A walk on the beach

JC and I decided to go for a beach walk and found that the high surf had scoured the north end of Ona Beach down to the bedrock. The landscape looked like another planet and lots of small agates were scattered around the remaining gravel beds. We were expecting a cold wind to be blowing so we over dressed. Naturally it was warm and sunny with no wind.
We spent most of the morning exploring and picking up agates.

Christmas

We spent Christmas eve with JC; Carol made burritos with her famous sourdough tortillas and we watched football. David and Brad stopped by and helped us eat.
There was an ambulance call around seven on Christmas morning, I went along, but we didn't have to transport to the hospital, and that was the extent of the ambulance duty.
We took presents over to Brad and Donna's house and spent the rest of the morning with them, grandkids David and Nicki, and great grandkids Aiden and Dominic. (They are really cute!)
When we got home Aubrey and Susan came over with our grand daughter Roshelle.
It was a full day.

Merry Christmas!

Well, we survived another power outage a few nights ago, ( I'm getting good at resetting all of the digital clocks!) I slept through most of it, but Carol spent a sleepless night.
There's another high wind warning for this afternoon and tonight so we'd better keep the oil lamps and flashlights handy.
Carol will be on ambulance duty Christmas day and I plan to ride with her as an observer if she gets any calls. We've done this for the last 3 Christmases but only had a call on the first one. It was a lady with heart problems and we ended up taking her to Newport and then transferring her to Corvallis, so it took up most of the day. We had Christmas dinner at Brad's that evening.
Some of the greenhouse panels came loose in one of our wind storms and we did a temporary repair with duct tape and dry wall screws, but I need to rebuild the whole thing. Hopefully it'll stay together till spring.

Winter Storm

Boy!
It's been a while since we had a blow like the one that came through yesterday evening. Our power went out so we lit the oil lamps and some candles, drank some wine and listened to the emergency radio. (Kind of hated to see the power come back on a few hours later.)
A lot of trees and power lines came down and another one of the Shore Pines in front of the house was waving around like a drunken sailor. I don't know what kept it from falling; the ground in a 10 foot area around it was heaving and bulging as the roots pulled out, but it was still there this morning. When it finally falls it will block both lanes of Highway 34. I just hope it doesn't land on anyone.
Things are pretty much back to normal this morning, it's raining but the wind is calm.
Some of the wind gusts yesterday were over 100 mph, so there was probably some damage done during the night that will become apparent when it gets light.
10:30am
Drove up to Newport with Roshelle and took a picture of the ocean on the way back, the surf is wild with 30 foot swells.

Neighbor's Christmas Decorations

There's no way I'm getting into a Christmas decoration competition with the neighbors. The picture shows the yard across the street, just one of the displays along Alsea Hwy. I surrendered quite a few years ago.
Carol has been really busy lately, with 2 or 3 ambulance calls every day. I guess the frequent fliers are making up for a slow summer.

Eckman Lake

I went over to my favorite place to relax yesterday and paddled around for an hour or so. My arms feel like it today. The lake sure changes over the seasons; it's crystal clear now, all of the algae and moss are gone.
The canned food drive was a success; they collected almost 3,000 pounds for the needy.

Operation Santa Clause

Carol's been busy organizing the yearly canned food drive. Tony Mooney is Santa this year and I snapped some pictures when they all met at Eckman Lake to get started. They do a different neighborhood each night for three nights. The food they collect goes to the needy people in the area.

Carol & Roshelle

Roshelle, our 14 year-old grand daughter, (Rick's daughter) came over yesterday and slept over. We played video games all afternoon and most of today. She got me out of the place where I've been stuck in Tomb Raider Legend for a month or two. She's really good at learning the key commands for all of the moves and her reflexes are about twice as fast as mine, but when it comes time to get in a gunfight with the bad guys she turns the controls over to grandpa.

Happy Thanksgiving!

5:00 am
Carol was rattling pots and pans late into the evening yesterday, and she'll be back at it this morning in a little while.
Someone hit a deer in front of the house yesterday morning early, so now we've got a chopped up pine tree and a dead deer for holiday decoration.
1:30pm
I fired up the smoker and JC brought his champaigned ham over. We put it in the smoker to finish it off. Carol stuffed the Salmon with wild rice and bay shrimp and after a half an hour in the oven we put it in the smoker too.
Aubrey, Susan and Roshelle showed up followed by Tom and Deanna. With JC, Kelly, Carol and I that made nine of us, ( Carol made enough food for twenty!)
The deer is gone, hopefully the White Wolf Sanctuary lady picked it up for wolf food. She has a deal with ODOT for road kill.
We watched football while we ate and then when the game was over, the comedy channel.

Rainy days

We had a nice day yesterday, and I got most of the blown down tree sawed up. At least the mail-lady can drive up to the mailbox now.
The storms are back in full force today though. It's a good thing we have a lot of jigsaw puzzles saved up for this kind of weather, if the wind kicks up again we'll probably have more power outages. It's been quite a few years since we've had so many storms come through, one right after another.

Chanterelles instead of Chinooks

Well, we gave it a good try today, but the fishing gods were frowning. JC had a couple on and lost them and I didn't even get any tugs on my line. It was still a good trip as it always is, especially when you top out at the trail head and crack open a cold one.
At least we managed to collect some Chanterelle mushrooms which are great chopped up in an omelet or fried in butter on top of a steak.
If the weather follows the forecast, we probably won't have many more trips into Drift Creek this season, but catching one wild salmon there is worth all of the pain and sore muscles hands down.
I hope we can still be hobbling in and out of there when we're in our 80's.
Carol had one ambulance call today while we were gone, they transported a heart patient. This has been kind of a slow year for her, either the "frequent fliers" are dying off or getting healthy, I don't know which.

When it rains it pours.

It was a pretty busy day yesterday. The forecast was for rain and high winds, but in the morning when we looked outside it was warm and clear. I decided to gamble and try and get in and out of Drift Creek before the storm hit. I got to the trail head at 7 just as it was getting light, made it to the water, (which was still really high,) at 8 and caught 3 fish by 9. I only kept one, a 20 pound Chinook, just right for Thanksgiving dinner. The sky was looking bad and the wind was picking up so I hustled out of there in an hour, a record time for me.
We had the fish in the freezer by 10:30 just as the rain began. The wind got really strong and at around 5 in the evening we decided to go down to the fire station to get our flu shots. When we tried to pull out onto the highway we were blocked by a line of stopped cars because one of the Shore Pines in front of the house had blown over blocking both lanes. Carol directed traffic while I helped some neighbors saw up the tree and haul it out of the way. We never did get our flu shots.
We spent the rest of the evening listening to the wind and the scanner and doing a jigsaw puzzle.

Drift Creek?

It looks like a small break in the rain today but the streams will still be way high. Don't know whether to make another trek into Drift Creek or stay home and do jigsaw puzzles with Carol while she waits for an ambulance call. My last trip in was a soggy fishless day, but I did get some nice pictures on the way back up the trail.
Climbing out of there I realized that I've been hiking in there at least once a year, (sometimes four or five times) since 1981. I wonder how many more trips I've got in me.

Fall on the Oregon Coast

Well, so far the Salmon fishing has been pretty much of a bust. JC and I caught and released some fish before the rains started but now all of the streams are too high to fish.
We had a beautiful summer but it looks like 40 days and 40 nights of rain on the forecast.
We'll have to move our Sunday barbeques inside for a while.
We're going to have Thanksgiving dinner here this year and probably go to Brad and Donna's for Christmas.
There was a bumper crop of apples on the Yellow Delicious tree, and just when we were ready to harvest them a bear, (or maybe two bears, ) made a raid on us and wiped them out. All they left us with was a bunch of claw marks on the tree and nine huge piles of bear poop. At least this year they didn't break any limbs out of the tree.