Tripping and Gardening – Spring ’10

This past week has once again been a very busy one for Kittee and I.

Last Thursday, Kittee had a full day of being in court in Heppner, OR. About a 2½ hour drive to the southwest from home, Heppner is further out in the middle of nowhere that almost anywhere else in northeast OR. A beautiful drive getting there, but once you arrive… you are still in the middle of nowhere.
Thursday after my morning bus run, I traded buses at our bus lot and came home with the trip bus and prepped it for a trip to Baker City, OR. Thursday was a beautiful day for traveling in both direction, but I got to run the interstate and landed in the beautiful Power River Valley, which is as pretty of a location as anywhere in the lower 48 particularly in April thru May. At Baker City to the south and west of town is the 8000' snow capped Elkhorn Mountain Range.

The Elkhorns

To the north of Baker City is the 10,000' snow covered Eagle Caps Range of the Blue Mountains. The Eagle Caps was the setting for the story of The Shack which I read last year while on a baseball trip to Baker. That reading was rather eye opening, and close to the heart, mind and spirit.

The Eagle Caps

Just before we arrived in Baker I noticed the rear window of the bus started to fog over. I thought from the uphill climb out of La Grande the bus may have sprung a coolant leak, but instead there was a pin hole rupture in the fuel line, so the bus spent most of the afternoon in the Baker County maintenance shop. On April 15 everything in the valley was green and temperatures felt great for going on open air walks around town and watching girls softball.
While in Baker I got to have dinner at one of my favorite eastern Oregon restaurants - the Inland Cafe- just great home style cooking served here. The MacHi freshman team lost both of their game miserably to the Baker City girls.

Friday, was another gorgeous day around home. Right after my a.m. bus run, I came home, fed the herds of critters here and then headed to Lowden, WA to visit my Goldie. Goldie had spent ten days with the horse trainer there and I was very eager to see how they were doing. It was about a half hour drive over there and when I got there Goldie and Chad were out riding around his place. I jumped out of Blue with my still camera and video camera and started taking pictures as the two of them approached. See video below of this Goldie ride. Found out shortly that my batteries were getting weak so my picture taking opportunity was short. Chad told me that Goldie was a very good saddle horse and was going to make a great trail horse. She was calm, mindful of the surroundings, didn’t spook, and paid attention to the directions of her rider. This made me feel good. I am really looking forward to having her back home, her spring shed brushed out and that pretty girl under my saddle.













Friday, Kittee was once again in court in Heppner, and left from there to go visit here sister’s family in Yamhill, which is way out in the metro area of western OR. I know that made a very long day for Kittee.

Saturday, Kittee was gone and I had plans to do some horseback riding with downriver Robert later in the day. Right after breakfast I headed for the garden to prep it for some planting this weekend. I moved up about 25-30 wheelbarrow loads of horse manure from the barn and Rusty’s keep and got that raked out and tilled in. About that time Robert came up and said he was running late in his schedule and would not be able to ride, so I just keep working the garden.

Asparagus bed ready for seeding.
Hummm, appears my tiller has a wiggle.

Saturday's temperature today hit 70°, first time this year, here at the ranch. Got my asparagus row prepped for planting and decided that this was enough work for the day so took a break and had a couple of red-beers and rested in the sunshine. Later in the afternoon a cool breeze came up with a storm cloud behind it so I went in and worked on the Walla² Fly Fishers’ blog site of last week’s meeting minutes. We did get a very nice evening rainstorm out of the weather system and at near dark I went out and fed the horses and grilled myself a steak and had that with a baked potato for dinner. Kittee called around 8:30 to let me know she was leaving Yamhill, and she had about 5 hours of driving in front of her to get home. I stayed up all evening, running around the Internet, chatting with folk on Facebook, waiting for Kittee to safely return home, she got in shortly after 1 a.m. It was pretty exhausting staying up until after 1:00 a.m. - waaaaaaaaaaay past our usual 9 o'clock bedtime. Plans for Sunday was to plant some of the garden and horseback ride, making up for lost time with our boys and girls.

It was after 9 a.m. before we woke up and started coffee on Sunday. After breakfast I went out and started planting the garden area worked on Saturday with lettuces, radishes, chard, and peas.
While I was gardening Kittee saddled up Derby in the round pen and gave him a short workout. The rest of the day we just took things easy. Pooped out from the Saturday night stretch we sit out in the backyard sunshine, then watched a Stephen King movie and attempted to take a nap, but really didn’t nap as the movie was pretty intriguing so right after an early dinner we called it a day, turned off the lights and was out. Hopefully this year with the Great Spirit smiling on me, I will have no horse wrecks and the garden will give us a good yield. Amen

Yesterday was another day back on the road as I made a trip with the MacHi girls softball teams, heading for Umatilla and Boardman, OR. This made a good trip, as both teams won all three of their games, hands down.

Varsity girls beat Umatilla handily

During the third game I walked around the Boardman Riverside Park which is located next to the Mighty Columbia River.

Girls warming up to play the next game

Seagulls following the migration of fish from the sea to Canada stopped by the park.

Standing on the banks of the Mighty Columbia River

It made a pleasant walk with temperatures in the mid-70’s just before sunset. The late afternoon was cloudy so I had no sunset views of the river. After last week's trip into the mountains of 8000'-10,000' it struck me that this day I was standing on the banks of the Columbia River at 275' above sea level (half the height of our backyard bluff), with fish and rivers that run out of Canada and seven states.
The OregonTerritory, quite a country.

Today after my afternoon bus route run, downriver Robert came up to the ranch, we groomed Nugget and Misty and spent the rest of the afternoon horseback riding along the river at McKuster Ranch. After work, Kittee joined us with a burgundy wine cooler in hand. It was a good day to be drawing air from these great Oregon outdoors.

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Not part of the comings and goings of K&D, but a slice of family history I will share here...
While cruising Facebook, I found that cousin Nicole has now exited the state of Texass (home of the likes of LBJ, GWB, Enron, the assassination of JFK, etc.) and moved back to the Turner Ranch in NM. I did find on Nicole's Facebook page a photo of she (while in Austin) and sister Brilynn (visiting), standing in front of The Alamo Memorial with our cousin James Bonham listed front and center as one of the defenders who gave his life for the Texass' independence from Mexico. Not sure that the lose of cousin James was worth it, but he was there as a Bonham and an American with the best of those that fell at The Alamo.
And that's the way it is around the ranch this past week.

Happy Trails and Peace be with you,
Dale

Running across Oregon

The past week for me was spent mostly at home in and out of the rain, feeding, grooming, petting horses and waiting for the weekend. This week we did find eggnog at Safeway, so we have been treating ourselves each morning with an eggnog lattè; that is worth making note of here. This is like an annual highlight to start our day as the daylight hours are now getting colder and shorter. A couple of weeks ago we started running our Happy Light in the evenings to ward off the getting shorter days blahs.
As the week came to a close we found that once again we had become a two school bus family. Nope we are not in the business of dealing in school buses, just staying a bit too busy... to get the job done with just one big yellow bus in the driveway.

Friday, Kittee was in Milton-Freewater city court for half a day, while I made three school bus trips to Walla Walla taking elementary school kids to concerts at Whitman College. Friday afternoon I mended fences from the hard wind blows of the week, and packed my travel bag with some extra cold/wet weather clothing for Saturday's out-of-town bus trip to the west side.

Saturday, I got up at about daybreak as usual, to make a trip to Wilsonville, OR for the Oregon State Boy's 4A Soccer Championship game. Our Mac-Hi School soccer team was playing the final and state championship game this day. All was going well and I was on time working on breakfast, put my bags and coats in the little silver P/U and headed for the downtown school bus lot to pickup my trip bus. Now, this day of all days, out of living here for over seven years, I go down the road about a mile and hit a deer... can't stop; gotta get to town and prep the bus to hit the road. Not sure what happened to that doe. I made it to town OK, as the buses (4 of us) were loaded with allot of hometown soccer boosters/fans and was ready to roll at 8:00 a.m.. It was a good trip, very uneventful and we made good time to get to the game on the other side of the state by 3:30 p.m.
The weather forecast was for cold and wet on the west side of the state, but when we got to Troutdale, the skies were clearing with a few sun breaks. By the time we got to the game it had clouded up a bit, but no rain, and game conditions were great for running, running, running after a soccer ball.

All in all it was a good game with the first score being made at about 55 minutes into the game. That made it 1-0 La Salle Prep School... the team in red above. At this point the game got a little testy as the clock was running down in the second half, when a La Salle player broke out of the pack, dribbled the ball down field and facing the MacHi goalie one-on-one made the score against MacHi... score 2-0. After this goal MacHi came fighting back and in a few minutes scored a tight goal making the score 2-1. Now with just a few minutes left in regulation play, MacHi made several strong attempts to score for the tie, but as time ran out La Salle had the ball in their possession/ hands, jumping and shouting in victory. It was a good game, great temperature for playing a running game, and no rain until we were back on the buses and driving out of the school parking lot. It was about 11 o'clock pm when we got back to Milton-Freewater after a great day's outing of traveling across Oregon. The only thing that really disappointed me about this trip (other than losing the state championship) was seeing the large number of wind turbines that have been place along the rim of the Columbia River Gorge. It really has screwed up the wide open river scenery on both sides of the mighty river, having the white needles showing up everywhere. As I drove through the gorge, I wondered what Lewis and Clarke might think about this view.
Saturday, Kittee was going to work at her Pendleton office, but decided it felt too good to stay home and enjoy some down time with the horses, and a little reading. She told me she spent quite a bit of quality hands-on time with our babies -- Rosey and Summer.

Again today we woke up as the wind was blowing hard, and the rains fell off and on all night; forecast for the day was more of the same, with lots of snow to fall on the mountains to our east. After having breakfast, feeding the herd; with these weather conditions, Kittee and I decided to make a run to the local pottery/art shop - Clay in Motion, to visit that operation (our first time there), have a mocha... Mmmmmm that was good, and venture on to Walla Walla for awhile and do a little shopping. With the weather and our schedules we got no horseback riding time this week. This afternoon, we were out petting horses as the sun had sunk slowly in the west, then out from under the clouds over our heads, the sun gave us a beautiful flood of golden lighting along our backyard bluff. That was a beautiful site... wish you could have been here to see it.
This entire week coming at us is time off, NO SCHOOL, for the Thanksgiving holiday. Got plans to stay close to home and horses ;>)
We have the Walla Walla indoor arena to ride in next Sunday, rain or freezing... Gettyup!!

And that's the way it has been around the ranch this past week --- Dale