parkerperegrination

[parkerperegrination]

California Peregrination, 2019

--Day 1

We have been driving through Oregon almost every summer since at least 1990. The traffic has gotten a lot heavier and it takes longer to do the drive but I still really like it. It just makes me happy to go through Oregon. Sometimes we go down the coast and sometimes we drive behind the mountains to the west. This year we are in a hurry so we are shooting down I-5. We got up early, drove to Portland and had breakfast at Bertie Lou’s Cafe in Selwood. The name tells you just about everything you need to know about the place. It’s small, funky, has a neon sign, friendly staff and good enough food. It’s our second time there. I asked about the snarky waiter we had the last time (he was great fun) and the waiter said, that’s Bob, people love him or hate him, he’s not here today. We love Portland but we had places to be and, full of eggs and coffee, we pressed on. 

The skies were completely overcast and the temps stayed in the 60s. We have never had weather like this for our August road trip, it has always been hot and dry.This year sky didn’t clear up until we passed Roseburg and here in Grants Pass, where we are going to spend the night, it is only in the low 80s--very cool for this time of year. Everyone has been telling us how hard it rained yesterday, it’s like the weather is upside down this year. 

Grants Pass is a place where F series pickups meet Subarus, logging and tourism are the industries here with Oregon Caves, the Rogue river, boating, hunting, hiking and fishing nearby. Our motel is lovely but the greeting here is guns, god and country. We are two blocks from a Republican campaign headquarters with Trump/Pence signs in the windows. Log trucks and Harleys roared past as we strolled into the heart of the historic downtown with its preserved turn of the 20th century buildings, antique and tchotchka shops, ice cream parlors and restaurants. The down on their luck folk watch as the tourists stroll by. It’s bear festival here and cute bear statues are scattered around the town, each bear a different anthropomorphic theme.

The big finds for us started when we went into a gallery of local artists. Lynn and I both stopped and fell in love with the paintings of kristen O’Neill. https://kristenoneillart.com/product-category/all-available-art/

One of the staff in the gallery told us that Kristen was next door in the Grants Pass Museum of Art https://www.gpmuseum.com/. We went in and found a fascinating exhibit by a photographer, Rich Bergman https://richbergeman.zenfolio.com/ who used an infrared filter to make striking landscapes. Kristen was really very nice and we had a chat about her art. It was one of those times I wished I had the money to collect art. I would like to have some of their work and I would like to support their work. 

Our last big find was dinner, Taroko, Asian Tapas. We walked in to check out the menu and thought we had just walked into a bar but decided to eat there anyway. I would go to this place if it were in Seattle! This is the only place we ate in Grants Pass but I am willing to bet that it is the best food in Grants Pass. Indonesian women prepared food based on Thai, Japanese and Chinese cuisines, with care and skill. They offer ‘small plates’ but their idea of small will fill you up with only a couple of  plates. Highly recommended. 

We end with a dip in the pool and a dive into bed. Tomorrow we head for the Trinity Alps and will be offline until next Tuesday. See you then.

[parkerperegrination]

Up, up and away...

Because I have been wanting to go up in a hot air balloon since I read The 21 Balloons when I was 11, I bought Lynn a balloon flight for Xmas. We planned to go up for a sunset flight on the 22nd of June--Solstice to Solstice; a midsummer’s sunset flight with Mt. Rainier as out background. But that didn’t work out. We got a text that there was too much wind, a storm was coming in and the flight was canceled. We rescheduled for later in July and drove to Auburn through evening traffic. We waited in the parking lot of a sad little casino near an Arco. The van arrived with the balloon basket and equipment on a trailer picked us up and drove to the launch site in a meadow with a view of the mountains: 

The balloon was unfurled and the wind came up. Waves of air that swayed the treetops and rippled the grass. After waiting a while and watching the weather the captain called off the flight, “if I don’t want to go up, you don’t want to go up. It’s not safe.” So, we drove back to Seattle and rescheduled for August 4th on the sunrise flight. Or arrival time for that was 5:15 a.m. 

4:00 Saturday morning when the alarm rang Lynn and I asked each other what we thought we were doing. We threw down some breakfast, poured the coffee in a thermos and dove down to Auburn for our 3rd attempt to get up in a balloon. We were met by the same van and whisked away to a new launch spot in another field. Wispy ground fog drifted across the meadows and distant Rainier sat softly in the predawn twilight. 

The crew set up two balloons, dragging the envelopes across the grass and attaching them to their baskets.  The baskets were on their sides and fans were used to fill the envelopes with air 

and then the burners were turned on and, as the air heated up, the balloons rose up off of the ground. 

When the balloons were straight up over our heads we climbed in. The captain turned on a long burn and the basket lifted off the ground with no sensation. There was no thrust, there was no being pushed back it was just: now we are on the ground and now we are not. 

And the sun rose, 

and glowed on the mist, 

And we listened to the quiet as we drifted through the air. We were pushed by the wind and had no sensation of movement unless we looked at the ground passing underneath us. 

The burners roared and we sailed higher with the other balloon trailing behind us. 

It was so quiet we could hear cows mooing in their pastures, dogs barking in their yards and the White River tumbling over rocks below. 

We could see up into the balloon above us, 

and the farms below us. 

The captain brought us down

to a gentle landing. 

and the end of a magical ride. 

Everyone was surprised and happy by how different it was from any other form of flying--so gentle, so peaceful, and so open to air.

No one was disappointed.