G'day Mate!

Sandi and I had a blast in Australia!  The festival in Newcastle was great, but I didn't take any photos.  It was Sandi's first festival 'on-staff' and it was fun to have her around, both to experience a day-in-the-life of a festival and to have her help.  She can tell you a lot of cool stories from the day we arrived until after follow-up was finished.
 

On to Sydney:

This photo was taken from a ferry to Manly Island.  The sailboats were out in droves.

It looks like the boats are about to tip, but they never did.

Skipping ahead to Cairns (pronounced 'Cans') we flew up to see the Great Barrier Reef on Thursday (Wednesday in the US).  Sandi, myself, and 4 friends from the Palau team rented a condo for 3 nights to get away from it all.  We were across the street from the beach.  The next day, we traveled to Port Douglas to snorkle the outer reef.  The coral and the fish were amazing.  Neither Sandi or I had the equipment to take good photos under the water, but a friend of ours took his camera.  I will post them when I get them.  In the mean time, you can look at this link for an idea of what we experienced http://www.quicksilver-cruises.com/nature_gallery.htm
 

After our snokeling trip, we went out to dinner.  Sandi and I celebrated Thanksgiving by having kangaroo steak and sweet potato mash.
 

The following day, we went a boutique zoo to hold a koala.  We also got to feed wallabee and see crockadiles. 

When our time in Cairns was up, we flew back to Sydney and said goodbye to our friends.  Carey and Kevin had to drive back to Newcastle that night, so they dropped us off at our hotel.  Our hotel bordered the red-light district (complete with prostitues, strip clubs, etc.) so our friends weren't terribly excited about our choice.  As we later found out, if you turned left instead of right, you were just fine.

Rather than show all 300 pictures of the Opera House, here is a sample of other Sydney attractions we saw:



St. Mary's Cathedral

The skyline reminded me of Seattle's skyline - very interesting and diverse.

The Botanical Gardens included an extensive array of grasslands, fountains, statues, trees and everything that makes a garden beatiful.  We spent Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning before our flight home wandering through the gardens. 

The gardens are home to the Governor's mansion.

Hyde's Park in downtown Sydney

Sandi relaxing in a 'secret garden'

 

 

We have much more to show and tell, but we'll look foward to seeing you in person.

Olympia

For graduation, I got Sandi a weekend get-away in Olympia at the end of September.  I completely understand if you might balk, but we got a great 'Groupon' deal on an overnight plus dinner package and Olympia has a great little downtown area worth exploring.

 

We arrived at the Governor Hotel on Friday afternoon and were treated to a beautiful afternoon right across the street from Capitol Lake. 

 

 

Below is a view from our hotel room.  We were just about a 1/2 mile away from the water front. We took a walk on Friday night after dinner and then revisited it in the daylight on Saturday.

 

We had to take advantage of the Olympia Farmer's Market. 

 

We arrived in time for lunch and found excellent Mexican food.

 

Both of us heard of the Evergreen State College, but neither of us had heard anything beyond rumors.  It was time for a visit.  Unfortunately, we have to photos to prove we actually visited, but it was fun to explore the campus.  As a bonus, it was a beautiful fall day for a self-guided campus tour.

 

Our weekend finished very nicely with dinner at Mom and Dad's. 

Our "REI" room

So, our computer room has been in shambles for at least the last year.  It's never been painted and it became our defacto storage room since Sandi started school.  We've talked about painting it for quite some time and this weekend, we finally got around to it.

 

 

The inspiration for our color scheme is my day pack for hiking.  It's a nice REI pack with red and grey. 

 

Like the day pack the red is for accent.  Friends gave us their left-over battleship-gray primer to paint the base coat.

 

We tried to match the colors as close as possible to the pack...

 

How did we do?

 

 

With our desks facing each other, we can gaze into each other's eyes as we check email and look at blogs.

Vacation!

Vacation!  It's what you do when your wife graduates from nursing school.  Less than 24-hours after Sandi went through her completion ceremony, we were off to Kalamath Falls.  K-Falls, as we like to call it, is some where you can't get to from here unless you drive over 5 hours to southern Oregon.  We like to visit because our friend Marisa lives there.  This weekend was her wedding. 

 

Marisa and her fiance, Greg, incorporated their wedding into her church's annual campout.  We pitched our tent and joined the festivities.

 



Her dad, a pastor at the church not only gave the bride away, but officated the ceremony.  It was awesome to be a part of it.  There ceremony was a God-honoring event that served as a good reminder of the importance of family.  The reception was a fun mix of Maris'a southern-Oregon roots and Greg's southern-US roots.  It was too hot to dance, but the BBQ was great. 



After the wedding, we took off on our own to Brookings.  Neither of us have spent much time on the southern Oregon coast, so we dipped briefly into CA so we could start at mile 0 and head north. 

A highlight for me was cooking dinner on the campfire grill.  Sandi chopped the veggies and we grilled steak, mushrooms, peppers and potatos.

Cheers!

 We camped 2 nights at Brookings.  Tuesday morning, we left Brookings and headed for Florence.  It was extremely foggy and misty and our tent was all wet.  We decided to see if Honeyman State Park had yurts available.  If they did, we would camp.  If not, we would head home.  The yurts were all taken so we took a break from driving and had lunch in downtown Florence. 

 

North of Florence towards Newport is a very rugged part of the coast.  'Restless' is an apt description we read to describe all the tumultous waves crashing against the shore.  This video and photos below try to capture how rugged it is. 

 

 

 

We had a wonderful time and would love to spend more time in the central and south parts of our coastline.

 

Picnic Table (II)

My first blog about this was the unstained version.  Staining it was another ordeal.  I am pleased with how it and glad I don't have to re-stain it for a couple years.

 

Now you see it, now you don't

Our refrigerator spoiled 2 milk containers and the repair man told us to say our 'good byes' so we started shopping around for a replacement.  We have yet to purchase it, but we did decide on an upgraded model with a bottom freezer.  Like all older-style kitchens, it was not designed to accomodate it.  The newer styles are a little too tall for the current space.

Our solution: rip out the offending cabnet.

It was surprisingly easy.  I intentionally destroyed the cabnet (whtie-painted pressed board) and painted over the previously hidden area. 

This gives me hope when it comes time to rip out the remaining cabnets....

Backpacking Eagle Creek

Last weekend, a buddy and I went to Eagle Creek on a 2-night backpacking trip.  Eagle Creek is ideal and unusual because it is just outside Portland past the falls but so vast as to offer multi-day hiking trips.  For example, we just finished our first mile when we ran into a boy scout troup finishing up their 7-day backing trip.  They started at Timberline near Mt. Hood and hiked all the way here.

The trail is lined with waterfalls, but this is one of the more impressive falls.  The trail takes you behind the falls via a tunnel. 

Just past the falls above, is one of the my favorite falls because it splits.

Below is the obligatory, yet awesome views of Mt. Hood.

We hiked a 20-mile loop in 3-days.  The first night was alongside Eagle Creek.  The next night was at Dublin Lake.  To get to Dublin Lake, we had to hike out of the valley of Eagle Creek and then along a ridge.  Though level, the ridge was my least-favorite part of the hike because the trail was so crowded with grass tuffs that my trekking poles were useless (plus it was exposed to the hot mid-afternoon sun). 

Harvesting our Garden!

We have a lot of green tomatos but they seem stuborn and reluctant to turn red.  At long last, we were finally able to enjoy a fresh tomato from our garden.  Sandi celebrated by cutting it up with mozzarela cheese, basil, and balsalmic vinegar.  Even better, we were able to share them with friends over dinner.

Sandi received a water melon start from a friend at OHSU.  We were both a little skeptical about it's viability, but we had nothing to loose.  One day, we saw a little bud that turned into a little melon.  That grew to be a big melon.  We decided to harvest it earlier this week.  The little white thing next to it is a golf ball for scale.

Turns out, we picked it a little un-ripe.  It could have turned a little redder and sweeter, but it's not bad.  We were afraid to let it go too long only to spoil.  Oh well, we might have a few more chances before the season is over.

Joy over for dinner

Sandi's sister, Joy, came over for dinner last week.  Sandi made wonderful encheladas.  It was fum seeing her and we really enjoyed sitting outside on our picnic table.