Flying with Paul

 My friend Paul offered to take me flying sometime, which was very exciting but also nervous-making. I have only flown in a small plane once before, on the return leg of a canoeing trip in Canada. That was in a seaplane and the ride was pretty fun but it was hard to see down from the seat I was in. I mostly saw the sky and some of the forest when we banked to turn.

Paul and I headed out on a Wednesday afternoon to his usual airfield. In a plot twist, that field was closed to resurface the runway so the plane he had reserved was actually at a different nearby airfield. Luckily, we had gotten there early so we had time to drive over to the new place before our reservation started. It would have been keen if I had made a note of the names of any of these places, but I didn't. There are way more little airports scattered about the Portland area than I realized.

Our plane was a Skyhawk (Cesna 172) named Mike Romeo (the NATO phonetic for it's letters). It was parked in the grass because it didn't have a regular spot at this airfield. Paul showed me how to check that all the flaps were moving right, how much fuel there was, and whether there was water or dirt in the fuel. The plane uses less fuel than I thought, 6-8 gallons per hour. Paul and an instructor pushed it out of the grass onto the taxiway, but I got to help push it back into the grass later. It only weighs about 2,000 lb and was not that hard to push around.

Our plane, Skyhawk Mike Romeo.

Mike Romeo back in her spot after our flights.

The new field was closer to PDX than Paul's regular field and had some special rules about how high you could be in various areas. We did a quick flight with an instructor from the flight school to who showed Paul where the various boundaries were. He was a cool guy with a lot of good info. I got to sit in the back seat which actually had a better view to the side because the wing strut thing wasn't in the way of that window. I didn't realize it at the time though so I didn't take any photos.

On our second flight I got to sit up front. We flew around up and down the Columbia and Paul practiced some of his maneuvers. We did low power flight, low power stall, and high power stall. Low power flight was very peaceful, kind of similar to being in a hot air balloon. The stalls felt kind of exciting like starting down a hill on a roller coaster. The high power stall was scariest feeling.

It was fun to see the mountains. I managed to get Rainier, Helens, and Adams all in one shot. I also liked looking down on the houses and the river. Now when I see a small plane flying above our house I try to figure out if they're doing practice maneuvers. I had a ton of fun, hopefully I will get to go flying again sometime. Paul is also learning to fly a more acrobatic type of plane that can do loops and corkscrews and such. eep!

Left to right: Rainier - Helens - Adams.

Truckventure: Tygh Creek Road

 Over 4th of July weekend we finally had good weather and free time to go check out some rustic camping along Tygh Creek Road. A neighbor friend suggested this area last summer after we got the truck but we didn't make it out before the road closed for the winter.

The view from our campsite. Can you believe there was a burn ban?

Jordan Creek crevice.

Jordan Creek crevice the other way.

Tygh Creek Road runs right next to Jordan Creek, naturally. There is a nice swimming hole with a waterfall that is accessed by a chossy steep "trail". There's was a group there already with some floaty toys when we arrived. We found a free shelf of rock near the waterfall to dangle our feet in. The water was pretty cold, I'm impressed by the folks who were swimming around in it.

The view from my shelf.

View from shelf with toes.

  

Nick was relaxing too.

Unbeknownst to both of us, the camelbak was emptying itself the entire time.

We picked a campsite just up the road from the swimming path. It had a nice rock fire pit but there was a burn ban and everything was super dry so we didn't even bring wood with us. We did singe some leaves with the fresnel lens in the backyard last week though. I made my world-famous macaroni and cheese with a chicken packet and extra cheese powder. A wonderful evening was had by all. 

Our campsite.

Our campsite all set up.

The next day we hiked back down to the swimming hole to see if we could swim before the crowd arrived. I was building up my courage when Nick noticed a round worm trapped in a mini puddle next to the main pond (🤮). So we decided not to swim after all. 

The trail down to the swimming hole.

Swimming hole sans people.

Sneaky Alien Automaton

I am in love with handmade automata. I especially adore wooden ones, but unfortunately the product of my woodworking skills and attention span has been insufficient so far for me to make one. BUT... I have a much higher attention span for coding up 3D models and printing them. So that's what I did.

Spaceman with hiding alien automaton.

The inspiration for my model is this cute scene by Alan Westby: 

He has a lot of neat models, sadly his website seems to be down now. 

*cut for 20 minutes of increasingly incredulous internet searching*

You guys, Alan Westby teaches (taught?) at a charter school in my hometown. What a small world. And he was a director at the Fox Cities Children's Museum while I was a child there. Mind blown. Anyway, the upshot is he has a facebook page where he shares some of his other models.

Moving right along. I designed the base and mechanisms for my model from scratch in OpenSCAD, a programmatic 3D modelling package. The mountains were modeled after someone's open source code for making printable table top strategy game terrain but I made so many changes I don't think any of the original code remains. The other models I borrowed from thingiverse: 

• The spaceman is the Matter Hackers mascot Phil A Ment (a printer-testing model)
•  The alien is a model of the alien from Toy Story.
• There was a rocket behind the spaceman, this one but shortened, but the pin it was glued to broke off. 

And here is the final product:

It was really fun to design and print, but did take forever. Next time I dust off my printer I may do some wildly modified version of a marblevator like this one from Greg Zumwalt. There are a lot of cool marblevator designs around.

Truckventure: Tygh Valley

 We took the truck over the mountains (actually we went out through the Gorge and came back through the mountains) to Tygh Valley last weekend. Since our trip to Panther Creek we've shortened the scaffolding in the back by 3 inches (guess the solar cell will have to ride on top) and it is way more comfortable to sleep back there. I also made window covers, but then I forgot to bring them with.

On Saturday we stomped around at White River Falls State Park. It has several impressive waterfalls and a decommissioned hydro station. They have a very cool placard showing you which areas to stay out of because otherwise the river will kill you. I didn't see anyone taking that advice though. I think as long as it doesn't rain it's fine. And as long as you don't fall in, I did see a couple people tempting fate on that front but nothing too egregious. Some folks must have had a wedding at the park because there were roses and rose petals all over.

The top cascade.

The power house from above.

Rose petal lined pathway.

I accidentally implied that Nick should be serious.

I swear that kid is not peeing.

Second cascade and pool.

Cool windows on the power house.

Cool pipe leading to the turbines.

Cool rivet guys on the pipe.

Downstream from the third falls.

Nick and the third falls.

Mostly normal selfie.

Downstream side of the power house.

Saturday night we camped next to the Deschutes River, which is quite the thing. There is a lot of water going through there and it's pretty rocky and shallow so it's moving fast. The fishing must be great because there were quite a few folks around angling and there were a bunch of rickety looking platforms cantilevered out over the water. It looked very exciting. There are a lot of campgrounds through there to host the fisherpeople, which was nice. We stayed at the Oasis camping area right below Maupin. We ended up getting our dinner and breakfast from the grocery store in town because the adapter for our propane tank apparently deformed during its test run and was no longer gas-tight. We have since obtained a better one. It all turned out for the best because I had amazing shepherd's pie for breakfast and now I'm inspired to make my own.

Truck and campsite with the swanky part of Maupin overlooking it all.

Breakfast spot.

Sunday we did a 5 mile hike from the Criterion Ranch Trailhead, south of Maupin on 197. It was beautiful open deserty plains. We had intended to hike to a waterfall but the relevant stream was not flowing so in the end we just hiked to a cleft in some rocks. But the views were great.

Pretty yellow bush.

Trail through the scrubby grass.

Desert selfie.

I think this is a meadow for part of the year.

View down to the Deschutes.

Selfie with chossy cliffs.

Truckventure: Panther Creek

We took the truck out this weekend for the first time with a minimum-functionality platform in the back (has a mattress but no drawers and certainly no electric). We built the platform from 20 mm aluminum T slot extrusion. The mattress is 4" high density foam on 19/32" plywood. When we first put the mattress in the headroom seemed low but doable. I think it must have expanded some more because now it's pretty claustrophobic in there. We're going to need either a taller topper or a way to lift the topper a bit when we're parked. Or possibly a shorter platform, but we have big dreams for the kitchen drawer.

For the venue, we headed over the river to Panther Creek in Washington. The truck did great on the gravel forest roads. We went over several sections that would have stopped the Yaris. We were planning to do dispersed camping but ended up finding a spot in Panther Creek Campground, which was lucky because everyone was out for Labor Day weekend. We found a cool spot on the creek with some downed logs that formed a nice bench. The water was beautifully clear but crazy cold.

On Sunday we drove the rest of the way up to Panther Creek Falls and visited the overlook. It's a pretty nice cascade falls. There was a trail down to the bottom but we didn't hike all the way down. 

On our way back to town we stopped at the Bonneville Dam to admire the fish in the fish ladder. There were 10k Chinook salmon counted going through the fish ladder per day this weekend.

Adventure Truck

My brother and his wife have been building out a custom camper van and it's super cool. I am v. jealous but I wasn't feeling quite that ambitious so Nick and I bought a little truck to spruce up as a camping-mobile. It's a black 2001 Ford Ranger, as yet unnamed. It should be much more capable on the forest roads than the Yaris is. We're planning to do a bed platform with a drawer or two underneath, we'll see how it goes.

Utah travels, Willis Creek

Brian and I spent a week in April hiking and biking in Utah. Brian has always wanted to bike the Slickrock trail, so that was our inspiration for the trip. We wisely realized we are in no shape to be mountain biking 6 straight days at 4,000 feet so we bookended the biking with two days of canyon hikes in Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument on either then. In case you're wondering (as I did many times on this trip) Portland is 50 feet above sea level.

We made our first base in Escalante, UT at a nice little camping/RV park on the edge of town. The local guide shop recommended Willis Creek and Bull River Gorge as fun non-technical slot canyons. We started in Willis Creek, which carves a wide-ish (10-20 feet) slot on and off for about a 1.5 miles from the road until it joins Sheep Creek. The hike was flat and relaxed, with just a bit of water flow, and the rock was gorgeous. All intersecting layers of slanted sandstone. 

One of several narrows on Willis Creek.

I love the layered texture in the Utah sandstone.

Another textured wall.

View from the fire road headed home.

We had a couple hours of daylight left after Willis Creek so we headed further down the fire road to check out Bull River Gorge. We found the top of the gorge but couldn't figure out how to get down into it. It appears about 100-200 feet deep and maybe 8 feet wide at the top, very cool. I now have the entrance beta and fully intend to go back sometime to hike through it. 

On our way home to camp we stopped at Escalante Petrified Forest State Park and did the three mile petrified wood trail. I had previously only seen a handful of petrified logs out in nature, although I am the proud owner of a small chunk of petrified wood. This park was amazing, so many boulders, logs, and piles of petrified wood. The rock took on a whole rainbow of colors. My favorites were a brilliant yellow that commonly formed the outer shell of the logs and a rick pink-purple that sadly did not photograph well. The trail was steep and tiring but very worth it. Five stars, would complain my way up again.

We got so excited when we came to the first petrified log, not realizing this was 0.1% of the petrified wood on the trail.

Rainbow rock with purple and yellow sections.

We also saw sandstone with this interesting bb texture.