It is time

Time for what you say? Time to write something again that isn’t related to the Alaska Trip.  I know, I know, we got home on the 15th, and I think it now is the 27th of the month.  The first week home, of course, was spent cleaning up and settling in.  The second week home I had to go back to work and put in a good 40 hours or more trying to get everything to work properly again after a government software upgrade.  Can you say “nightmare”? Finally, today, I managed to finish writing about the last few days of the trip.  Somehow I just couldn’t make myself write about it, and each morning my ‘todo’ list had on it, “FINISH BLOG”.  I am also not sure when I will be ready to change my header photo from that picture of Joe Lake on the Denali Highway.  I am just not quite ready to let go yet.

At least I am finally caught up. At least I will be until tomorrow! The MoHo is lined up in front of the Tracker in the driveway tonight as we prepare for launching once more tomorrow morning.  This launch is a short one, though, just a 2 night trip to Silver Falls State Park a few hours north of here. We will hike waterfalls, check out all the amazing dahlias in full bloom at the Swan Dahlia Farm festival, and sit by the campfire in the forest, this time under starry skies. We will cap off the trip on the way home with a much anticipated visit with Donna K and Russ from TRAVELS IN THERAPY.  I’m tickled about getting a chance to meet our fellow Oregonian blog friends.

As I write, Irene is bearing down on the east coast, and Al has posted photos of the sad damage in the Ontario town of Goderich. So far, everyone I know who is east is doing OK. My daughter the trucker was in Connecticut, but traveled south and is now in Orlando.  She managed to get out of the way of the storm.  So far, all the RV’rs back in that part of the country seem to be hunkering down and doing OK, at least the ones who can blog about it.   Out west all is calm, a few forest fires ignited last week in a thunderstorm are burning in Central Oregon, but everything around here is peaceful.  Nights are in the 50’s, days are in the mid 80’s, humidity is low and skies are brilliantly blue.  Oregon in the summer, when summer finally comes, is perfect.

Within a few days of getting settled back in, we had the kayaks out for a paddle.  It was a gorgeous morning, just cool enough to need a long sleeved shirt out on the water for about half an hour before we started peeling off our shirts.  The lake was so calm and there was a bit of smoke hanging over the mountains to the east, but I didn’t care. Snow was still on McLoughlin, and just a bit on the rim at Crater Lake and Mountain Lakes Wilderness.  It felt good to be out in the boats in familiar water.  The funny part about familiar water is that on Klamath Lake it is never the same twice. 

The lake levels vary and sometimes the refuge can get pretty low, but on the morning we went out, the water was deep enough that we had no trouble paddling across what is called “The Wocus Cut”, a route that nearly did us in for a late fall paddle last year. At that time we were paddling in late evening and our paddles were scraping bottom.  That was a rough ride that I don’t want to repeat!  We traveled the beautiful canoe trail through the refuge and so enjoyed all the birds.  I packed the camera along in the waterproof pelican case and took bird photos.  Since I just bought a serious wide angle lens, battered though it may be, I won’t be getting a fancy bird lens any time soon, so I have to settle for the best I can do for now.  I’ll let Judy take the fancy bird photos while mine will at least remind me of what was out there and how lovely they are.

The greenhouse has created a jungle of tomato plants and at last a few are getting ripe.  You have no idea what an amazing feat that is at Rocky Point! I planted some more spinach and lettuce for the fall, and am enjoying having a little bit of veggie garden to putter in.The daylilies are blooming beautifully, and so far the deer have left us alone.  I sprayed the Liquid Fence almost immediately, and I don’t know if it makes the difference or if there just aren’t any deer around this year.

The birds are back after a few days of filling the feeders, of course there aren’t nearly as many as there were in the spring before we left.  It seems the finches and wrens are the most prolific right now, and I have seen several flickers and this morning a tanager graced my office window.  For some reason the flicker was harassing the tanager as they both fluttered around in the sprinklers.  Strange.

I am not a daily blogger, unless we are traveling of course. I often wonder about whether I need to even write anything at all when we aren’t moving. Then I realize that I want to share the birds, and the lake, and the daylilies, and what better place to do it than here?  While on our Alaska trip we gained quite a few new followers, and I thank each of you for checking in and paying attention. 

The rest of the photos for our kayak outing are linked here.