Belated Birthday Gift

View of Mt. Hood from Mt. Hood Train Excursion

Last October Lauren gave Verne a birthday gift that we all enjoyed this past weekend. It was a scenic train ride on the Mt. Hood Railroad. The 45 mile round trip took us through densely wooded forests, orchards, and vineyards to end up at the southern end of the line in Parkdale, Oregon where we spent an hour walking around the town and visiting the Hutson Museum before returning to the Hood River station. Lauren popped for the Diamond Class, which included tickets on the upper most level, the Sky Dome, with panoramic views of the landscape. We opted to bring our own tasty treats for the trip rather than purchasing box lunches. Good decision! We learned a couple of things on the trip: the Hood River Valley accounts for 30% of the winter pear production in the United States and the track between Hood River and Parkdale includes one of only five switchbacks still in use in the United States. A switchback, also called a zig-zag, is a method used by trains to climb steep grades.

Mt. Hood Train Excursion

Mt. Hood Train Excursion

Dinner Saturday night was at a Korean restaurant in East Portland. One of the perks that comes with Scott’s job as quality control head for American Seafoods includes travel (and fine dining) all over Europe and Asia. His exposure to different cultures and foods makes him an interesting eating companion as there seems to be little he hasn’t tasted. Thus, we left the ordering to him and just sat back and enjoyed our two hour eating extravaganza. Our dozen side dishes were followed by several meats (plain and marinated) and shrimp that he grilled at our table as we ate. Of all the delicious food that night, Verne and I found the steamed eggs to be a favorite. The eggs were silky smooth with a texture like a perfectly done soufflé. Drizzled with one of the several dipping sauces and they were magical! As for magic, the barley tea (boricha) was delicious. If you’ve been following my blog then you know the girls and I love tea and trips to Portland always include a visit to Smith Tea, a high-end tea shop we discovered after having their Jasmine green tea at Thai Peacock. Although boricha is technically not tea as it’s made from roasted barley grains and not from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, for purposes of my blog and drinking the beverage, I’ll be calling it barley tea!

The rest of the weekend was spent with Scott and his family food sourcing and included a trip to the Columbia Farms U-Pick on Sauvie Island, where we picked raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries. Since giving up the Master Food Preserver program, I have also given up much of our food preservation efforts. However, we still have a few favorite foods that we put by, including triple berry jam. Last year we made a few jars of raspberry jam and loved it, so we were pleased to find that raspberries were in full season in the Portland area. This was our first visit to Sauvie Island, north of Portland and a short drive from Lauren’s home. It’s accessed by the Sauvie Island Bridge, has a little over a thousand full-time residents (mostly families involved in agriculture) and touts over a million visitors each year, many I suspect who are there to visit one of the several U-Pick farms. We arrived when Columbia Farms opened on Sunday morning and by the time we left a couple of hours later the parking lot was full and fields active with pickers.

Picking raspberries

Lauren picking strawberries

Lauren and Scott at Columbia Farms

We stayed in Portland until mid-week to help Lauren with a couple of home improvements. This time it wasn’t a DIY, we just had to be there to let the workers in and supervise the job, which included wood flooring for the hallway and new carpet in the bedrooms. We left on Wednesday refreshed and ready to get back to our work at home, which included the wood splitting and stacking project we started with the Burkhard’s visit mid-June. In hindsight, I don’t think Raelin remembered her supportive offer in May to come up with the kids when school was out to help us during Verne’s recovery from heart surgery with some hard physical labor. I remembered! And, I was prepared to take full advantage of her offer. We spent most of one day splitting wood. Kendall operated the lever on the splitter (the highly technical part of the job), Verne held the rounds as they were split, Raelin and Sam loaded the pickup (dodging the flying wood as Verne threw the split pieces in a pile), and I supervised. It’s my specialty! My original plan was to work (them) the entire weekend, but I weakened Sunday morning and changed the plan to include an excursion to Black Chasm. It was the second trip this year for us, but a new experience for the Burkhard’s and one they seemed to enjoy…especially as it didn’t involve wood splitting or any other project from our long list. We’ve got the McKenzie boys coming for a visit later this summer. We may get through that huge pile of rounds yet!

Raelin and her precious kids, Sam and Kendall

Family fun splitting wood