We meant to go camping but the camping wasn’t meant to be. Saturday, a comedy of errors.

Dithering meant a late disembarkation. We had to return to the house an unprecedented three times for forgotten items. Then there was driving, driving out east on Wash. SR-14. A failed foray towards a hot springs on the Wind River. Starvation turned us across the river to The Dalles. Time trailing away in an unremarkable Mexican restaurant with a surly waiter, instead of exploration.

A quick stop in the Columbia Hills Preserve and a stare at the view, but we couldn’t tarry; must be to Maryhill Winery before it closed and then find a camping spot. Harried tasting at Maryhill, rush off. Down to Maryhill State Park, where David wasn’t satisfied with the camping arrangements because it was RV-heavy and exposed, but agreed to stay.

We sat by the Columbia River and I sorted rocks. It should be illuminating that this was the best part of my day. So many rocks, all river-rounded, all complex. Where did they all come from? Flat, round rocks with veins of things and a shallow translucence like they had two skins. Perfect skipping rocks, though I am too graceless to skip them well. Rocks with green specks and red lines, rocks that looked better wet. It made me want to get a rock tumbler. It made me want to bone up on geology.

I stumbled back towards our campsite (foot-deep river rocks hard to walk through) and took a photo of a copse of unidentified trees. Strangely the only photograph I took on our “trip.”

At the campsite David had camp chairs set out and a beer. It was sunny and perfect, only the slightest suggestion of a breeze (no tortuous, typical Columbia Gorge squall-wind). We supposed now that the sun was getting low we should set up the tent we’d borrowed from our friend Carl (don’t get me wrong: there are multiple tents owned in our household, but none large enough for our new queen-sized air-bed–Carl’s was reputably huge).

We unfurled it on the grass, all dusty from its previous use at Burning Man, and suddenly David looked stricken.

“No poles,” he said.

We scrabbled frantically through its storage bag. No poles, anywhere. We sat back down in the camp chairs and stared at the opposite side of the river. A few trains went by. Finally, we packed everything back up, put the river-damp dog in the hatch, and drove towards home.

We detoured via Goldendale along the Klickitat river through its eponymous, creepy, dead-mill, polluted-weird town. Home by solid darkfall, but weary from being carbound and cooped on such a solitarily perfect spring day. David made a campfire in our yard. I came out and sat by it with the camping lantern for reading by but there was poisonous rhododendron ash raining into my glass of Syrah and it was hard to see my book (Lewis & Clark’s original journals). I went inside and felt headachy and read the first act of Julius Caesar and fell asleep.

I’ve had more productive days.

Tags: camping, oregon, spring

lyzadanger posted a photo:

Dryland wheat farming in north central Oregon. White-gold sunlight. April.

More photos from last weekend at Flickr.

Tags: condon, oregon

SATURDAY NIGHT, CONDON, ORE.

It’s very late and very dark. I’m asleep because that’s what I do often when it’s very late and dark, in our hotel room in Condon.

Off to the side of the bed I suddenly start hearing some shambling, scuffling noises. Then some exhalations of exasperation and then a timid, persistent thumping, hollowly, the sound of pummeled wallboard. Somewhere in the wilds of our room, David is tumultuously afoot.

Gruffly, me: “What are you doing?” No answer immediately. More low, impact noises. Then a clattering of hangers and a low, guttural, braying sound of despair.

“What are you doing?”

A pause. A slight crash. “The doorknob’s off…I can’t find it…did it fall out?” A confused Mr. Pencil. His voice is muffled by a bathrobe.

“David? Are you trying to get to the bathroom?”

“Mmmmm.” Patting up and down the wall, looking for a door that very much wasn’t there.

“You’re in the closet. What are you–I’m so confused.”

It seemed pretty funny the following morning. Don’t worry, he did eventually find the bathroom.

Tags: humorous, oregon, Travel

Today was one of knowledge, seeing and experience: the kind of day I hold as the highest value in my esteem.

We are staying in the Hotel Condon, built in 1920 and recently restored–carefully, tastefully. There is a pervasive obsession with the Rat Pack here. Most of the time the public areas are bathed with Frank Sinatra tunes. Paintings of Sammy Davis, Jr. That kind of thing.

There are vintage mid-1940s Life magazines scattered around. In one that David was reading, there was a multi-photo series of an ornery “Jap” being burned alive. Everything urging you to buy war bonds. Times have changed. I thought a lot of my grandmother Pearl*.

This morning was cloudless and perfect after so long in the dimness of Portland. There were birds singing. We went across the street to a gift shop in an old storefront that has a tiny outpost of Powell’s Books in it. Peculiar. David bought a three-foot tall Cymbidium orchid.

We drove east to Heppner, where 250 of the town’s inhabitants died in a freakish and tragic flood in a single day in the early 20th century. You can still feel how it defines the town. We wandered around an outdoor display of farming equipment and rail paraphernalia.

Lunch was in a diner where I got grilled cheese on their homemade white bread. Perfect: greasy, with no pretension, American cheese straight from the plastic wrapper. We read real estate advertisements and got too many warm-ups on our coffee. Across the street at the Shell station, teenage boys fueled ATVs and made fun of each other.

Back west, then south towards Spray, through peculiar Hardman, Oregon. Hardman, it seems, is a ghost town. Except not. People still live there. Mixed into the blistering and bent and broken ghost houses. Some of the ghost-looking houses are still occupied. Even a newer, corrugated steel shed has a “ghost front” tacked onto it. In another context, it might sound like a gimmick. But there’s no reason for it here: the town has no services, no possible tourist implications. It’s all alone out there, and ghosty. And eerie. This article has some more details.

Time for the learning part of the day. We visited the Cant Ranch, a sheeping operation from 1920. We hiked the brief “Island of Time” trail in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (Sheep Rock unit). I wanted to spot a fossil so badly but, of course, did not. I did find one interesting rock. Alas, not a fossil (I don’t think).

FOR GOD’S SAKE, SIR, CONSIDER THE OREODONT!

Since this afternoon, I keep randomly ejaculating “Consider the oreodont!” It’s my new thing. It’ll get old fast, all right.

On to the Thomas Condon Interpretive Center where we spent an awful long time gawking and bothering the rangers about things. I sat down and studied minerals and their cleaving angles for a while. David and I pondered a complex and comprehensive (and very large) geological map of Oregon. We discussed the fossilized mammals: “miohippus” (a.k.a. “middle horse”), mice-sized deer, “bear dogs”, rhino things, elephant things, and something identified as a “skunk-badger-weasel”. And, of course, oreodonts. I CONSIDERED THEM.

And then there’s this silly picture. We’re not exactly sure what the goal was here.

* Pearl was a nurse, in Liverpool, England, during World War II.

Tags: condon, heppner, john day, oregon, Travel

Yesterday’s drive into Condon, was during the long-shadow part of the day in the dryland wheat farming hills of north central Oregon. Wind farms have been expanding ferociously in this corridor, and ones of truly epic proportion are clustered in the dozens, hundreds in total.

Here is a quick, 20-second clip of the beautiful shadows they create right at low-sun. The blistering wind chill–I’d estimate the wind was gusting upwards of 30 or 35 miles per hour–kept me from photographing as much as I’d like. There will, I hope, be a few acceptable shots once I develop my film.

p.s. Yes, sorry, I had something on my lens.

Tags: condon, oregon, video, windfarm, windmills