Time Traveling: Day Two

Good morning, my friends. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it's going to be a busy week for me. Today I'm driving across town to pick up a check for a classical guitar I sold on consignment. It's been at Old Town Music for over a year, and so I'm happy to get it sold. As long as I'm out, I'm going to make a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up something for tonight's dinner. I hate shopping on Monday's. We'll save our bigger shopping trip for tomorrow.

Yesterday morning started with some housekeeping chores. It was also time to water the flower pots. The kitties were champing at the bit to get outside. They refused to pose for their picture until their open-door demands were met.

Outside, the grass pickings were slim. It doesn't grow much at this time of year.

Perhaps some dandelions.

The Checkers dahlia is opening bit by bit. I think it might be even larger when I check today. I'm waiting for some of the side flowers to open too.

Possibly when I check this morning I'll find Fuzzy Wuzzy has opened too. It's very close.

Back inside, I took the first stitches on the "Joined by Thread" stitchery.

And then I spent the next several hours canning these Spicy Dilled Carrot Spears. My yield was six 12-oz. jars. Probably I'll make more of these before summer is over. They get eaten fast.

It was time for sewing then. I spent an hour on Tiny House #27, completing sections "C" through "H." This one has sections all the way through "R," and so it's only about half finished. A new one was released today, and so I'd like to finish this soon.

When my hour was up, I went to work cutting cornerstones for the Vintage Linen quilt. As I considered how to set the nine large blocks, it occurred to me that I could fussy cut some of my grandmother's smaller embroidery motifs for this. I needed 16. See the one in the lower right with the letter "N"? There must be a story behind it. My mother's maiden name was "Maust." When she married my dad, she changed her name to "Nelson." The "N" was embroidered onto a woman's handkerchief, and so possibly my grandmother made this for my mom when she married my dad. There's no way to know for sure since anyone I could ask has passed on. I like my story, and so I'll stick with that. 

And then, I sewed the first block together. I'll just keep going, adding blocks until I have all nine sewn together. After that, I'll use some of those purples I inherited last month for the outer borders. It will all become clear soon.

Okay, so let's travel back in time to last Wednesday. We were planning to do some sight-seeing later in the day, and so we took the boat out early. There were no other boaters on the river, and so the water was glass smooth as we left the marina.

I took these next two pictures simply because I liked the reflections of the bridges on the water.

And then off we went. We were heading in the opposite direction on this morning, and we passed under  another railroad bridge.

There was more evidence of grain "processing" on this side. 

The next day, we passed by this same complex from the road where we saw grain spewing from a large pipe onto a big pile. 

We can only assume it's loaded into trucks from there and hauled off to some other venue. Or maybe not. One wonders if that is the next step, why not load it into trucks rather than dumping it on the ground? I know almost nothing about what happens after grain is harvested until it gets to the mill.

We went as far as we could go, which led us to Little Goose Lock and Dam. I misspoke in yesterday's post when I said we were headed in this direction. We were actually headed toward Lower Monumental Dam, but we didn't go that far. We'll save that for a future trip. In the image below, you'll see Little Goose Lock and Dam. Notice the long pipe that comes from the right side of the image toward the center. That is where fish from the fish ladder are dumped back into the river to continue on their journey.

We did some sight-seeing later in the day and drove up to the dam to see it. (We'd already seen it on our last visit, but Mike wanted to see it again.) I nearly missed the sign.

This next image shows the lock. Notice the distance from high to low here. Also, the bridge we drove over is a draw bridge to allow watercraft to pass through.

Here's a closer picture of the dam. 

It has a huge fish ladder. Looking to our right, we could see this. The water fairly rushes down those concrete steps. It's hard to think a fish could make the jump, but they do.

There was more looking to the left, and even more overhead.

There's also a fish-viewing window inside the structure. At this time of year, we could expect to see mostly Coho salmon and Shad.

On this same day, we visited the Starbuck jail. In the early 1900's, a jail break and murder of the sheriff resulted in a large man hunt, capture, and trial. The small Starbuck jail can be visited today in “downtown” Starbuck. Bent window bars are still in place where a gun was smuggled to the prisoner.  The window bars are bent where the gun was passed through. Here's the structure. It sits right at the beginning of the main street through town.

Around the side is a metal door.

Inside were two cells.

Peeking through the window with the bent bars, we could see this:

And that was a full day of boating and sight-seeing. We headed back to the campground where I started stitching up my quilt binding.

Tomorrow's post will include our visit to the Pataha Flour Mill. That was very interesting. I'm not forgetting to tell you about the quilt shop, but I'll save that for yet another post. Right now, I need to get myself around. It's an hour's drive both directions to pick up the check for my guitar sale. I'm hoping to get some housework finished before I leave, and then I'm hoping I'll get some time to can beets this afternoon. If there's time for sewing, I'll continue on with yesterday's projects. 

How's your week going so far? It's only Monday. Anything could happen.