Category: walkabout / local

Slightly chilly, but we head for an early Charlie walk at Morgan Lake and continue the process of Canonization, benefiting from Jim’s camera.  On the high plateau where the lake is situated, we see an assemblage of mounted cowboys herding cattle into a number of large semis.  So we hear distant cow-sounds for the duration.  Bumped into our old neighbor, Kent, an environmental scientist with HabLab, out searching to confirm the existence of a reported species of ocean duck on our own lake.  And we swapped intelligence on daughters; Kent’s was also a schoolmate of Ivi’s, including college, and we find that Ivi and Miriam both are strongly drawn to Portland city life.  On the way home, we thread our way through the convoy of trucks, then on down the road, find that one truck has taken a steep uphill curve too sharply and dropped a wheel into the ditch, requiring us to pull through the weeds to continue our descent.

Today, we see geese flying … north!  And experience a watermelon turnip.  Plus the usual sights that accompany a walking of the Dreaded Creature.  Pointing & shooting …

Up at dawn, but could only squeeze off a few in the semi-darkness before the camera died.

A late afternoon walk with Charlie Barker…

After spending most of the day working on financial and administrative matters, I was ready after a late lunch and nap to go walking.  Joined by Kim, after taking care of banking, we strolled about downtown, and ended up at the library (filling Kim’s backpack with new borrowings).  On the way, we looked at the changing colors of autumn, bumped into my old friend/colleague, Tracy, on the street, checked out the status of the new county building construction, filled a request by a young boy to have his picture taken, and saw a little of this and that.

Arising at 5:30am, downing a quick breakfast and securing The Charlie-Bob-Marley Beast, we head for Riverside Park for an early morning dog run.

(Color originals, plus a few more for good measure, are just a click away here.)

Up early today, but not as early as Kim who took Charlie up Deal Canyon.  With a late start, I catch them about three (? — Kim thinks it is much less) miles in, as they were returning.  (You can see a work-in-progress experimental take on Charlie’s greeting as he spots me coming up the trail.)  After a couple of encounters with stranger dogs, we return into town, still crisp and cool from the fall start.  And a little visual automotive trivia is noted along the way, including a reminder of Volkswagen’s “dieselgate” debacle.

(By the way, in case you don’t know, the “TDI” rear badging on VWs (and some Audis) stands for Turbocharged Direct Injection, but is also known as Turbo Diesel Injection.  In any case, it designates VW’s diesels for the past decade or so.)

Ivi and Dad take Charlie for a late morning run through Grandview and up to the AT&T tower.  More of the same; it’s like practicing scales on the piano.