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!' 😄

 

Boy, oh, boy, did it rain last week! We had quite some serious downpours accompanied by very strong wind-gusts. We heard that Mcminnville had a gust of 85 miles/hour!
A few trees went down in the county but fortunately we didn't loose any power and besides some large branches that came down around us from the oak we're under, we had no damage at all.
Which can not be said from the poor folks in California, they suffered several flash-floods and mudslides and people lost their lives because of downed trees crashing on cars and houses.

                                                            

Despite the bad weather, which caused lots of leaves to fall already, the vineyards are still showing their gorgeous colors ..

Pretty eh? But most of the week it looked more like this:

   

Ans since the rest of the week wasn't any better, we didn't even get to golf at all!
We did order sushi to go on Wednesday though, and brought it over to Doug and Brenda for an easy dinner for all of us.
No pictures of course .. sigh, I don't know why it is so hard to take a picture of the four of us but it almost never happens ..
Here's two of how the food looked like, sort of:

It was delicious once again!

One nice thing coming out of all this wetness are ... mushrooms!

They literary seem to pop up over-night, and although some look rather tasty we didn't chance trying any of them. I'm pretty sure they're all poisonous ..

As for the orchard we're sitting in (which looks so pretty when it doesn't rain doesn't it?) soon, Brett (our landlord) will cut some trees down to sell as Christmas trees, and Serena (his wife) has her eye on one for herself.

                    

All the little ones will stay of course, so fortunately it won't be looking like one of those clear-cut disaster areas, like we sometimes come across when we drive through the forests around here.

I think that was about all for this week. Due to the weather we didn't 'do' much. We basically spend the weekend inside. Which was very cozy nevertheless.
We had the fireplace going, took long and lazy coffee breaks and made some simple meals. James took the opportunity to put some hours of study in and I started a new puzzle.
The one that I only make once a year, in the fall .. lots of pumpkins!

                         

Hopefully next weekend will be better, we might be able to get some golf in and I'd like to check out the Champoeg State Park, which is only 10 minutes away from us.

The forecast does look a lot better, so we'll see!

These are the trees lining the road to the golf course!

We only had a small dry window on Tuesday afternoon in an otherwise rainy week to play 9 holes of golf, but when we did it sure was a beautiful one.
The course always has great views, but with a lot of trees showing of their fall colors right now, they're even better!

It's getting dark a lot earlier now too, so we have to plan carefully to be able to even get our holes in before we loose sight of our ball and the course.



Afterwards we were hoping to pick up some sushi-to-go at a place we went previously but they were closed so we had to settle for Thai from a new-to-us place the Golden Leaf, on main street.
Not a bad second choice as it turned out, because it was excellent too!

 

Here's a few pictures from my walk around the neighborhood ..

First I walk by the blueberry bushes in Doug's yard, no berries anymore but still pretty now in their fall colors.
Through the front yard I step out onto NE Hyland road that starts (or ends, if you will) right there, which I follow, passing some neighbors, for a few minutes ..

                                   

Than I take a right into the forest where the huge oaks are turning yellow ..

Coming out on the other end I than connect with the 'main' road through the neighborhood, where I have a view over the little valley through which Hess Creek is flowing:

It's hard to see, but there's a creek down there!

A little further, this bright little red tree stands in the yard of one of my favorite houses around here ..

Following the road and making a right again, I end up at the Highway , where the railroad tracks on the other side pass over an old trestles bridge ..

I don't see a lot of birds these days, a lot have gone south already, but halfway my hike I came across this cute little guy ..

             

I think it is a Kestrel, a small Falcon ... they mainly eat insects and voles so this cozy trio of starlings sitting only a little away on the same wire were probably safe enough ..

                          

And look, finally, our new fridge has arrived! We'd ordered a new one 6 weeks ago but, like everything you order these days, compliments of Covid, delivery was hugely delayed ..
So, we spent the whole of Saturday swapping them out:

                 

Out with the old!

And in with the new:

James had created a walkway and ramp with some plywood and we were able to roll them in and out quite easily. We did take the doors off, and only had an inch on each side to spare, but fortunately they did fit through the door!

  

We've chosen a 'normal' house-fridge this time, since we're not going to travel much with this RV anymore and we don't need the gas function.
I'm not too fond of the stainless steel but we might put a wooden decal on it or some other sort of cover in the future. We'll see ..

  

In the meantime it's functioning beautifully, I've got a lot more room, and it's nice to have the fridge cooling the way it should, and not the (very) unhealthy 52F of the old one! No more mold also ..

To pay for all this, it's fortunate we both work now (just kiddin')!
Look, that's us, in Doug's office:

                                                             

                               

I can only be there when Doug's on route in the mornings, since we don't have enough computers for all of us, but since I don't want to work more than a couple of hours, that works fine for me.
For now, I'll be going in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and when they're behind, but with me helping they hope they can now keep on top of things.

With these rainy days I spent a little more time puzzling, and finished the third and last puzzle I got for my birthday this spring.

      

Also, now it's colder and darker, we're also craving more 'stick to your ribs food', so I'm starting to cook a little more , other than just throwing things on the BBQ or going for an easy frozen meal and salads. So, I baked a meatloaf ..

It got a little dark there on the edges (burned BBQ sauce) but it was delicious!

 As for desert: Easy apple dumplings ..

 

(No sugar in those !)

So, life goes on .. but of course there's the (white) elephant in the room .. we soooo miss our sweet baby .. he's left a huge hole that's so very hard to fill.
We're both still so very sad at times .. fortunately we have each other for comfort ..
I'm trying to keep physically busy because reading and puzzling alone doesn't keep my mind of him for very long.
So I'm working in the yard, cleaning up my vegetable garden for the winter, putting things away around the RV, going for brisk (and wet) walks, getting groceries, obviously cooking and baking, and fortunately now there's working in the office also ..

We'll get through this, and we know he's in a better place, but boy .. it's hard!

We loved him so ..