Category: Travel

I am seriously pro-food. I like to think about food, read about food, gently prod food, ferment food, garnish food, smell food, buy food, seek food and experience new food. I regale the difference between 6-month and 12-month Manchego, care whether asparagus is in season, and am honestly fond of (not just making a point of) eating sweetbreads (thymus and pancreas, usually, of calf), bone marrow, squid and fermented fish sauce. However, my upcoming trip to Iceland is making me gustatorily anxious.

Icelandic food specialties read more like grievous and fatal fraternity hazing rituals than anything that a human with extant taste buds and olfactory capability would submit to willingly. The regional recipes manage to get an F- on each of the rough trinity of food-is-yummy criteria, offending the user psychologically, aesthetically, and sensually.

Rain and sunbreaks at the Beckmans’, in the spruce forest above Cannon Beach. This was the first weekend that I was willing to believe it might possibly be spring sometime soon. The rain showers, though some of them were quite dense, were soft and almost warm. I shot this with my regular camera (Canon 5D Mark II), which does video. I under-utilize that feature!

Curiosity. I have it. The frightful 8.8 magnitude quake that jolted poor Chile last Saturday sent out reverberations: the threat of tsunamis all through the Pacific world. As it happened, I was scheduled to spend the weekend at my friend Emma’s family’s house in the misty, spruce-studded hills just above Cannon Beach. The tsunami was scheduled to reach that part of the Oregon coast at right around 3PM local time. I needed to see what this looked like.

It looked like nothing. Too subtle for humans to notice, but very much there. The water changes caused by the far-flung tsunami were merely a foot or so along the western edge of Oregon, but the fluctuations were very real.

I have a habit of, when I travel, absconding immediately to the nearest art museum. I neglect even the most vital tourist activities (various towers, mountain peaks, cathedrals, piazzas, antiquities, Disney parks, stadia, canals, funiculars, and botanical gardens), often at great experiential expense.

Simply put, here is a list of notable (note that I’ve excluded the Portland Art Museum and anything billed as an art collection in Las Vegas, et cetera) art museums I have visited. You will find reading a list of notable art museums I have visited interesting. You will.

And then you will tell me your favorites.

While driving through the Santiam Pass today along highway 22, it occurred to me that I don’t have a favorite. Favorite thing to look at in Oregon, that is. I asked David what he thought the most scenic thing in Oregon was and he was befuddled and had no answers really, either.

Here are a few obvious choices for scenery destinations in Oregon, along with a few personal faves. What are yours?

It had been my hope to merge my current site theme (The Heavens) with a winter weekend in Sunriver, Oregon. The high desert resort community usually has cold, clear weather at this time of year, and is far away from significant light pollution. That is, the stars can be heavenly, and I have in the past dabbled with entry-level astrophotography there with somewhat acceptable results.

I wanted to write for you about taking photos of stars. Alas, lingering between me and said celestial objects was a stubborn and weepy slab of clouds and mist that did not lift for the entire four days I was out there.

After plan B failed, too, I just had to make something up. Enjoy this latest post in my “heavens” theme series.

Today I returned to a site that unites three eras of history.

At the Besson site along the Deschutes River in central Oregon, a wide swath of rocky and sandy ground bubbles lightly and forms a series of streams that join and then flow into the Deschutes just beyond. It’s a slightly magical place, with odd-colored algae, deeply black basaltic rocks, and roiling underwater silt where the water burbles in. The place looks quite different than it did last year; the patterns of precipitation and season change the locations and intensity of the springs.

A stray inspiration from Autumn last week turned into a full-fledged planned exodus: The Pencils are going to I*eland. That is, both Iceland and Ireland (and also France (and also the UK (well, me at least (David is going back to the US earlier than I am)))).

We are going in late May. The prices on non-stop Icelandair flights out of Seattle seem too good to be true. David’s round-trip ticket was $553.67. Mine was costly enough that I’m embarrassed to disclose the total: I’m flying first class.

Photo by Cristiano Corsini

During a recent trip to central California I learned several key life lessons: Nissan Versas are staggeringly dull, things like to fall over when blown on with 60MPH winds, Hoizon’s CRJ-700s can land in essentially zero visibility, and the OLCC will let you drink awfully early at the PDX airport as long as you can cough up a boarding pass.

What some are terming the “storm of the century” has made landfall on the Central Coast of California. Yesterday it was rainy and moody out in wine country, but today it is bucketing.
We have to drive five hours to Sacramento shortly. I am hoping this will be an adventure and not just grief!