cathleen's place: Oregon

Who knew there were hundreds of wineries in this area? Of course, if you're like me, and you had not made the connection between Willamette River and Willamette Valley (of the you-can-grow-anything-and-it-will-be-awesome fame), you would have been one of the ones who did NOT know. Okay, that's fine. Now I know and now I get that thing about Willamette Valley.

I went out to Oak Knoll Winery (that little red pin) (don't forget the part about clicking the picture so you can actually SEE what I'm talking about) to visit Haris. Occasionally she sings there and sometimes she runs the tasting room there.

It was incredibly fun driving around out in farm country. There are even alpaca ranches out there. And huge tree farms and wonderful nurseries with every conceivable kind of flowering thing. Oh. My. God. I really need my own yard. Now.

This was my first ever visit to a winery. I didn't even manage to visit a winery in Napa for crying out loud. It probably has to do with not particularly caring about wine. I went to Oak Knoll because Haris invited me and I love Haris.

Yesterday, Kim and Jeff and I went out to the Columbia River Gorge for some hiking and waterfall enjoyment.

It was a perfect day for it too. Come on with me and I'll show you what was there:

Elowa Falls

The bridge

Survey marker

Kim and Jeff

Succulents growing in a rock crevice

One of the little blue butterflies that Jeff mentions

Kim pondering a very old, very rusty pipe

Gigantic slug

A tiny little path carved out of the cliff

Lots of mud

The Upper McCord Creek Falls

The Upper McCord Creek

Thanks for coming with me. Where would you like to go next time? How about Astoria?

What a glorious place! Absolutely luscious, rich, bucolic (this doesn't mean a sick baby, it means pastoral, which I didn't know until a few weeks ago), and very down home. Here's the Wikipedia page if you're interested in the history. I did a quick search and found out that unless a whole lot of you want to donate a whole lot of dinero, Kim and I won't be living on Sauvie Island any time soon. *sigh*

Melissa and I (and the little guy) drove around the island, stopping to tempt a horse, take a few photos, check in at the local market/car repair/chicken farm for a day parking pass and a map. The thing to do is spend one day per weekend out there, all summer long, picking the fresh organic fruits and vegetables. Mmmmmmmm, yes. And you'll want to check out the Maize Maze at the Pumpkin Patch in September and October. Rumor has it traffic can be a bit nuts, so plan accordingly.

What else could we do?

When we moved to Florida, we had spent a whirlwind weekend buying a house a month before we sent all our stuff and hopped in our car and drove across the country. We arrived two days before escrow closed and the moving truck showed up 15 minutes after signing the last piece of paper at the title company. Whew, it was close all the way -- and way too fast.

It's small but somehow there's enough room for our two computers. Kim can continue working, while I wander around Portland trying to figure out what to do next.

At least I still have a great view.

First things first: find an apartment. Ok, I did that. Actually, I really did and we move in on Saturday. I'm praying for lots of help, hint hint.

And 3200 miles later:

I have 100s of photos to edit and sort and clean up and write about, so it will be a little while before the story gets filled in. We had a safe and wonderful journey to our new ~~home~~ state.

A recurring theme on this blog has been the renovation of this house. When we made the bubble-headed decision to move here, we thought we'd better have a house to move to. So we flew in and spent one day looking at property, picked two houses, made offers that were accepted and went back to San Diego. We did the rest of the process remotely. Silly us. We trusted the real estate agent in Clearwater, a $cientologist who was recommended by another $cientologist.

We knew that the house had some problems. We knew we were going to be doing some "remodeling." That was okay, we'd done plenty of that in San Diego. The inspection that was done didn't cause us any particular alarm, so we thought, "It's fine, just some paint, a little tile, no sweat." Well, we'd been in too much of a hurry and hadn't registered a lot of what was wrong. For instance, I'd completely forgotten that three rooms had been coated with thick plaster that had been "pulled" with a wet sponge, so the end result looked surprisingly like meringue (think of a lemon meringue pie, just like that). All that plaster had to be scraped off and the walls resurfaced. That was a lot of work.

We knew the colors weren't quite right and that we'd be painting, but we'd forgotten how weird the house really was -- low ceilings, odd spaces with no right angles, dark rooms, bizarre solutions to add-ons. So when we arrived and started living in this house, we were worried, to say the least. I can't possibly tell you or show you all that we did -- it's simply too much. But here are a few photos that will give you an idea:

So this is the house that we made beautiful and aesthetic and easy to care for and easy to live in. And this is the house we finally sold so that we can get out of Florida and go live in Oregon, where sane, intelligent, good people live (I know that all my friends who don't live in Oregon at the present, will certainly move there as soon as they possibly can).

Next stop, Portland. ROOOOOAD TRIIIIIIIIP!

I think I have the most amazing friends. Haven't I said that a few thousand times? No matter. I will say it and say it and then I'll just say it some more. I'm very lonely here in Florida. The "friends" we had were $cientologists and they're not allowed to speak to us any more. We had great friends in San Diego -- many who had nothing at all to do with $cn. And we have sorely missed them. I also have fantastic friends from when I lived in Arizona.

As Kim and I have worked through our disconnection from $cn and made our plans to relocate to Oregon, a remarkable number of people I'd lost track of started to surface. Or, in other cases, stronger bonds were made with friends who had been shunted aside because they weren't interested in our "religion."

Well, all this is just prelude to these fabulous photos that three lovely friends have shared with me and I am now sharing with you.

Lois visits a Caribbean island.

Haris dresses up Sadie.

Lauri zooms down a slide carved out of ice.

Have I mentioned that we know a lot of people in Oregon? It really boggles my mind that we're going to have so many friends the moment we move there. It's awesome. In fact, we already have our first dinner invitation!

Back in January, Stephanie told me that our house would sell on March 5th. I thought, "Wow, that's so specific. How can she know that?" I think she said she dreamed about it.

And yesterday, our house sold. We've had it for sale since last July.

We're moving to Oregon. Finally.