We're All in Our Places

We're home safe and sound. It was an easy drive through the Columbia Gorge yesterday...with sunshine! That's a lucky day in Oregon at the beginning of March. Usually when we're driving through the gorge at any time other than summer, we're driving through rain and road spray. It was nice to get back to some good weather. 

The kitties were vocally excited to be home. They ran around yipping and yapping. Smitty yapped at me every time he saw me, as if to say "Whoopee!!" They're funny because they run around for just a few minutes, and then they want inside the house to check things out there too. They had some time outside for a while yesterday afternoon, and then they were in for the night. This morning, Smitty found home on his kitty pole:

Sadie was cocooned in her favorite flannel quilt.

We noticed some mouse droppings in the downstairs part of the house last night. Within a few seconds, Smitty had dispatched a mouse. Let's just hope that's the only one. Aside from that intruder, things looked pretty good at home. A couple of big limbs came down from heavy wet snow, but otherwise, things look as they should. There aren't even too many weeds, but then...it's the beginning of March. I'm sure they're there, lying in wait for some warmer weather.

So, let's just back up to yesterday's drive, shall we? We hadn't gone very far when Mt. Rainier came into view. It was probably a couple of hundred miles away. Yes, it's that big.

Just a little farther on, the Columbia River came into view. Below, there's just a sliver toward the middle of the image and then some more in the foreground. There are busy railroad tracks on both sides of the river. The tracks here on the Oregon side are built on a berm out in the river.

Farther down the road, the river is so wide, it looks like a lake in places.

We saw a few barns along the way. This red one was on the Oregon side.

Looking across to the Washington side, I saw another.

Also, I could see Washington's Stonehenge replica on the other side of the river. I only realized just this past fall that it even existed, and so I knew to look for it. You can read more about it and see more pictures right here.

Also, I noticed this little church. I love churches with tall steeples. You can see a train running along the back of it.

And then...the sight that let's us know we're almost home...Mt. Hood. I can't drive this road without remembering when we first arrived in Oregon from Phoenix in 1978. Mike had just graduated from engineering school and had a job at a company called Floating Point Systems. We were bursting with dreams of our future, and somehow the mountain seemed to speak of good things ahead.

We'd driven for four days to reach this spot. We were in two cars. Mike had our two cats (Benjamin and Peanut) with him. I had all our potted plants with me. Mike had been in the area for his job interview. It was my first time seeing this.

As we approached Bonneville Dam, I took a picture of this freeway art. Salmon heading upstream, which is kind of ironic given all the dams that have been built on the Columbia. Still, they've done what they can to provide fish ladders for the salmon. 

Several years back, California sea lions discovered good eating at the fish ladders and took up residence near one of the dams, decimating the returning salmon. There was quite a bit of controversy about how to handle the sea lions: shoot them? trap them? California sea lions are protected. And so permissions needed to be sought. You can read more about the efforts to save the salmon while preserving sea lions in an article right here, if you're interested.

I spent just a little time on my slow stitching before we took off yesterday. You might recall I was concerned that the words didn't show up better, and so I stitched right over the top of my earlier stitching to give it a little more thickness. Now, there are four strands of floss there. I think it helped a little.

The only casualty at home was our internet service. Mike did what he could at home, and he's usually able to fix any problem related to our computers. This time, though, he had to put in a call to the guys at our internet service provider. They checked, and indeed, we had no internet signal at their end. Probably one of the pieces of equipment stationed at our home has died, and they'll be out tomorrow to take a look at it. For the time being, I'm using the personal hot spot on my phone.

Today will be spent unpacking. I'm hoping to get it all done today because I'm itching to get back into the sewing room. We'll need to do our grocery shopping tomorrow morning too. I'll be back blogging again tomorrow if I have anything to tell you. It seems like a long and boring day with all the unpacking and a mountain of laundry to do. I'll check in if my words start backing up on me. But first, slow stitching. I can't start the day until I've had some slow-stitching time.