Snowpocalypse 2014

After a very dry winter, the moisture finally came in the form of snow. Portland is a funny place when it snows. We don’t get it very often -- maybe once a year or so in the city -- and it rarely lasts more than a day. This February though, we had four good days of snow. That happens about once or twice a decade. And when it does people here freak out and are sorely unprepared (sometimes it feels like this). Many places just shutdown, especially when the freezing rain came. But we love the snow and had a lot of fun.

Dana and Magnus spent on afternoon taking pictures down by Fort Vancouver. The snow was pretty. Magnus had fun except for getting snow in his shoe.

After watching The LEGO Movie we built a small snowman.

After the freezing rain we went to the park to look at the ice encrusted world.

Ruth smashing a ice sheet with her head:

Here is a very cold Earth:

At Farmor’s house we built a giant snowman and Anton made an igloo.

We had lots of fun in the snow.

Baby Kate

We learned that when Matt and Karen lived in NYC, Karen took Kate (our niece) for a photo shoot at Simplicity. Here are two patterns with Kate as the model. Karen showed these to Ruth’s mom, Rosanne, when they last visited.

Here is a link to the page. She is the cute baby modeling 1470 and 1471.

Happy as a Clam

Dana finally got a chance to go clamming with Brian. Brian is a clamming pro and he was a good teacher. It was a gorgeous evening at Long Beach, WA. There wasn’t any wind and it wasn't too cold. In about an hour we caught our limit of 15 clams each, and they were big ones.

Back at home, Brian showed us how to clean them. Magnus thought the clams were “wiggly.”

He even let us keep his clams, so now we have lots. First thing we made with them was clam pizza. We have also fried some and we made a batch of clam chowder. Yum.

Out Came the Sun

We took advantage of a nice sunny day here in Vancouver by doing the driving loop in the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge. There were some nice animals to see, including a coyote. It was a good day.

Historic Gorge Adventure

Dana headed to the Gorge to do a hike that he has been wanting to do for a while: the loop behind Multnomah Falls. But when he got there he found out the trail was closed because a rock fall had damaged the bridge over Multnomah Falls (the one in the picture). So, he chose a more obscure destination. This was a trip through time.

 

 

 

The Gorge has been a difficult place to build roads through because of the steep cliffs and the river. The first road that made it through was a wagon road built in 1872. Before that people used steamboats. 1882 saw the first railroad which covered up most of the wagon road’s stretch, so not much of the original remains. To get to the trail to see this section, you have to park on the side of the freeway (finished in 1956), walk along an abandoned section of the Columbia River Hwy (1916), and up a talus slope.

The stone masonry for the wagon road looked like some old mossy ruin out of Lord of the Rings. The moss made a very nice carpet over the road.

Walking a little bit more down the freeway brought me to Summit Creek. The canyon doesn’t really have a trail, but a short scramble up the beautiful little stream led me to Camp Benson Falls.

I really liked this one:

After the waterfall, I took time to explore a little further down the abandoned, moss covered highway.

After getting back in the car I stopped at Mitchell point to scout out another trail I want to try. This was the location of another abandoned section of the 1916 highway. This was also the location of the Mitchell Point Tunnel, a tragic loss in the face of progress. Follow the link to see an awesome architectural feat that is gone.

A funny rock face:

On the way home I made a quick stop at Dog Creek Falls, another place I had not been.