This is the local gathering spot on the "ranch" for a very wide range of characters - and I do mean characters! This is a very diverse community, which is one of things I love about living here.
This is one of our favorite singers, Dottie who can really belt out a song!
This is our bartender, Makah, who has the personality to match her job. She is a real kick! I have NEVER seen her without a smile! I let her experiment on my drinks sometimes and she does a pretty good job.And a photo of us and of Joyce and Bill having a good time!
And our karaoke master, Judy, who has a great voice, too.
OK, on to the reason for our trip - another work crew on the White cabin. See my other blog for updated photos from this trip. This is the sign that Dean carved for the new cabin. Pretty nice!
One of the days we were there, we went for a hike to see a waterfall on the Wallowa River. On the way, we went over this bridge at the Boy Scout camp and I had to take a photo for Janet because of the lashed bridge. We were just talking about lashing tables and wash stands, etc. at girl scout camp. 
We spent the first few nights sleeping on a bed in the Floyd White (Edsel's father) cabin at the local Methodist camp which we shared with friends Gordy and Faye (shared the cabin, not the bed.........) When they had to go back to Vancouver, we moved into the new cabin and slept on an air mattress - which we thought had the leaks fixed. We quickly learned that they were not fixed after all. We got up several times during the night to blow it back up. On top of that, we had our summer weight sleeping bags and one night it got down to 37ยบ and we got COLD! Old people shouldn't try to act like youngsters sometimes! Kent and Sam Landerholm were staying in the old cabin while they were hiking in the area, so when they left, we took their place and had a pretty good nights sleep on the last night we were there. Abby had her own bed, of course, but we found her curled up on our bed the day it was cold and rainy.
The main purpose of this trip, we learned after we arrived, was to install stairs to the loft/storage area. No one had been able to figure out how to make them work, since the total tolerance between the steps could be no more than 3/8" difference in the rise. I think everyone there tried to figure it out with no success. Dean finally went to town and had to buy a fancy square in order to get some instructions for laying out a staircase. Problem was, the directions were pretty complicated - until I finally figured it out!!! Yeah, me! Not to blow my own horn or anything......... well, my brain hurt and I felt pretty good after I mastered those darn things! Here is a photo of the final product. Whew!
So, we were able to leave after the stairs were finished. The town of Joseph, at the end of Wallowa Lake, is known for it's artist community - mostly bronze casting. But this weekend, it was known for a big biker gathering. We didn't stop, but saw literally hundreds of bikes on the road on their way to Joseph. Here are some of them. Notice how clean the windshield is.
Abby is getting better and better about riding. Usually she just goes to sleep in back on her bed, but once in a while she has to be closer to us. Is this cute or what!
We took the long way home, traveling down to Baker City and up through the gold country. We'll be going to S. Oregon in another week for Dean and Jim to go to a gold camp - hopefully they will make us a fortune - or at least learn how to get more when they go out panning. We stopped at one mine along a river - at least the sign said it was. We saw no mining activity at all, though.
I don't know why, but I have a thing about old power houses, so we drove up to see the historic Fremont Powerhouse near the town of Granite up in the Blue Mountains. I was built in 1907 to provide power to mines and towns in the area at the time and operated continuously until 1967. It cost about $100,000. to build which was a lot of money then. All of the original machinery is still in place, though it was not open when we were there. 
Water to the powerhouse was transported 8 miles from Olive Lake through a wooden and steel pipeline. 
Along the gravel road from Granite to a highway were several mines and residences, many of which had painted rocks next to their driveways. This is an example. 
Driving from John Day toward home, we encountered a hatch of some sort. Remember how clean the windshield was when we left Joseph? This is what those flying things did! It was getting towards dusk, so I didn't take any more photos, but you can see that it was getting crowded.
So ends the trip. We arrived home around 8 and had a little something to eat and fell into bed!
1 comment:
All that self-sufficiency makes me tired - but way to go on being the one to figure it all out. Once my pal was installing a wood floor at her friend's house and she called me for a math solution for measuring in the hall corners. The irony of that! But, I did figure it out when others had not, so I'm just going to hang onto that little bit of glory for a while longer.
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