Family!!

 Last week we were so lucky to have family visit us in Oregon!  Kristin's Grandma (Myrtle) and Sister (Harmony) visited us during the week to see the sights of Oregon and California.  They flew in on Tuesday and Kristin picked them up to take them to some gourmet cheese, wine and chocolate tastings!

After the tastings we went home for a delicious home made meal of Fisherman's Pie!  Believe it or not, Kristin cooked most of it!

Wednesday morning we started with french toast covered in sauteed cherry tomatoes to prepare for a long day in central Oregon.  First we headed to Crater Lake National Park for a couple hikes and beautiful sights!

Then we headed down along the Rouge River to see some waterfalls!  We initially planned on seeing only roadside falls, but we ended up doing a lot of hiking!  (Go Grandma!)

Wednesday night was wrapped up with some home made pizza's by Chef Edward - I'm such a lucky wife!

Thursday was the day for Lava Beds National Monument and Medicine Lake!  We actually got Grandma into a LAVA CAVE!  We had a blast and enjoyed a wonderful picnic at the lake with bagel sandwiches, local cheese and crackers and local chocolate. 

Thursday evening we went to the Klamath Falls 3rd Thursday festival to see the local artwork and crafts.  We had great time tasting local wine and looking at local jewelry and finished the night with a great Thai dinner downtown.  Friday we took it easy and visited a few local mountain lakes but found it a tad to cold to jump in! 

Sadly we said good bye on Saturday as Grandma and Harmony started their 12 hour trip home...hope they come back soon!

Shopping and Gypsy

Last week at work was absolutely exhausting - Kristin had a ton of work to get done in order to prepare for a new measurement device which is being installed this week and Ed has been spending all day, every day outside overseeing and inspecting a new sewer line project.  We were definitely ready for the weekend!!  This weekend we did a little baking to use up some fruit and veggies that were about to go bad then we headed to Portland to do some shopping and to see Matt Insley's performance of Gypsy at Lakewood Community Theater.

Kristin used up some left over corn and blackbeans to make a Mexican Breakfast Pie - this is a favorite that is so easy once you have the pie crusts down.  Basically just take breakfasts foods, put them in a pie crust and then fill with 5-6 beaten eggs and cover with another pie crust and cook at 375 deg for 45-50 minutes.  We used hashbrowns (thawed), fake sausage (cooked), green peppers, corn and blackbeans - yum!  The great thing is - it will last us 4-5 days!

After the breakfast pie, we noticed that we had a ton of blueberries that were about to go bad so Kristin took an old recipe from Ed's mother and made a Blueberry cream pie.  This was sooooo easy once the crust was made!  If anyone wants the recipe - let Kristin know!

Before we got to Portland, we stopped at the madhouse shopping area of Woodburn.  This place was so packed we couldn't do a whole lot of shopping - just shoving!  But we did find 1 KILLER deal that we had to post!  Kristin found a super nice pair of Merrell winter boots for $33! (original was $115)  These are water proof and super warm for winter activities like snowshoeing or snowmobiling. 

After our one good deal, we raced out of there to get away from all those crazy shoppers and headed to Terri's for a home cooked meal of shrimp, ribs and veggies - Thanks a ton Terri!  After dinner we finally headed to see Matt's show - Gypsy!

Gypsy was an absolutely awesome show - here's the description from the theater:
Based on the real-life account of burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, Gypsy is really the story of her mother Rose and her unflappable desire to see her daughters become stars. Fueled by regrets of her own dreams lost to motherhood and fate, Rose's destructive obsession eventually drives all the people who love her away, including the one man willing to accept her for who she really is. This epic musical covers more than 15 years in the life of Rose, her two daughters Louise and June and the gripping mania that drives them to tour the country seeking fame and fortune.

 

 Matt and AJ with the child version of June - this girl twirled baton WHILE dancing on point!!

 After the show we headed for a drink at Oswego Lake House - this was a very cute restaurant and pub that we will definitely have to visit again!  We sat right on the Lake and enjoyed watching some moonlight sailing.


On Sunday we headed for a nice morning bike ride with Terri, Josh and Elsie in Lake Oswego (near Portland).  We did their typical "work out ride" which was definitely a work out!  We ended our ride at breakfast where the food was just awesome!

After breakfast, we headed home through Bend, just to see what it was like.  That is SUCH a cute place!  There are tons of winter vacation spots there and a ski resort, so we'll definitely be back up there in a few months!  On our way, we passed an old Army Corps of Engineer's Dam- Detroit Dam.  This was not pretty by any means, but it was kind of cool as it was completely covered in moss!

Now it's time to get serious about cleaning the house for Harmony and Grandma's visit in 2 weeks!!!!  Woohoo!!!

Baking and Climbing!

This weekend consisted of our 2 favorite things: baking and mountain climbing!  We decided to take it "easy" this weekend and not travel or camp anywhere in order to start cleaning the house for our August and September visitors.  On Saturday morning, we got up early and headed to downtown Klamath Falls for some fresh bagels and to peruse the local farmer's market!  The produce and treats were amazing there - Ed definitely took advantage of the free samples while Kristin snuck away to buy a fresh baked cup cake!  We ended up getting some of the local organic strawberries that were so sweet you would SWEAR they were grown in a pile of sugar!

In addition to some awesome fruit, we also bought a couple tomato plants that were already in the planter - perfect for our back deck!  These are "yellow-pear" tomatoes - supposedly small and sweet!  Buster was very interested in the new plants, so I nabbed him for a pic too...

At the farmer's market, I got some fresh thyme and made some thyme-cheddar-jalapeno biscuits for lunch - they didn't rise a lot (still getting used to the altitude cooking) but they were delicious! 

Sunday we headed out early to climb Mount Scott at Crater Lake National Park. This is a relatively short hike (5 miles round trip) but it has a 1200 ft elevation gain, so it definitely tested out our muscles!  The weather was perfect for the hike and we even saw some remaining snow!

On the way home we were lucky enough to spot a bald eagle on a telephone tower!!!  We were so excited to see him and he was certainly less than pleased to see us, but we took pics anyways!  It's amazing how "not-scared" he was of us, although considering he could probably eat Buster in one gulp, maybe I shouldn't be that surprised...

After we got home, I set out on the Sunday night goal of making a chocolate-peanut butter cake for an office party on Monday.  This was a chance to finally use the recipe card book I got for Christmas too - which I LOVE!  (Thanks Grandma!)  We haven't tasted it yet, but Ed certainly hopes there is some left after the party! It's chocolate cake with peanut-butter icing and a chocolate-peanut butter glaze - yum!

Field Work and the Oregon Coast!

This week was exhausting!  Kristin had her first experience of true "field work" on Thursday.  She took a very bumpy 2 hour truck ride down to Clear Lake and then hopped on an airboat to go check out the Lake levels and measure the flow coming out of a natural underground spring.  The spring was very small but the water was crystal clear and you could actually see the water bubbling up from the sand below!

Mammoth Spring - contributes to Clear Lake just south of the OR/CA border

On the 1 mile hike coming back from the spring, she found a piece of history!  The Applegate Trail (a southern route from the Oregon Trail) runs right through the Clear Lake area - she found an old horse shoe from the old wagon days! Following LNT practices, of COURSE she put it back...

On Friday we headed to the Oregon Coast to camp with Terri and Josh and see the "cold" coast!  The drive Friday after work felt like we were just chasing the sun down - it was just beautiful the whole way.  Unfortunately we reached the coast just after dark so we didn't get to see the sun set.  We ended up staying in the "tent area" of an RV Park after finding out that ALL the coastal State Parks were FULL!!  We were pretty disappointed until we realized that this "tent area" was well away from all the RVs and it was RIGHT NEXT to the ocean!  We fell asleep to the sound of crashing waves...

Saturday morning we tried some old pancake mix  that we've had for years and it was awesome!  Apple Grain pancakes with an apple syrup topping - yum!

Of course that was topped by some award winning clam chowder from High Tide Cafe down the street - a great recommendation  from a co-worker of mine.  And then THAT was topped by an awesome camp fire dinner from Chef Terri!  We had baked potatoes, corn on the cob, salmon, steak and grilled veggies - all cooked on the camp fire!

Other than eating and enjoying some fine Oregon Pinot Noir, we spent the rest of the time playing like little kids on the beach and checking out the cool ecosystems caught in the tide pools.  Some of our best pics are below:

 This is a live starfish eating mussels

Crabs stuck in a tide pool

A little before sunset...

From the campsite area

Ed jumping...

Terri jumping...

Kristin jumping!

 Kristin and Terri

Just at sunset 

We miss you all!!!

Wildlife and Caves!

This week was a busy one!  I (Kristin) had tons to do at work including lots of field work!  We did some flow measuring on canals that went through farms and I found that the phrase "curiosity kills a cat" could also work for cows...they were definitely interested in what we were doing and kept inching closer and closer to us!  I did have to chase a few of them away but they didn't go very far...

 
On Thursday, Ed wanted to go out for a nice dinner on the river...in Ashland!  It's about an hour away but we wanted to test out the Subaru on the mountain curves, so we went for Thai!  On the way out we were reminded that we are definitely in Oregon...where the deer keep wondering when we're going to leave...

On Saturday we decided to ambitiously climb Mt McLaughlin in the Sky Lakes Wilderness Area!  It's about a 9,500 ft peak with a base around 4,500 so around 5,000 feet of climbing!  We hiked a little less than a mile in and were just swarmed by mosquitoes!  I have been warned by co-workers that the Cascade Mountains are really bad for bugs in July...but I didn't realize just HOW bad!  Needless to say, we decided to try this one again in September...

After a disappointing time at Mt McLaughlin, we decided to check out the TuleLake Wildlife Refuge - about 30 minutes south of Klamath Falls.  This refuge is a part of the Klamath Basin project that I work on so I had been there before, but never got the chance to stop and look and Ed had never seen it.  We saw more birds that one can imagine!  Tons of different diving ducks and geese and loons!  We were there around 6pm and I definitely want to try and come back one day closer to 6am when all the activity happens!  They say the Bald Eagles are plentiful here in the winter too.  This was also our new Subaru's first time off-roading - it seemed to do very well!

Sunday we headed out to do some caving at Lava Beds National Monument (45 minutes to the south).  Lava Beds National Monument is a very unique and cool place but we won't say too much about it (or show too many pictures) since we'll be taking our summer time visitors there!  There are just TONS and TONS of caves there -some are super easy with clear head height and others are very complex with maps required and belly crawling a must!  One of the coolest things about this park is that you can go backpacking in the back country there and there are tons of unmapped, unnamed, undiscovered caves out there!  How cool!

 

After Lava Beds, we decided to check out Medicine Lake in the Modoc National Forest - a high elevation lake that some people had told us was a cool place to spend a weekend.  It's about 15 miles from Lava Beds down a dirt road.  It was very pleasant and we decided we definitely want to come back with a canoe and do some canoeing and camping!

After a short peek at the Lake, we wanted to head home to make some dinner BUT our GPS had other intentions.  The road (pictured below) it took us down to get "home" ended up going up to the top of a mountain (to an old fire lookout) for the best view of OR/CA that we have ever seen!!!  Thank you Garmin!  I'm putting the lookout picture here, but it doesn't really do it justice.  The sun was so bright that you can't even see the awesome view of Mt Shasta in this pic - but it was there and it was awesome!

Finally, after an hour of a confused Garmin on dirt roads, we got on the main road to get home.  What a fun weekend!

Weekend in Portland

This weekend Ed and I headed to the "Big City" of Portland! We went to see Matt Insley in "The Last Five Years" at the Miracle Theater - it was an AWESOME show! Basically, the story was of the last 5 years of a relationship between a couple that met, married and then separated. Matt LITERALLY played piano for 90 minutes STRAIGHT!!! No Stopping!!! It was very impressive! Friday night we enjoyed some delicious Oregon wine with Matt and AJ and then got some sleep to prepare for Portland exploring on Saturday.

Saturday we (Matt, Ed and I) climbed Mt Multnomah, the 2nd tallest waterfall in the US - 2nd only to Yosemite. It was only a mile up, so we went after it like an easy hike. By the time we got to the top, our butts were burning and the lactic acid was flowing! The views at the top were gorgeous though!



Saturday night we got to have a delicious dinner at a brewery with Matt, Terri, Josh and Josh's mom (Terri) and her husband Rob. I ate way too much food, but the beers were very delicious! After a long, still unfinished game of trivial pursuit we headed to bed to prepare for more exploring on Sunday!

Sunday we headed to the International Rose Garden and the Japanese Gardens in Portland. The scenery was gorgeous and provided the perfect setting for many silly pictures. Afterwards, we headed to a completely empty Chinese restaurant for and early dinner.


After all of that fun, we headed home for a relaxing (and very lazy) day off.