A Busy Month

August has been more or less flying by at a breakneck speed. We got to start off with a shindig for Jon's 62nd birthday over at Pat's. Suzanne cooked up a bird on the BBQ and the whole family gathered to celebrate Jon making it to the first social security check. Even with commercial cupcakes, it was a tasty event.

The following week Eden and I went camping at Kulaloch, Washington. The campsite was absolutely beautiful, and it was just a short walk down to the beach, which was amazing in it's own right. The entry to said beach is nearly 20 feet deep in driftwood, making for treacherous footing. Silly me, I didn't even wait for the wood to take a tumble. Of course I took the fall in traditional photographer's fashion, making sure that none of the equipment impacted more than I could help, which meant that although the camera survived, I paid for it in skinned limbs. We got an even more impressive evening, with the sun lensing through the clouds in an interesting rainbow fashion in early afternoon and a pretty sunset to finish the day. Even better, it turned out by chance that that night was the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, so we spent the late evening watching fire streak across the sky together.

We decided to take the long way home the following day, following highway 101 north and around to I-5. Of course with certain people's fascination for the Twilight series, we couldn't resist stopping in Forks to look around. In point of fact, it was a pretty sad sight - the entire town is glomming on to the popularity of the series, and obviously won't survive once that wanes. Honestly, the place didn't even bear a reasonable resemblance to the description in the books or movies. As we continued on to La Push, things got significantly better - the scenery was beautiful. We were planning to find another spot to camp for the night, but those plans were washed out with some impressively torrential rain along the way, so in the end we just headed home.

Eden felt poorly most of the next week, so I was somewhat restricted in locations to shoot. It actually worked out fairly well, as I found a couple of places near the west end of Mill Plain that had some great birds, both lakes and rivers. For the most part, it was a nicely isolated situation, with just a little bit of company from time to time. It also gave me an excuse to get some time in on the bike, as there wasn't any access by car in several places.

The weekend of the 22nd was another market weekend, actually the official opening of the new Bill Naito Legacy Fountain. Sales were slow, but it was still fun to see all the people enjoying the new waterworks. It's crazy how much fun kids can have getting wet.

A friend of a friend turned out to need a pet sitter in the middle of the week, so we took advantage of the situation, both to get out of the house for a while and to make up some of the money from the previous weekend. Both of Sean's dogs are great, and it was hard to take a bad picture of either.

As it turned out, Sean returned early from his trip, so we took a long loop around Mount Hood, stopping at Little Zigzag Falls and Lake Trillium along the way. Many, many good shots to be had here, which we of course took advantage of. It seemed as though the dragonflies on the lake were in mating season, as they zoomed back and forth crazily, sometimes banging into each other mid air with surprisingly loud impacts.

Finally, we headed to a potluck after market this past Saturday. The theme for the event was Mexican cooking, giving me a chance to try out a recipe for Bolillos. They ended up a little plainer than I anticipated, but it seemed like people enjoyed them. Unfortunately, even though the event was supposed to be for marketers only, it ended up crashed by both beggars and general public, making for a fairly uncomfortable situation and less than adequate food, as of course those crashing did not bring their own contributions. Regardless, it was nice to spend some time with friends outside of having to mind respective booths.

2009-08-31 Picdump [Show images on map] [Fullscreen slideshow]

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.