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http://jonathanellinger.blogspot.com/
Well, another week has passed installing magnetotelluric stations throughout 
Washington. Thankfully, the project has started to move into 
the Cascades and Western Washington away from the boring plains and hot weather of the East. It has been difficult to work with Jeff
because he has a severe anger management problem, road rage, smokes, and is generally just an ass. We have driven across the state twice this week and my days have been 13-15 hour long days of driving. The field work is still relatively easy although I’ve had to keep an eye on Jeff 
so 
that I can fix his mistakes. I’m not going to say a word to the other crew members but if I was in charge he would not be an employee of mine for sure. Thankfully today I was set off on my own while he joined up with Trey to install sites. It’s nice to know that they find me competent enough to maintenance sites on my own. Tomorrow 
I’ll pick up a helper in Yakima named Joe Dean or something.
Hopefully he will be easier to work with than Jeff. Because I’ve been 
working with Jeff I don’t have any really interesting stories like I did while working with Jen. Thus, I’ll just post a bunch of
pictures with this blog entry of some of the cooler sites I saw. The northern Cascades are truly beautiful to drive through with rivers and lakes glowing a blue green color due to the copper dissolved in the water that rusted
(think green statue 
of liberty). I’ve seen a ton of deer, had lhamas try to stick their heads 
in the truck, got a glimpse of Mt. Baker in the clouds, got chased by some cows while trying to back out of a field, and I
took a ferry today from Seattle to Olympia. I got so close to the deer in the picture that I was able to tell it a joke… enlarge the picture by clicking it to see it’s reaction.
Emily is off at wedding in a tropical paradise and I miss hearing her
voice. I 
haven’t even been able to properly call Nicolette to check in on Ellie
either because I’m always out of cell phone range until it is too late to call the East Coast. I’m going to be very happy to get a break this Friday to do some backpacking on the Continental Divide. 7 days a week for 4 weeks straight now has been tiring. Anyway, enjoy the pics.
This is
the end of my 2nd week working with portable MT systems throughout
the Northwest. Each run is ~20 days
long. After 10 days Jen and I go to
service the site and then after another 10 days we remove it. Neither takes more than 2 hours but we have
to drive 2-5 hours between each site so the days are very long. We are lucky if we get to a motel before
8pm. So far most of the work I’ve been
doing has been in Eastern Washington. The land is pretty much all crops and high desert brush. The crops seem to be mostly hay and
wheat. Around Yakima there is a ton of
hops growing as well. I can’t tell you
how many tumbleweeds I’ve seen and massive 200-500 ft tall dust devils kicking
up the very dry soil into tornados without clouds. We have driven by many fires and landowners seem
to be genuinely really scared for their crops this year. They are very weary of our presence on their
land due to the catalytic converter of our unleaded truck that could catch a
field a blaze. It’s been so dry that
Minnesota has declared a federal drought
disaster and most of the crops are lost. I’ve been here over two weeks now and I haven’t seen a cloud in the sky
in Eastern Washington! It’s hard to
believe from the dusty dirt we dig through that anything can grown on this land
but it does…
amazingly, with the help of water from the great Columbia River
that flows all through the land in deep canyons cut into the high eastern
plateau. The ice age Missoula floods
that unleashed the waters from an ice-damned lake in Montana swept across
Eastern Washington to the sea. This lake
was much bigger than the great lakes are now and it deposited tons of nutrients
into the soils of Eastern Washington which accounts for the rich soils now out
here when water are added to them.
I feel
like I have driven every part of Eastern Washington now. The towns are all very small and positioned
in the middle of nowhere. You literally
drive over a hill… and boom, there’s a town tucked into some trees. Everyone must know everyone in these
towns… Halfway through the week Jen
and I had to drive all the way across the state to meet Trey outside of Seattle
and drop off the 4 portable arrays we had pulled out of the ground for him,
then drive all the way back the next day. We took a route through the cascades on the way back which had great
views of the high Cascades. On Tuesday
Jen and I were able to stay at Coulee Dam and
got to see the laser show on the
water pouring over the damn at 10pm. The
movie was totally propaganda for damming the Columbia. True it provides the most electricity of any
dam in the U.S. but it also flooded all the ancient fishing grounds of the
Native Americans in the area. This
resulted in entire nations starving to death or turning to booze and drugs to
ease their pain… The many dams now harnessing the power of the Columbia
resulted in the death of thousands and thousands of Native Americans… They touched on it in the movie but
certainly 
didn’t portray the full extent of the casualties of the damn. The laser show itself was pretty cheesy and
the unicorn flying around halfway through for no reason had Jen and I cracking
up. The next day we got to see the dam in the
daylight as well as some crop dusting planes flying around the local
crops. It was a massive dam and
definitely a feat of engineering to construct.
This
week we have seen a bunch of animals, insects, birds, etc. One
day
we had a large red tail hawk sitting on a fence post curiously watching
us. We had a large fox run in front of
the truck at another site. Jen saw a coyote
up on a hill but I missed it. We
have
also seen a ton of deer. They seem to be
at almost every wooded site we go to. Driving to one site we encountered a bunch of wild turkey in the road in
front of us. The silly birds began to
run in front of the truck and it 
seemed like more and more were joining the
marathon in front of the chase truck from the sides of the road. It was only after I honked a few times that
they decided to scatter into the woods. At one of the sites this week Jen and I were able to go swimming in both
a beautiful mountain river and in a local lake.
At the
end of the week Jen and I had to return to Yakima because she
finally was going
to get her much deserved two week break from the project. One of the last sites we went to had been
completely burned 
just a week before Trey had
installed the site. It looked like a wasteland of charred
ground. Check out the picture of Jen
walking over the burned ground. It was
blatantly apparent why landowners are so worried about fires during these
months. On the way from the site we
encountered a
lost milking cow running down the side of the road. It had clearly broken out of a fenced in area
but when we pulled over and tried to get near 
it to check its tags it ran away
and wouldn’t let us get near it. It was
pretty terrified. When we
got near
Yakima we drove into the remnants of a giant fire. The sky was black with smoke which was
traveling over the mountains with the wind patterns in a thin layer. The sun was setting through the smoke which
made it look like the sky was on fire.
On
Friday I got to work with my new partner… a 40yr old named Jeff. He apparently is getting paid more than me
because he’s an operator and I’m a field assistant yet I know more than he does
about what we are doing and have been teaching him since I met him. He is paid more because he has 10 years of
consulting experience but it’s clear he doesn’t know a thing about the science
behind the work. He seems nice enough I
guess but he smokes which is a worry to me out
in the fields in Eastern
Washington and I’ve already had to tell him to put his cig out and hide it when
landowners came up to us to chat at one site. He seems to have a blatant disregard for how Jen and I have been
proceeded with the sites and because he is best friends with Trey (who got him
the job) he thinks he can do things his way. This morning his actions pretty much told it all…. He had installed
Sirius satellite radio in the truck and was playing “sex talk” very loudly from
the truck as little kids were walking around the parking lot with their
parents. I reached in and turned it down
and told him about the kids… he said, “I don’t give a fuck” and turned it back
up… great… this is the kind of person I’m going to have to spend two full weeks
with… basically babysitting an immature 40yr man who will give GSY a bad
reputation. I forsee some personality
conflicts in the future.
Today
we drove to a site which had been chewed up by coyotes so we had to spend a
little time fixing it. On the way home
Jeff was driving like a complete asshole with road rage, gunning it all the
time. I was in the back of the truck
typing up directions for him because he doesn’t seem to be paying much
attention to what needs to be done in the field and I don’t have much
confidence in him as the 
operator of the NIMS… funny that I’m getting paid less
yet teaching him how to do it. Anyway,
we get pulled over because he had doubled the speed limit and was tailgating the
car in front of us. This was all amusing
to me. On the way home we drove
through
Rainier National park and took some unbelievable pictures of the massive
volcano. I asked Jeff to pull over about
3 times while he ignored me so when he actually did I decided to go for a walk…
all the way back down the road to get the photos I had wanted. I told him “if I’m too long come and get me”
which he did. I can’t wait to climb Mt.
Rainier. Maybe next summer.
If
you’ve actually read this far… good for you. I’ll post another update next week. I’m looking forward to my Continental Divide trip on the 18th
and I can’t wait to see Emily again when I head back to NY for my cousin Erin’s
wedding. I’ve been pretty much saving
all my per diem for a new MacBook Pro this fall. I’ve been eating soups and stealing all the
fruit and muffins from the hotels for my lunches. J. Talk to you next week!
Well, this week I started my summer job working for GSY-USA
installing portable magnetotelluric 
stations throughout the Pacific Northwest
as part of the EarthScope Array project. I was rented a very expensive U-Haul to get up to home base in Yakima,
Washington where I met up with my crew. Jennifer, Chris, Trey, &
Dimitri. It’s a sweet deal. I get paid
very well and I get $325 a week per diem that I can use (or save for a MacBook
Pro) as I wish. We also get to drive
around in two brand new rental trucks – a dodge ram and a Ford 150.
The first day I went with Chris and his nephew Dimitri to
the hills below Mt. Ranier 
to install a portable MT array. It wasn’t very hard work and we
were done in
under 4 hours. There were cows all
around us and cowboys out practicing how to rope them in the fields. Small pines grew out of the stumps of ancient
old growth trees that had been cut down years before. The drive back was long due to construction
on the mountain road every 5 miles. I guess the biggest part of the job will be
the extensive driving all over the state to get to all of the sites.
Let me explain briefly what I am doing. Each array consists of 100m dipoles in the
North-South, East-West Direction which measure electrical currents within the
earth created by the interaction of the earth’s ionosphere with solar energy (solar
flares etc). Those charges in the
atmosphere induces an electric field within the earth. This is the electric field we measure and it
is altered by interactions with the moon on a daily basis and the sun on a
yearly basis. By looking at the electric
currents in the earth we can look deep into the structure of the earth down to
about 14km which is the crust/mantle boundary. Earthscope is setting up these stations every 70km across the nation
(over 1500). Along with MT studies
seismic stations are also set up along with heat flow measurements and
satellite ground movement measurements. Earthscope is the largest and broadest geological study in history and
it will provide us with amazing imagery of what lies beneath the United
States. I’m very excited to be a part of
it.
On Wednesday Jen and I worked together to take down several
sites slightly east of 
Yakima. It was
very easy and we were able to take down each site in about 2 hours. At one of the sites we saw a pack of male elk
with huge racks running off over the hill. I also found out that
short socks and boots with shorts on don’t work in
that kind of grass! On the way home we
passed by miles and miles of hops crops. Apparently, Yakima is one of the world’s largest producers of hops for
beer. Last year a fire in one of the
warehouses destroyed so much hops that it upset the world’s beer market! That afternoon I had some time to go for a
drive up to Yakima Canyon where I drove a very drunk couple back up the road to
their truck after they floated down the very cool looking river. I also saw some wakeboarding boats slicing
down the river… Very jealous. I had
bought a watermelon at fruit
stand… dumb. How the hell was I going to eat a giant watermelon in one night? Well, I did, with some help from my
co-workers, but I definitely think I had watermelon poisoning the next morning
and I believe I pee’d about 10 times! Check out what the prairie grass did to my socks!
On Thursday Jen and I headed East with all our gear to
service a few stations. We 
ended up off
roading pretty hard at one site through some puddles nearly 2 feet deep next
corn crops. We drove over grasses that
were higher than the front of the truck and couldn’t see anything a few
times. Then, after finishing the site,
we were flying through puddles and I almost ran over a duck! There were also large prairie fires raging in
the distance. We ended up picking up
professor from Yakima named Kevin who was sent by NSF to check to make sure we
were working correctly. He was a nice
guy and I heard we’ll see him again soon. We ended up staying at a skeevy motel in a small town with pretty crappy
wi-fi that didn’t work. I bought a 4
foot long beef stick at the gas station along with some campbells chunky soup
for dinner…. Always trying to save a buck.
Friday we headed out to pull out a few sites with amazing
views of farmland and 
rolling hills. We got done early so we headed to Moses
Lake, WA and hit up the sand dunes by the lake for some swimming to cool
off. After relaxing on the beach for a
while and cooling off in the wonderful water we headed to check out the new
Simpsons
movie. I thought it was pretty
good and well overdue after 20 years of being on tv. Jen was still working on the giant zucchini
given to her by the nice
farmer we met the night before with Kevin working on a
site on his property. We then decided to drive West towards our next
sites. Passing by George, WA we
stopped
to see the huge natural amphitheatre over the Columbia River but were greeted
by a massive religious music festival and decided it
wasn’t worth fighting with
the crowd. We stopped briefly for some
great pictures of the Columbia River and of Wild Horses Monument up on the hill
before continuing on to Ellensburg. We
ended up sharing a double room by necessity because every motel in 50 miles was
booked.
Saturday 
we serviced a couple more sites and stayed in Idaho
at a pretty nice Best Western near the boarder. The first had great views of Mt. Stewart (part of the
cascades) and the
second was out in grassland that stretched for miles. Somehow our truck ended up with a very small
tire leak that we eventually need to fix.
Sunday we drove out to several sites in Eastern Washington
and filled up the 
back of the truck with a total of 4 transportable arrays now
and a ton of conduit tubing that
looks like it’s going to fly out the back on
every turn we take. Got a great picture
of red-tailed hawk today.
So far the job has been a blast with a lot driving but I
have a great time with Jen. She’s easy
to get along with and as long as we keep her fed she 
always seems to be in a
great mood J. I call her Indiana Jen because of the funny
archeological type outfits she wears for fieldwork. She loves her job. Tonight we are heading towards Seattle. We’ll see what adventures next week brings!
I just got back from a wonderful trip home to see everyone
that I care about. I was expecting to
travel home for less than a week but the only days that I could use my frequent
flyer miles with United was from the 6th of July through the 18th
so I had a very big vacation home for the summer. I parked my truck in downtown Portland to
save money on the parking garage for the week and half and thankfully when I
got back it wasn’t broken into… might have to do that trick again.
I got
home the morning of the 7th after a redeye flight across the country
through San Francisco and Dulles, Washington. My beautiful girlfriend Emily picked me up at the airport just before
Noon and we headed to Jon Hughes’ camp on Glen Lake for a day of wakeboarding
and partying with him, Jacquelin, Logan, Megan Jones, and
Jacquie (soon to be
Jacquie Jones). Jon had to go home for
some family stuff until around 1 so Emily and I headed to my parents to say hi
for a little while before heading back to Jon’s camp. We ended up getting several great runs on the
lake despite some wind at first. Emily
had been out a few times already with some friends from work and she had
improved incredibly. I’ve always been a
little jealous of Logan having a beautiful girlfriend like Jacquie who can also
rip on a wakeboard and other sports. Although this was only Emily’s 4th time ever on a wakeboard I
feel like she has almost caught up to Jacquie’s abilities already. I was amazed. She is so athletic! My run was
ok, but at nearly 28 I decided it was time for me to stop trying to do misty
flips when I don’t even know how to pop off the wake properly for big
air! That night Megan, Jon, Emily and I bought a
bunch of food at the store and had a BBQ at his camp. We played cards and got pretty drunk. It was a great day. In the morning we woke up to Logan pounding
on the door of the bedroom (thankfully this summer Emily and I locked the
door). We hit up wakeboarding a few more
times and then Jon had to take off back to Boston so Emily and I left for her
place in Saratoga. That night she and I
took her car to the Glen Drive in to watch Transformers (kick ass movie) and
the Silver Surfer (sucked). It was fun
to be able to go to a drive in again…
Mon,
Tues, and Wednesday I spent the day at my parents and the nights with
Emily. We went out to dinner at the
sushi restaurant on Phila street and we got a
giant $45 “Lovers Boat” of sushi
which we shared. It was the first time
Sushi ever filled me up. Emily had
ordered it recently…. ;).
On
Wednesday I was able to visit my ex-girlfriend Kim Tyrer and her handsome
little boy Ethan. She and her husband
Jeremy have a beautiful home behind East Field in Glens Falls and she is
actually pregnant with a little baby girl. She seemed to be very happy with where she is in life and she misses
Jeremy who is away in Iraq in the military. Thankfully he ranked high enough that he won’t be placed in any very
dangerous areas. Evan pulled out every
one of his toys to show me and at a little over a year old he is starting to
talk pretty well. She looked great and
it was really nice to see her so happy.
Thursday
night I ended up going down to Albany to visit my buddy Kenny Wilhelm. Emily was traveling for work and he had the
night off so the two of us decided to head out to the bar that he worked at for
some cheap drinks. Before we left I was
introduced to the Wii and Guitar Hero as well which I really enjoyed. If I had some extra money I might even be
tempted to get the Wii. Kenny proceeded
to get me annihilated drunk at his bar that evening. Thankfully two of my drinks got knocked out
of my hands or I never would have been able to keep up with him. I don’t remember any of the night after
getting in the cab to go back to Kenny’s apartment. In the morning I woke up and headed back to
my parents forgetting the case for my video camera at Kenny’s… oh well. It was a good time with a good friend who I
haven’t seen since he drove out to Oregon with me last fall.
Friday afternoon I picked up a rental car and drove down to
Tarrytown to a beautiful restaurant called “Harvest on the Hudson” for the
wedding rehearsal dinner of my best friend Lindsay Sorter from my undergrad
years at Bowdoin College. We haven’t
really been in contact much over the years because she and I had let our
friendship progress to something more our Junior year and I had hurt her pretty
badly emotionally… To my surprise
several weeks before the wedding I got an email from her saying how much she
missed our friendship and how much she wanted me to be at the wedding. I’ve always considered her one of my closest
friends in life and the time when we were friends and living together at
Bowdoin are times I’ll never forget. Of
the 3 friends weddings I had this summer I decided that hers was the most
important for me to attend. I pretty
much had set the two of them up together anyways. She had liked Ryan but was too nervous to act
on it so at a party at Pine Street at Bowdoin I walked up to him and told him
to go over and ask her out because she had a crush on him… he did and the rest
is history. I was the only one invited
to the rehearsal dinner not in the wedding and that was very special to me. Lindsay sat next to me at the table and we
did as much catching up as possible. It
was a delicious dinner and I liked catching up with Jessie Poulin who sat on
the other side of me as well. It was nice that even after years of separation
I was able to sit between two of my closest friends from Bowdoin.
That night I left the dinner to go hang out with my old
buddy Adrian in Tarrytown. He was so
wasted when I met him at the bar that I and his friend barely got him
home. He wasn’t making any sense. In the morning he was fine and we headed to
NYC to Central Park to check it out. I
tried to call my buddy Matt Jones but was unable to connect with him in time in
the city. Central park was beautiful but
even in the park I found there were way too many people for my liking.
After changing at Adrians I headed off to the Tarrytown
House where the wedding was at 7pm. I
met up with Shawn and his new Melissa. Shawn looked great after all these years and is back in graduate school
as I am. The wedding only took 20
minutes and I was able to get the vows on video tape for Lindsay and Ryan as
well as their first dance. After the
wedding there were cocktails and munchies including scampi, chicken and pasta
etc. I thought that the food was the
dinner after the wedding and got a couple plates until Shawn told me that there
was still a full dinner ahead. Needless
to say I was absolutely stuffed by the end of the evening. I actually asked the waiter to “just stop bringing me food because I’m a
grad student and will eat anything put in front of me”. Everyone had a great time and it was
wonderful to see Lindsay so happy and dancing with everyone. I briefly danced with Lindsay during “Baby
got back” but nothing else because it was her day with Ryan and I didn’t want
my past with her to upset Ryan at all. I
was already getting odd looks from his father to begin with, especially since
she sat next to me at the rehearsal dinner and then at breakfast the morning
after the wedding… I know that Lindsay’s
love for Ryan is true and they will be happy together but I’m pretty sure that
her and I had more wild adventures together at Bowdoin then she’s had with
Ryan. But the best part of that is that
they now have their entire lives together to make their own adventures and
write their own stories. That night I
crashed with Jessie in her room for the night (who is also happily engaged… I’m
I the only one left?).
After a
quick breakfast with everyone in the morning I said my goodbye’s and headed to
Greenwhich, CT to see my beautiful daughter Ellie. This is only the 2nd time that
I’ve gotten to visit her and she has grown so much. She is starting to say
some words including
“hi”, “da-da”, and “ma-ma”. She is so
cute when she looks into your eyes and talks baby talk with a look on her face
expecting you to understand what she is saying. I got to meet Nicolette’s boyfriend Clay whom she has been dating since
September. He is a great guy and
wonderful with Ellie and I’m really happy to know that Ellie is growing up with
a father figure in her life. I think
Clay liked me and I really hope that she keeps him around because he is a great
person. We took Ellie for a walk and out
to dinner before putting her to bed. I
bought her a baby drum set because she is beginning to crawl and likes to beat
her hands on 
things and grunt (cutest thing ever to watch). I slept overnight there and got to drop her
off at daycare the next morning with Nicolette and meet her caretakers during
the day. They seemed like very caring
women. It was hard to leave my baby girl
again. I can’t wait until she can
communicate back with me. She holds my
heart.
I got
back to upstate NY Monday afternoon and after talking with my dad about all the
events of his life (while recording it) I got to see Emily again for a couple
nights before heading back to Portland, OR on Wednesday afternoon. It was a great trip home and the best part of
it is that Emily and I decided that we weren’t going to let distance kill
us. We had broken up in April because of
the distance and the fact that I’ll be in graduate school for a very long time
but when I came home it was just as intense, if not more, than when she came
out to Oregon to visit me. We decided
that we are going to work very hard
at finding something for her out in Corvallis so that we can be together. She loved it when she came out to visit and
I’m sure that she would get along well with everyone that I know. I think it would be great opportunity for her
to broaden her horizons as well. I’ve
always felt that the best things in life are those worth fighting for so I’m
going to do my best to find her something. I’ve also made a big move for someone before and I fully realize how huge
of life changing decision it is so she will have my full love and support
throughout it. I hope that it will work
out because I can definitely see myself growing old with her in my arms.
Yesterday Jason, Chris Holm, Urva,
Niloo, Karen, Mac, Brendan and Tory floated down the Willamette River into town
for the 4th of July. Everyone
met at my 
place around 1pm and proceeded with the long process of blowing up
all the inflatable tubes in our living room while having a few beers. We loaded up all the tubes in my truck and
headed several miles out of town. After
shuttling the vehicles we jumped into the river around 2pm for the 2 hour slow
float into town. Some of us were in
inflatable donuts, Jason and I were in small inflatable boats, the girls were
in pool 
floaties, and Brendan & Mac were the lovely couple on a giant King
Size
inflatable mattress! Depending on
the current and where we were we all floated down the river at different
rates. I tied the suitcase
of beer we
had to my raft and let it float in the cool water to stay cold while randomly
tossing cans to everyone as they were requested. It was a great river float and many of us
were plenty drunk after the ride. Nobody
will forget Mac’s stagefright peeing off the side of the mattress for nearly a
quarter of the trip!
After the float everyone went home to change
and shower before heading over to Kristin Splinter’s apartment for the annual 4th
of July BBQ there. All the summer
undergrad students went and I’m pretty sure that all the graduate students
still here for the summer went as well. There was plenty of food to go around and everyone had a terrific
time. At the end everyone walked
downtown or to the top of Winiger to watch the local fireworks. I went home to chat with Jason and ended up
walking downtown with him and McKenzie to see the (incredibly weak) fireworks
show. It ended up being the first 4th
of July in 3 years that I haven’t been either pulled over or arrested by the
cops (see post of last 4th of July)!
So, 
after 3 years without any injuries I decided to give myself one mountain biking. The first picture my buddy Mac Bar took of me in the hospital room when I got to the ER. The next one is when I got home from the ER 6 hours later and the final one is
me a week and half later. This all occurred because I decided I wanted to break a small tree in half with my face while mountain biking…. When my buddy Mac came upon me he
said I was lying face down in a pool of blood unresponsive. I came to a few minutes later but I don’t remember a thing until I was in the hospital room getting sewn up. I asked the doctor how bad it was and he flipped a mirror so I could
see… pretty bad. 30+ stitches in my head to get my eyebrow back in place and in my lip to hold it together. I also have some pretty deep wounds on my hands and knuckles that will have scars. I was told that in the first cat scan they thought I had 
bleeding in my brain but 5 hours later I looked ok so they let me go. I lost about a liter of blood and was told I’d have horrible headaches for a week. I actually felt no pain since I left the hospital and only took a couple asprin for a canchor sore that was in my mouth before the accident… Anyway, while my mom was here visiting me I healed up quick and am pretty much back to how I looked before with a slight scar down the front of my head. Like I always say… if you have no scars or broken bones you aren’t living life hard enough!
Ok, this may be a long entry…
This week my mom came to visit me. It was her first time visiting the Pacific Northwest so I thought I would give her the grand tour of what I’ve experienced so far but jammed into a pretty exhaustive but amazing week. On Thursday at school I printed up all of the Oregon Scenic Byway maps and linked together several cool trips for her stay here. I’ll try to split this into sections…
On Friday I picked her up at the airport after doing some hiking in the Columbia Gorge (see previous post). Her plane came in at around 3pm so that gave us time to head towards Cape Meares and Cape Lookout from Portland so she could see some rocky northern Oregon Coast. She was amazed when she saw the huge Octopus tree as well as the giant spruce in the park and she also enjoyed all the salmon berries that we came across on the trail, but not so much the huge banana slug I showed her! It was a beautiful day and I think she was really amazed by the views. We saw a bunch of cormorants on the rocks as usual and we even stopped for dinner at a wonderful restaurant in the town of Oceanside. We also picked up 3 dozen oysters from my favorite skeevy RV park Oyster dealer on the way home. It was getting late and I could see she was exhausted from the flight and time change so we booked-it through Salem to Corvallis instead of going through Lincoln City to get back to town quicker. After meeting Kenzie and seeing the house a bit I gave up my room for her and hit the couch around 10pm for bed.
On Saturday we took the rental car I still had from Enterprise for a 3 day trip down the Coast and through the Cascades. First we drove to the coast after getting breakfast downtown at the Broken Yolk and walking the Saturday Farmers Market, which amazed my mother. We stopped at all the great places I had been to throughout my first year here. We drove to the top of Cape Perpetua, checked out 
the lighthouse at Haceta and saw seals and sea lions at Cape Arago. We even went for a short hike at the Oregon Dunes State Park near Umpqua where I coaxed her up one of the biggest sand dunes in the state. It was a beautiful day and I could tell she really enjoyed seeing the various coastal environments from rainforests to desert dunes. We made it all the way to Brookings where we used my GPS to find a seafood restaurant for dinner before crashing at a local motel there.
On Sunday morning we woke up early and hit the road for the Redwoods at Crescent City which was only an hour away. When we got to the town my mom wanted to get some water for the trip so we drove downtown to a grocery outlet and got some while also stopping at the cities information building. A nice kid there told us to take a backroad through the forest instead of the main highway so we took his suggestion which turned out to be an amazing ~15 mile drive on a one way dirt road through some of the grandest trees I have ever seen! My mom and I had both seen 
the trees before on our 1989 trip through Northern California but they seemed equally amazing this time around as well. I even got
my mom to crawl into one. There was a downed one across the road which had been cut to allow cars through.. check the picture of me on it for a size reference… After we made it through the forest road, almost running into a mule deer, we jumped on to route 199 (the same one with the landslide that forced Emily and I to turn around 2 months ago) and drove to Grants Pass where I we stopped for some food at a DQ so I could call my dad on 
Fathers Day. We then drove to Crater Lake for the afternoon and words can’t possibly describe how beautiful it is there. The rim road had just opened two weeks ago and there was still plenty of snow around. We drove around the rim taking pictures at various road-side turn outs and then stopped in the gift shop briefly before heading down towards Bend and the high desert of Eastern Oregon. There wasn’t
very many places to eat but we luckily found a really cool restaurant in 
Crescent, OR. The place must have had 400 stuffed animals in it and was known world wide (except to us…). We stayed at a motel next door to it that had just been renovated and was adorned with
a new western motif of antlers, landscape paintings etc. In a part of Oregon with very little population and places to eat or stay we definitely lucked out for the night.
On Monday we woke up and drove through the Cascade Lakes around Mt. Bachelor with amazing views of the Sisters wilderness. We went for a short hike to a place
called Osprey Pt. in hopes of seeing some ospreys but there were none. The drive
was pretty desolate and we only passed about 4 cars despite the fact that the route was an Oregon Scenic Byway. After driving around the lakes we went to downtown Bend to browse the shops, walk around a park and get some lunch. It was the first time I had really walked around downtown Bend and it reminded me a lot of ritzy 
locations in Boston and Greenwich, CT. Everything is overpriced and only the rich celebrities on vacation in the hills can afford to shop there… But we did make it to REI for an hour or so, allowing
me to check out equipment that I hope to buy soon for CMRU and my Continental Divide backpacking trip. We left Bend and tried to drive over McKenzie pass to head back to Corvallis. We stopped for ice cream in the town of Sisters and made it all the way to Windy Pt. on the pass before coming to a barracaded road preventing us to go further. The top of the pass was essentially a giant field of lava with amazing views of Washington to the North 
and the Sisters to the south. We could even see as far north as Hood and as far south as Crater lake. There was a very cool stone sheter made out of the lava rock that you could climb up to for fantastic views. Inside the shelter were windows cut out pointing towards teh various cascade volcanoes. When we got to the
barracade we saw a large black bear run across the road ahead. We turned around and headed back down towards the Sisters to take Santiam Pass over the Cascades
instead and on the way down the mountain I had to swerve to avoid a mother skunk and it’s baby crossing the road. When we got down from the pass we ate dinner at a wonderful restaurant across from Foster Lake near Sweat Home before heading back to Corvallis. When we got back I found out that someone had stolen my oysters!!!! Arrgghhh… if it was a homeless person I don’t feel to upset about it but if I ever found out it was some frat punk I’d be pissed as hell. It was a great trip and I saved a lot of money with the rental car on the 950 mile trek.
On Tuesday I decided to take my mom for a short hike up to the summit of Mary’s Peak where we were rewarded with the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen of the 
Cascade range from California all the way up to Mt. Ranier in Washington! The flowers were out in full bloom and we could even see the ocean clearly to the west. I wish I had more room for photos to post all that we could see from the summit that day! I then took her for a brief tour of campus, introducing her to Anne and Bob Lillie and also stopping at the Bookstore to pick up some maps for our next adventures. We ended the day by taking Jason out to dinner at McGrath’s Fish House which was fantastic (except for the weird "bite-size" oysters in the shooters I ordered).
We took Wednesday to relax a bit. We walked around town, bought meat at Emmon’s meat market on Rte. 34 and stopped at a fresh vegetable stand for some fresh fruit. At 5pm I was sworn in by Diana Simpson, our county Sheriff, for CMRU with my mom watching and from 7-10pm my mom was my guest to one our CMRU training meetings where we went into the truck bay and learned how to rig up our rescue system. I think she was really impressed at the knowledge that we need to have to properly conduct a rescue mission. Jason missed the meeting because he and a few others were on a classified search elsewhere that he couldn’t even tell me about.
Thursday I again rented a car (this time a really great Nissan Altima instead of the Chevy Aveo shitty car we had before). We drove to Silver Falls, stopping at a pancake house in Portland on the way for Breakfast, to hike the 10 falls trail. My mom had been nervous all week about the hike but I kept assuring her it was a piece
of cake and as it turned out she did just fine on the 4 mile walk. We walked past a total of 15 waterfalls in about 3 hours through a temperate rain forest that simply blew my mom’s mind. She was amazed at the beauty of all of it. I ended up running the 3 miles back on the rim trail of the canyon to the car to go pick her up at the North end of the waterfall trail. We then drove another scenic byway past
Brietenbush Hot Springs towards Mt. Hood. On the way we passed by Detroit damn and got out to take some pictures and look around and the massive damn. The Hot
Springs had some healing weekend going on so we weren’t able to actually see the springs. It was a long drive through the woods to get to Rte. 26 and Mt. Hood but I thought 
it was definitely more scenic than taking the highway. I took my mom to Government Camp, SkiBowl and to Timberline to show her where I climbed to the summit of Hood a month ago. We then drove down to Hood River past all the
scoured rivers from the excessive rains of last fall. We ate a quick dinner at Shari’s (yuck) and made it to Multnomah Falls just as the sun was setting for some beautiful pictures of the falls I had stood atop of just a week before. We ended up getting a hotel room at a Portland Quality Inn for the night.
On Friday we slept in for a bit then drove the 2 hours up to Mt. St. Helens to check out the Johnston Ridge Observatory. At the first visitor center of the park I got some great pictures of a couple Osprey nesting in a tree high above the visitor center building. Driving the road through the 1980 blast zone was absolutely amazing. You
could see the devastation everywhere but at the same time the forest was returning and life was everywhere. About halfway to the observatory we almost ran into 3 huge female elk crossing the road ahead of us. At the Johnston Ridge Observatory we watched a
movie on the eruption which then opened up to a view out a large window of the volcano as it is today. I had not been there yet and I found everything
to be absolutely amazing. It was pretty cloudy but I was able to get some cool pictures of the mountain and the new lava dome growing it side of it. There were also a pack of 5 bull elk in the valley below that we could see. We walked along a self-guided walkway for a bit until my mom began to freeze up in the cold and wind so we returned to the car to head back to Portland. After stopping at REI in portland to browse a bit and then at a great Prime Rib Restaurant near the airport I dropped my mom off for her 11pm flight back home. I really do think she had a great trip and I wouldn’t be suprised at all if she decided to move out here in a few years. At least now she has a better understanding of how wonderful this state is.
This past weekend I found out that oysters from the Pacific Northwest are 3x the size of the ones from the East Coast and are absolutely amazing but really difficult to get open. I looked up on Google how to open the damn things and tried using a knife to no avail.. they are like cement! I decided to then use a screwdriver and hammer instead and was able to get a few of them open for raw oyster shooters! (an oyster shooter is a large oyster in a shot glass with cocktail sauce). I decided that opening them raw was going to be too difficult so I decided to steam them instead which worked out fabulously! I think I found the equivalent to lobster on the West Coast!
Today I found out I was chosen out of 3,500 applicants to officially map the historic Continental Divide Trail this August.. Only about 200 applicants were selected and I 
was chosen to lead a group of 5 people through a 60 mile section of the trial on the Idaho, Montana Boarder. The area I’m hiking through looks amazing (check the pic) and the entire length looks as if it is above at least 7,000 feet with multiple high peaks and mountain lakes through bear and elk country. It’s amazing to think that thousands of people will be following my footsteps when I am done marking the trail with my GPS. I will be working with Backpacker Magazine and the Federal Government to accomplish this. I’ll make sure to get lots of pictures to post also.