The rain finally stopped this week and with clear skies and temperatures in the high 30's we had some nice colorful sunrises again ..

We don't really see the sunrise, to make that picture above I have to step out of the RV and climb the little hill in front of our door.
But after about 10 minutes the sun has traveled above and to the right of the barns and will peak through the trees to set the 2 ponds next to us aglow with it's morning light ..

And a couple of minutes after that, it will hit the RV:

So pretty!

Now the weather had cleared a little (although that particular morning we woke up to a thick fog), we'd picked Tuesday to visit the little town of Silverton, and more specifically their Christmas market and lights show.
We'd come close to Silverton a couple of times in our travels to and From Salem and surroundings but never got to really visit, so we thought we'd 'kill two birds with one stone'.
Actually, we added another 'bird' to the list by taking the opportunity to pay the close-by Silver Falls State Park a visit as well!

This park we had seen before, but that was probably about 20 years ago during which we only saw the South Falls.
So, this time we planned to go and see the North and Winter Falls.

People call this park the “crown jewel” of the Oregon State Parks system and for good reason.
It is the largest state park in Oregon with an area of more than 9,000 acres, and it includes more than 24 miles of walking trails, 14 miles of horse trails, and a 4-mile bike path.
Its 8.7-mile (14.0 km) Canyon Trail/Trail of Ten Falls, a spectacular, nationally recognized hiking trail, runs along the banks of Silver Creek and by TEN waterfalls, from which the park got its name.

                                      

The park's most visited waterfall is South Falls, a 177-foot (54 m) cascade, which as I mentioned we saw last time, but in July 2023 the North Rim Trail was opened which includes a viewpoint of the North Falls.  
It's only one-mile in and out and easily accessible with a width of 6 or more feet of compacted surface.

By the time we got to the park the thick morning fog was only just lifting but it actually added some interest and mystery to the short hike through the forest:

         

Due to the latest rainfalls the Fall was quite spectacular:

 

This more or less double-barreled segmented waterfall plunged and thundered some 136ft over its overhanging lip, which made it pretty awesome!

Driving towards Winter Falls, a little further down the road, we met two little does.
They weren't too impressed with us and kept on grazing the grass that is still growing thick and lush everywhere .. compliments of the recent rains.

At the Winter Falls trailhead a 0.7 mile hike brings you down to the valley floor some 100 feet below, through a beautiful grove of old, moss-covered oaks and pines:

Winter Falls gets its name from the fact that it only runs in the winter. In reality, it runs year round, but in the summer and early fall, it shrinks to a mere trickle.
It has the lowest volume of the ten major waterfalls in the state park and is definitely at its best in the winter or spring.

The water plunges for close to a hundred feet, then slides down the basalt wall to complete the 134 foot drop:

And what goes down must come up again ... or something like that .. you can see the trail was rather slippery but do-able.

                                  

All that hiking (well, not that much actually) had made us hungry for some lunch so our first order of business was to find some food.
We drove the 14 miles to the little town of Silverton and ended up in 'Mac's place':



Which turned out to be an excellent choice. It's  is the oldest building on the Silverton National Historic Registry (1890) and is a fun, funky dive bar with great food.

We shared a plate of fries with bacon, blue-cheese and chipotle sauce:

                                                      

                                                       

As you can see, we didn't like it at all! 😂 Man, it was good!
And if that wasn't quite enough we managed to share one of these house-smoked BBQ pulled pork po-boy as well:

All of that was washed down with some cranberry and pear cider. We were stuffed!

We sat inside because unfortunately it was rather cold and wet outside, but this bar actually has a deck on the backside overlooking pebble-bottomed Silver Creek as it rolls through town.



A little further down the street there's even a cute covered pedestrian bridge over the creek. it's not old by any means but it's a nice place to watch the creek go by .

Afterwards we strolled through town for a while, visiting some of the many antique and art stores the town is known for:

  

Another thing the town is well known for are all the murals, depicting scenes of the Silverton area heritage, industry, beauty and more.
The Murals are curated by the Silverton Mural Society, a local nonprofit, dedicated to preserving the town’s history through art ..

There's even one for Bobbie the Wonder Dog, a legend in his own time who warmed the hearts of a nation:

                                  

This Scotch collie mix was lost on a family trip from Oregon to Indiana in 1923 and walked all the way home, a six-month and almost 2,800-mile journey, to return to the people he loved!

Finally at 5 pm, last but not least, it was time to head to the Oregon Gardens for the Christmas market.



Due to overwhelming popularity of this event in previous years they're now trying to spread out the amount of people a little over the evening by selling tickets for a certain time-slot online.
We'd booked tickets for 5pm (at $15 pp). This didn't include parking but there was a shuttle that picked us up in town for free!

The market is based on a traditional European-style, German Christmas Market, where you can experience the sights, sounds and smells of the season ...



There's a heated and covered beer garden, food and craft vendors and pictures with Santa.

                       

Or a visit with his counter-part, the Krampus, a devil figure from European Alpine folklore, that scares naughty children back onto the path of good behavior.

                                                 

Those more adventurous will enjoy snow-less tubing. Yes, there's such a thing:

But the biggest attraction is to stroll through the garden's lighted walking paths featuring more than a million Christmas lights!



I didn't count them but yes, I'll say that's easily a million lights .. and than some!

Here's me, as a Christmas ornament ...

                                                  
         
And James, still wearing his Texan cowboy hat whenever he gets a chance .. oh well, fashion isn't his forte .. but he's cute. 
       

           

We spent about an hour walking through the gardens, checking out the boots, taking pictures and eating a piece of bread-pudding ... hey, that lunch was hours ago and we didn't have dessert yet!

All in all, a most delightful day, full of Christmas magic .. and food!

Talking about food, and desserts .. I started baking my yearly Christmas-cookie extravaganza .. or something like that.
First up, one of my all-time favorites 'Hungarian butter crescents':



This disk, cut in pizza-like slices and rolled up like croissants, which than become these:

                                                                  

Followed by a close second: Chocolate crinkle cookies ..

Made with that famously #$%@$^! sticky dough, but totally worth it! I gave them a festive cherry on top this year.
I used a different recipe this year, only using chocolate powder and omitting (melted) baking chocolate, but wasn't totally happy with it, so I'll revert to the old-and-tried one which does use this next time.

And that wraps up the Christmas special for this week, but stay tuned ..
who knows what we'll do next week?!

Time goes fast to begin with but seems to go even faster around this time of the year.
Only 2 weeks to Christmas, how is that even possible?

As usual I did my research for any events in the area to get us 'into the spirit'!
The tiny town of Willamina (population 2100) is literary 'around the corner' from us and lo-and-behold they were putting up a Christmas parade as well as a Tree lighting ceremony!



I thought four o'clock was a little early for a tree lighting and it was still light when we arrived just before 4pm, but by the end of the ceremony it was getting dark enough to see the lights:

As announced, the Delphian High School choir did a wonderful job 'caroling'. They were really very good, rather surprising for such a small-town little choir!

We were very lucky that although the forecast had predicted some light rain throughout the afternoon and evening, it was still dry.
Since we had some time to kill before the parade would start at 6pm we'd planned to have a bite to eat at the little cafe/restaurant at the Wildwood hotel, which come to think of it is probably the only hotel in town.

   

It's a no-frills but cozy, small cafe. One of those places 'where the locals go', which means the food is usual good.
We chose to splurge a little and shared a prime rib steak which didn't disappoint, it was excellent!

Around 6pm we moved outside to the porch of the cafe and waited for the parade to start, which would conveniently come right by there!



The chamber took the lead and were followed by a surprising amount of decorated and lit-up cars, trucks and even a horse or two!

All in all, it took half an hour for the whole parade to pass. Certainly not the longest parade but also not the shortest we've ever seen!

    

We even lined up to see Santa who'd set up court at the Free Methodist Church.
In fact, we went for the cider and cookies of course, but is was fun to see the little kids having their obligatory pictures taken .. some happily, some shy and some terrified!

But before we could launch the Christmas season for real we had one more holiday to celebrate on the 5th of December, that of St Nicolas, aka 'Sinterklaas', a beloved dutch childhood-tradition.

   

And although we aren't giving each other any gifts (anymore), as is customary on this day, I did bake 'Speculaas' as I do every year.
I'd bought new spices when I was in Holland. They are a different brand than I usually get and boy, are they nice! Much better than the previous ones!

                                               

OK, now that that was behind us I could start 'decking the halls'. I cranked up some Christmas music and 'went to town':

It doesn't take much to transform the RV into a cozy Christmas cabin ..

And the same goes for the outside!

I completely forgot to mention that we had some terrible weather this last week!
The North-West was hit by what they call an 'Atmospheric River', a weather pattern that brings tropical, moist air from the south all across the ocean and than to dump it for several days, in an almost continues 'river', somewhere north!

We have 3 ponds on the property, the largest one right next to us. The water-level rose almost all the way to the path:

                

But fortunately our landlord installed a large culvert last year so when it gets to a certain point, it drains into the second pond below, and from there into a third one below that one ... like this:

There's more rain in the forecast, yet another of those 'rivers', and there are floods everywhere in Oregon and Washington, but fortunately we're safe and warm and dry.
I'm so glad we moved when we moved!

Being stuck inside I finally had some time to finish my puzzle.

By the way .. we recently bought this small collapsible table for me to lay out my puzzle-map, or do anything else like working on something on my laptop.
James often needs the whole dining table to lay out his papers for an appraisal which left me with no room to do anything.
This one is light enough to easily move out of the way and collapses fast when not in use. 
Another problem solved!

Happy camper!

What a gorgeous week we've had! Frosty mornings and clear skies made for beautiful pictures like these ..

 

Everything was covered with a thin layer of crunchy ice ... so pretty!

                                                                                    

                                                                 This was why ..  26F, brrrrr!                                           

          

Good news for our moving plans though!
It meant that the ground had a chance to dry out some and by Tuesday we decided to take the plunge and move the RV early in the morning (8am) when the soil was crusty and hard and fairly dry ...

And we did it! Not without a few hick-ups but we made it!

The first turn towards the path going down was a little tight and James had to swing real wide and make several attempts but he got it done.
Everything went smooth the rest of the way down and he got the RV pretty much in place on the first try but when we tried to make a small adjustment, as in moving it over a couple of feet ... he got stuck!

Fortunately our landlord was on stand-by to pull him out, which went very easy and after a little back and forth they got it parked in it's final 'resting place'.

And voila .. done! Isn't it a beautiful site?

  
 

We spent the rest of the day hooking everything up; electric, water, TV, Internet and James brought the big propane tank over ...

We were so busy that I forgot to take any pictures but here are a few of the end result:

 

We even installed the skirt under the front, laid down the pallets and mat for the porch and brought the awnings out so we have a nice dry place to come into the RV again.

 


                                                 

This is the view from the inside out. They're not the best pictures but you get the idea ..

                                                   

                                                   

We have great views from all windows, the ones on the side look out onto the pond and the tree-line of the little forest on the right, and the windows in the back look out all the way towards the distant mountain range.
We still have a few things to install and more stuff to bring over from the barn where we stored it for the time being when we arrived here but we're functioning and we're warm and dry. 

Time for some R&R!
Well .. sort of ... James got two new orders while we were busy with the move so we took a day of from organizing, connecting and adjusting and spent some time driving through the countryside to measure and photograph several properties.
It's work, but it's also rather fun to see new areas and have a look-see in different houses.

We had lunch at the 'Hitchpost', a bar/cafe somewhere in the countryside around Keizer where this sign greets you at the entrance:

    

                           

We fit right in .. look .. there's a redneck right now! 😁

                                                           

Despite all that, the food was excellent. We split a Tri-tip French Dip sandwich with curly fries and a Prickly-pear cider. Yumm!

Talking about food, it smells really wonderful here at the moment .. I just took this Blueberry pie out of the oven!
Following a new recipe, I used both regular flour as well as cornflour with the berries to avoid a 'soupy' pie, and baked it 10 minutes longer than usual.

It looks like that paid of, no visible running juices ..
They also advice to let it cool down for 4 hours on the kitchen counter and than overnight in the fridge to let the cornflour set even better.
We'll see .. the hardest part is not to dig into it right now!

I guess that's it for this week, it was a busy one and we're rather exhausted, but the move is behind us and we can finish setting up without being on a time-line and without being anxious about getting stuck or not being able to get the RV in it's place.

 Peace out!