Summer

Summer started early this year; in May we flew to Huntsville for graduations ceremonies, Matthew from Fourth to Fifth grade,

Maren from Eighth to high school.

We stayed about a week, spent three days near Chattanooga, from where we visited "Rock City," a tourist attraction on Lookout Mountain, developed in the '30s by the inventor of "Tom Thumb Miniature Golf," who was able to purchase the mountain top but whose wealth did not confer taste: a stunning site cluttered with signs and painted concrete gnomes.

From the top, one was supposed to be able to see seven states

but more interesting were paths through grottoes and defiles.

We scheduled a long horseback ride through the Chickamauga battle field where I hoped to visit monuments, relics, and learn about the battles, but a storm moved in overnight, dumping rain by the bucket.  We had looked forward to the ride, so we went anyway--no fair weather riders we--and got wet.  As Deb said, just when you thought you couldn't get wetter, it started raining harder.  Through the downpour, we rode by cannon and monuments in the trees, but it seemed fruitless to dismount to look closer, and way too wet to unsling cameras; it was so wet my phone's face screen quit working, which a dousing in the pool a year before had not accomplished.  A month or so later, it started working again for no reason.  After a couple of hours, we called it quits.

 We flew back to Oregon with Matthew and set off for Ft. Stevens to camp for a week.

 We took in all the usual: bike trails, s'mores, the batteries,

 Peter Iredale,

 sand castles.


The park posted warnings about camp robbers,

but unlike deer crossing signs, these warnings were accurate.  The thieves showed up in the later afternoon, and after dark they were brazen.

At Fort Clatsop, volunteer reenactors in period costume described the life the Corps of Discovery experienced and let Matthew try out some of it.

 At Seaside we found the Salt Works, a modern reconstruction, hidden in a urban development.

 We stopped at Tillamook Cheese for the delicious ice cream.

 We headed for the Rose Parade, and walked the midway at Waterfront Park where Matthew tried his luck and rides.

 The parade had all the usual: bands, floats, rodeo princesses, Indians.

And then it was time to trade grandkids.  We put Matthew on a plane in Portland and picked up Maren, with whom we drove to the Olympic Peninsula, stopping overnight at Forks, which used to be one of the many unknown small communities on 101 but now famous as the location of the "Twilight" series.

We camped at Ozette Lake, where signs warned about camp thieves, but the only intruders were jays and deer.

We hiked the roughly 3 miles on mostly boardwalk (some 800 stairs) to Cape Alava, then south along the gravel and rock strewn shore to see petroglyphs at Wedding Rock.

 There are supposed to be about 30 scattered along the shore.  We found a number of them just as we remembered from 10 years before although encrustation seems to be taking its toll.  I spent some time hunting for the one I found most memorable, remembering whales awash, but this time was low tide.

 I finally stumbled on them, high and dry.  We continued south, following a doe and fawn who seemed curious, as it probably had never before seen a Goth hiker.

At Sand Point, I watched a Sea Otter play off shore while Deb and Maren climbed the point and took photos of another deer that seemed oblivious to human presence.

We hiked the 3 miles back to camp, weary but pleased enough that two days later we hiked back and ate a picnic on the peak.  In between, we spent an afternoon at Sol Duc, which seemed like a European spa, the hot mineral pools crowded with people speaking a variety of languages.  Not exactly roughing it.

On the Fourth of July, we drove to Neah Bay on the Makah reservation and spent an hour or so in the excellent museum which houses some 50,000 artifacts from the Ozette dig in the '70s.  We hiked out to Cape Flattery, the most northwesterly point in the contiguous 48.

The reservation does not need to follow state or federal regulations, so everyone can buy real fireworks, not the woosy stuff available elsewhere, so naturally we had to buy some.

 Maren was reluctant at first, but soon she got into lighting them.

We watched pyrotechnicians set up for the evening show, 10 and 12-inch mortars,

and that evening we sat on camp chairs a couple hundred feet away while the most spectacular fireworks blew up close enough overhead I could feel the blast.

It was like the Fourths I remembered from my childhood.

 The next day we drove up Hurricane Ridge for the views, deer, ravens and snow--on July 5.

Then home, PDX, and Maren was gone again.