At Champoeg State Park .. beautiful fall leaves along the Willamette River

"Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful"  ... oh wait, that's still a month or so away I guess, but the weather is really sort of frightful at the moment. Rain, wind and quite cool with temperatures around 50F!
I'm mostly staying inside where it's warm and cozy and only venture out to go to the office, all but 500 yards away .. I'm starting to get the hang of the basics and according to James I now know about 80% of what I'll be going to do when I'll start working for him in the future. Cool!

The week was not all lost in rain though, it so happened to be quite nice on Sunday morning, so we decided to go for a first visit to Champoeg State Park, only a 10 minutes drive from us.



This beautiful park is situated on the south bank of the scenic Willamette River and consist of acres of forest, fields, and wetlands.
It's the site of a former settlement in the 1840s, now a ghost town, where the famous 1843 vote to form the first provisional government of the Oregon Country took place.

We took our time to visited the visitor center and little museum where we learned that this very river wiped out the once thriving port city in 1861 when it rose 55 feet (17 m) above its normal summer stage, flooding the town with seven feet (2 m) of water!



I'd hoped to see some fall colors, and there were still some around but due to last weeks rain, and especially the wind, a lot of leaves were already on the ground.

We drove to the river for a little peak through the trees and a view of the old Pioneer memorial building, but than we had to cut our visit short since we had a tee-time at the golf course, and since this would be the only dry afternoon for a while we wanted to take advantage of it!
We will certainly go back though for some more exploring and possibly some hiking (imagine that!).

Actually, I didn't end up going because my heel is causing me a lot of trouble at the moment. I'm suffering from what I think is either a heel-spur or plantair-fascitis, already since before I went to Holland, and although it had gotten a little better lately with the help of an insole in my shoe, it is getting worse again ..
On top of that I have a lingering, at times burning, pain in my right buttock, which is most likely due to a pinched sciatic nerve .. how fun getting old(er)!
I think my hiking days will be on hold for a while .. not that I would be doing a lot of it with all this rain!

For our weekly dinner out this time around we went to the Korean restaurant in town, Kori Ramen.

James has been to Korea but I had never had any Korean food so I looked forward to try something new.
Their restaurant is among the few that are open, although there weren't too many clients. Just as well, Covid numbers are up here too ..

                                                                   

We had the Bulgoki Spicy Shrimp and Spicy Pork Yakisoba. Both delicious! I especially liked the Korean noodles of the Yakisoba.

Than there was Halloween of course, and Newberg's main street was packed! I was picking James up after golf and totally forgot about Halloween and couldn't believe how many people were out there!

Some wore masks already because .. well .. Halloween costumes of course, and some wore mask for Covid, but a lot didn't wear any at all .. because .. who cares, don't they? Sometimes I get so mad about all the stupid people out there who still don't get it.
I actually hope they do get it .. see how that feels you dumb-asses ..
Sorry. Moving on.

Well, it's a short one this week I guess. For now, stay warm and dry and .. (as Whoopie Goldberg on the View just said) 'put the toilet seat down!' 😄