Winter Travels

I did a bit of a U.S. tour over Christmas/New Year's. We started out with a week in San Diego to visit Nick's family and ensure we'd be as unprepared as possible for the bitter cold in the midwest. I went on some good walks, had a delicious steak dinner with old family friends, and benefited from the annual cookie baking marathon. Nick's mom gave me the amazing gift of one of her spinning wheels. It is a Ashford Traditional and I think it has been to New Zealand. I can't wait to get it spinning. Sadly, I had to leave before actual Christmas to head to Chicago.

Wiggly cactus - one of many cool plants I saw on our walks. Most were hard
to photograph without creepily taking pictures of other people's houses.

I'm not sure if it's possible to hike directly to that little peak in the distance,
but I plan to find out the hard way someday. Maps schmaps.

My newwwww spinning wheel! Eeeee.

When I got to Chicago, it was a very reasonable 40°F. The weather proceeded to get colder 10°F/day for the next four days. We still had a really great time. I got to know Jack's friend Nicola a bit better and Brian had opportunities to be a photo bug. For our arrival meal, Dad found a local joint with great thin crust pizza that you could eat in the adjoining bar. On Christmas Eve Eve we had our traditional meal of lasagne with hot beef sandwiches with my mom's side of the family. I got a lot of fun presents and was able to deliver several craft projects I'd been working on this fall. We even snuck in a game of Tripoley. 

On actual Christmas Eve we went to see Wicked in downtown Chicago. The show was great, fun songs, cool costumes, and a good emotional arc. I've listened to the soundtrack a few times since. 5 stars, would see again. I would also like to know how long it takes to scrub the green off Elphaba afterward, or if they even bother. 

Snowy bean and skyline.

I love this ceiling in the Chicago Macy's.

Brian and I test drove this couch for quite some time while the other folks shopped the fur vault.

After our days in the big city, we headed north to my folks place in Wisconsin. I had fun showing Nick around my hometown, visiting Wilmar's Chocolates, playing board games, and watching movies with my dad. We compared notes on how we passed the time summers, and whose childhood library has the better indoor garden (mine, there are tiger cages). We also went to see Coco and play skiball at the movie theater. I thought the film was really fun, it got me more excited for Incredibles II this spring. Becky and David stopped by for a couple hours one day. We had fun catching up and meeting their new baby. He's a cutie.

Rick and Nikki and the boys came up for a day over the weekend. We introduced Isaac to the ancient art of Yahtzee. Rick forever skewed his understanding of probability by getting three yahtzees in one game. We went for a hike in the meadow with Simon and played in the snow on the sled. The average high while we were there was about -4°F. The bitter cold kept us pretty much indoors, but we did do a few short trips out to visit the horse down the road and to stomp around in the meadow. By the end of the week I basically had cabin fever though. 

My mom's tree looked magnificent.

She featured several ornaments handmade by my friend Jessica the craft genius.

Becky's baby rocking the hat I made him!

Nick takes being a good house-guest very seriously.

Oceanside rocks

Brian and I got one rock-hunting trip in before winter ended. We went to three beaches on the north Oregon coast. The first two were up near Highway 26 and didn't yield much in the way of rocks. And we got rained on a lot. Luckily I had my new Columbia rain coat on. We almost gave up but then decided to drive down to Oceanside beach, where we had better weather and found a ton of great rocks. 

Oceanside rock hunt prizes.

That's about 7 lbs of rocks. My tumbler only holds 3 lb so I picked the agates (the white pile on the right and the center pile) and added a few of the green guys and the black rocks with embedded agates. I skipped the coarse grind step and added a third polish step with 1000 grit alumina to hopefully get a higher shine more quickly. Here is the polishing progression:

As-found beach rocks.

After 1 week of medium grind (180/220 grit SiC).

After 1 week of pre-polish (500 grit SiC).

After 1 week of mid-polish (1000 grit alumina).

After 1 week of polish (1200 grit alumina) plus burnished 1 day with Ivory soap.

This is a pretty small subset of the batch, the whole pile looks like this:

Oceanside rocks before tumbling.

Rocks after tumbling.

Yachats trip

I spent some of my layoff-cation exploring the coast town of Yachats with Nick. We stayed at Ocean Cove Inn and ate dinner twice at Heidi's Italian Restaurant, both of which were awesome. It rained every day we were there, which kept the crowds down and made for good waves. 

Our main objective in selecting Yachats was to check out Thor's Well, a hole in rock ledge on the ocean's edge that fills and drains with every wave then the tide is right. We visited first thing Friday morning. You'll have to check the link for pictures. We were too chicken to take our phones out near it. I did get a shot of the Spouting Horn blowing up a puff.

Cape Perpetua Spouting Horn spouting.

We stomped all over the coast then drove up to the Cape Perpetua overlook to dry off a bit. It was only 800 feet up but that was enough to transition the rain to snow. It was too overcast to see very far but the view gives you a good feel for the coastline.

Nick in the snow.

Cape Perpetua Overlook

After lunch we hiked the Giant Spruce trail to what is reputed to be the second largest tree in Oregon. It is a big one. It started life on a fallen log called a nurse log. When the nurse log rotted away it left a nice dry cave. 

Hanging out in the nurse log cave.

That's a big tree.

Cool yellow plant.

On Saturday we drove down the coast a bit to check out the sea lion cave. It is a huge sea cave where sea lions hang out; you can take an elevator down and ogle them. The scene is kind of like the elephant seal beach in Big Sur, but in a cave. They have a mesh fence up to keep the visitors separate from the seals. There is not much chance of disturbing them from a distance because it is crazy loud in there with the barking and the waves. While we were down there the elevator broke down so about 30 of us were trapped for 40 minutes while they tried to get a repair person out. Eventually they decided it would be too long to wait for a fix and we all got to go up the stairs. It was the twistiest spiral staircase I've ever encountered. You had to kind of sidle up with your back against the center pole. I kept picturing us all going down like a line of dominoes if someone at the top stumbled. 

Sea lion cave.

Sea lion cave movie.

After escaping from the sea lions we went for a short hike on the dunes. I would have liked to get down to the ocean but the path was flooded and swampy from all the rain. Still, we got to scamper in the sand which was fun. 

Nell on the dunes.

Sunday we headed home in scattered rain. We stopped a few times to look for agates and to check out Otter Rock. We glimpsed a few critters in the waves, but I think they were sea lions not otters.

View south from Otter Rock.

Otter Rock in repose.

I put up a Christmas tree

I've noticed over the past couple of years that every time we hike through a pine grove I really enjoy the piney forest smell. So this year I decided to bring some forest home and do a Christmas tree for the first time. It was super fun. Nick and I picked it up on Saturday and got some cider fixings. I put the lights and ornaments on while the cider mulled. Then I sat on the couch and stared at it for a bit. 

My tree aesthetic is pretty similar to Mom's: the lights are white, there are a million of them, all the ornaments are shiny. The cats are being very civilized about the whole thing, they act like it's been there all along. I did avoid hanging any ornaments below the lowest branches to minimize temptation. I really like it and it smells great. Happy holidays everybody.

    

Winter Hiking in Conway

We've been making an effort to get out and have some adventures this winter because adventures are awesome, even in winter. The Purdue Outing Club reunion fell on Valentine's day weekend this year, aka the coldest weekend of the season. We met up with about 20 POCers in Conway, NH. Some brave souls went downhill skiing, Brian and I stuck to slow snow sports to avoid enhancing the chill factor. We cross-country skied for the first time in forever. It's more fun than I remember. Sunday we hiked Hedgehog Mountain on a tip from the bookstore folks in Lincoln. It was the perfect choice, good views from the summit despite being below the treeline the whole way.

View from Hedgehog

Another view from Hedgehog

Lightly wooded summit