(Just kidding.)

We also did the iconic drive down the mid-California coast (Big Sur area) 

and were blown away by the views ..... not to mention the gas prices.  Yet again, I am reminded that Oregon does not walk away with every natural beauty contest.  If California could fix its problems, I'd be tempted to live there, in spite of the unfortunate fact that it (or rather a certain piece of uneven pavement) gave me a slightly broken foot which sent us in search of a pair of crutches the next day and promptly eliminated any hikes we'd hoped to do.

We're still trying to figure out Nevada, which .... is just there ..... kind of in the way of the more enjoyable states.  Although we did visited a car museum in Reno.  (Surprisingly, I've come to learn that car museums are quite interesting.)  

And, had the elevation not been so high making it too cold ..... we would've spent the night by this odd structure.  Click here if you're slightly curious.

Stokes Castle

We drove home via a portion of Oregon that was new to us, up through the town of Lakeview.  This town, I assume, got its name because of its proximity to massive Goose Lake, as shown on all the maps.  Maybe the lake was there once, but it's not there now.  It's just a huge empty flat grassland. 

It was Easter morning when we stopped by a couple of recently-heard-of-by-us natural landmarks between Lakeview and home.  The ancient volcano, "Fort Rock", abruptly rises up out of the nearby farmland, and was unexpectedly impressive. We learned that every Easter, for nearly 70 years, the local Christian church holds a sunrise service there, complete with a bonfire.  We arrived in time to see them hauling away the burn barrel, and we both decided we'd like to attend the service sometime.

Nearby "Hole In The Ground" (its official name) is a huge indentation that I'm sure people would love to think was caused by a massive meteor, but it was another volcano.  The road(s) to it are a maze of rutted, winding dirt roads that are more comfortably done with a higher clearance vehicle than what we were in, although we did fine.  You need your GPS to get to it because there are no signs.  Worth seeing once, in my opinion.  But not twice.

Also in that same vicinity is something called "Crack In The Ground" (I'm not making these names up) which appears to be a type of slot canyon (yes, Oregon has a few) ..... but alas, my wounded foot forced us to save that hike for another trip.

And coming this summer, the plans are still a GO ...

to drive to ........ 

Alaska!

Your average winter day in the rural *High* desert

 

You may have assumed, by the title of this post, that I was going to talk about snow.  Nope.  Right now the sky is blue and the ground is dry.

As I have mentioned previously and probably too often, we live on five acres (five-point-two, to be more precise) out on the "high" desert of Central Oregon.  (I don't know why it's called "high" .... I looked it up and learned "high desert" doesn't really mean anything at all .... ) 

When we purchased this land five years ago (OMGosh .... FIVE! ..... wow) it was completely uncleared.  And the bulk of it remains uncleared.  Which was the plan.  Zero landscaping except just around the house.  Leave it natural and organic.  Easy peasy!  

How naive, were we.

Now we are tasked with the noble plan each year of spending a good chunk of the winter months, removing anything that might become fuel for unwanted fires the following summer.   Yup!  By golly, it'll be a banner year taming the land!  However, our plans usually whittle down to only a handful of days, if that.  Because it's so easy to NOT do it.  And because it's hard work.  

We just had one of those noble days.  Husband dusted off the chainsaw, hauled it outside, and buzzed off heaps of low branches from a few of our gazillion juniper trees.  I pulled up (what seemed like) tons of mostly-rotted scrubby sage bushes and it all went on burn piles.  

In western Oregon where the color green was born and perfected, the trees are real, and where I lived most of my life, if you cut fresh branches off living trees or shrubs and immediately try to burn them in the middle of winter, well .... good luck with that.  You'll get more smoke than flames.  Not the case here in the *high* desert, where even the saplings will promptly erupt into an inferno regardless of the season.  No need to let firewood "age" if you plan to burn it in your fireplace.   It's ready from the get-go.

And for an added thrill, you can top that burning pile of branches with some o' them thar dry tumbleweeds.  Just keep a bucket of water close by.

We spent most of the day cutting, pulling, hauling, piling, and burning ..... and a relatively small portion of these 5.2 acres actually looks a little cleaner.  (Until the cheat grass arrives this spring.)  Afterwards we hobbled back to the house, soothed our aching muscles in our hot tub, and slathered on the Icy Hot.  

Please tell me you can see the difference.

The question remains if we will do any more this winter.  The intentions are impressively lofty, but we'll see if those intentions bear fruit, so to speak.   I'm especially good at dreaming up grand (and unlikely) ideas which include (but are not limited to) things like learning to use a chainsaw myself, building a cabin, buying a tractor, adding a second driveway, rearranging some boulders, and the like.  But for now, a little more clearing will have to suffice, as boring as that is.  

On the upside, we have enough free firewood for our wood stove to last into the next decade.  It's just hanging around outside, thinking it's a tree, ready to be cut down, stacked, and burned that same afternoon. I'm keepin' the Icy Hot handy.

Survived the holidays yet again ... and other residual ramblings

As a young mom, I was really good at doing Christmas.  I budgeted all year for the extra spending.  I usually started my gift planning around September, involving a secret, highly-guarded, constantly-updated list of gifts for our kids.  It was my job to keep it all balanced so that, when opening presents, no one ran out ahead of the others.  Sometimes Husband would spring a last minute gift-idea for one of the kids and I would scramble to provide something comparable for the others so it all remained *even*.  Plus there had to be a balance between the inevitable new sweater or socks .... and the fun stuff.  No one teaches these skills when you first decide to become a parent and many dads wouldn't have paid attention anyway.  

I shopped, decorated the house and tree, played the music, baked the cookies, planned the food, mailed the cards and letters, and wrapped mountains of packages.  Christmas was like a giant pageant with me as the director, producer, caterer, and set/costume designer.  And I loved it all because those wonderful and priceless childhood memories will always be our gift to our kids.  

But that phase of life ends.  

And here we are, alone in the desert.  

This year the realization hit that if we don't want to spend Christmas alone .... then we can no longer spend Christmas at home.  This is because all of our kids now have kids, and we engrained in them years ago, that a kid's Christmas is best at home.  So that's where they need to be, with their own tree and their own stuff and their own memory-making traditions.  We were the ones who chose to move away.  So we are the ones who now must do the traveling.  

Side Note:  One of the many motivations for building our van was to better enable foisting ourselves upon our adult-children by making our visits easier on everyone.  We can park in any of their driveways and sleep in our own bed.  (In #Vanlife, this is called "mooch-docking".)  It's a win-win for everyone .... assuming you like your relatives.  

That said ...... whoever decided to plunk Christmas right down into the dead of winter (instead of .... say .... balmy May or maybe June) wasn't thinking it through, because in our case, in every direction from our home, are mountain passes.  And that's where it tends to snow .... a lot ....  

Husband poo-poos my concerns.  Unlike me, he loves driving in snow.  Even better if everyone else would stay out of his way.  I must admit, so far we've had no issues driving through said passes.  A few concerns a time or two, but nothing scary.  He bought new beefy tires for our non-4WD van and on the chance we ever DID get stuck, we'd have plenty of heat, water, food, and all the comforts.  I think Husband would actually enjoy getting stuck for a while, just to show the world that we've GOT this.  We carry chains and a shovel (to appease me) but have rarely come close to needing either.  However, both this year and last, we had to cut our holiday visit a little short to get home ahead of incoming weather.  It is our new normal.  

But new normals aren't necessarily bad.  They're just different.  Christmas is easier than it used to be .... even when it snows.  And our kids are very welcoming and our grandkids are award-winningly delightful.  

Plus I don't need to make a list anymore.  Another win .... sort of.