Catching Up Part 1 "Spring Fishing"

Opening weekend of fishing season at Paulina Lake with Paulina Peak in the background. What an amazing place. Our next door neighbor from Eastern Idaho who spends the summer fly fishing the upper reaches of the Snake River with a view of the Grand Tetons commented that he couldn't believe how beautiful it is at Paulina. Many hours of the spring and early summer were spent catching fish here as many of the following pictures will show.

This will be the first of many blogs, Catching Up Part 1 "Spring Fishing".

This picture was taken from a point on the hike to Little Crater overlooking the southeast corner of Paulina Lake. The area at the top of the picture on the far shore is where we usually fish. Jane like this picture so much she put it on her screen saver at work.

The rewards of the hike? A couple hours of fishing and fresh fish for dinner. Even Lexy got into the action on this trip. She caught this one.

Stay tuned....

April Fools?

Marc and Kerry, I am booking reservations for dinner for your anniversary but need to know more about what time. As you can see, they are only open Thursday -Sunday 4-9 pm. More about this later. I want it to be "special." (just kidding)

Jane had the day off and we had time to kill so we took off in a direction yet to be explored. We found this sign on Highway 31 as we headed southeast of LaPine.
I didn't even know Oregon had an outback, "mate." We didn't have to travel far, about 30 minutes to Fort Rock to discover why they call it the "outback."

This is Fort Rock. For all you scrabble players it is what is referred to in geologic terms as a "tuff." Size and scale are difficult in pictures but you can just make out the park host's 5th wheel as the white speck in the middle third of the right picture above.
Below is a picture of Jane in front of one of the larger rock formations inside Fort Rock near the back wall. Notice "Tilley the rock-climbing dog."
Also, there is me on top of the back wall at its lowest point. Not bad climbing for an old man!

The pictures below were taken from the back wall where I was standing looking southwest over the desert.

On the way home we stopped off at the aptly named "Hole in the ground." No explanation and off the beaten track some, I suppose it is some form of collapsed cindercone. As you can see, it is quite large. Those are pine trees on the far side.

Marc and Kerry, as promised, the "special" pictures of the Cowboy Dinner Tree Steakhouse are below. We found this place 4.5 miles on a dead end road out of Silver Lake. Believe it or not, it is a real restaurant I've heard about from more than one person with steaks that have a reputation of being large enough that it can take all week to eat it. I can't decide whether to try it out or wait for you guys.

Dan, I wonder if they have ribs?

That would be about all for now. Oh yeah, by the time we got back to LaPine it was snowing hard.

Love to all,

Marty and Jane

Let the Sun Shine....

What a beautiful weekend! Jane had to work this w/e so we got up early Saturday to go x-country skiing up at 10 mile on Paulina Peak and it was so icy we decided to just walk up to this viewpoint. We could have skied it but would have paid the price with bruises coming down. The snow was hard enough, that walking up the road which had 2-3 ft. of snow, we never sunk in more than about an inch.
Mt. Bachelor(l) and Broken Top (r) were in the sun. You can just make South Sister inbetween the two.
This second picture is looking down over LaPine. I'm not sure what peak that is in the background. It is still difficult for us to believe that we can have views like this 20 min. from the house.

If Saturday wasn't enough, today (Sunday) we hit 71 degrees and I spent as much time outside as I could and took some pictures of our newly acquired boat.

Last weekend we went to the Sportsman's Show (no political correctness, "sportsperson's", when it comes to hunting and fishing) just to get some ideas. I saw a nice 15' Smoker Craft 'Alaskan' that I really liked but they had an underpowered (10 horse) motor to keep the price down. Still, aluminum boats are expensive and they wanted twice what I was willing to pay. So as we were leaving what do I find "For Sale" in the parking lot? A 1999 15' Smoker Craft 'Alaskan' with a 15 horse Mercury outboard with all the extras right at what I was willing to pay. Included were all the extras: brand new fishfinder, two anchors, Minnkota Electric trolling motor with new battery, 1 yr. old canvas top and several anti-theft goodies.

Coincidence? You know I'm not a big believer in those things. All in all, pretty amazing week!

Saved, just in time!

Not normally considered a weapon, large, pointy shafts of ice have been forming and falling from the eves of buildings striking people and killing them instantly. Here I barely saved Jane by yelling, "those things have been known to kill people!"

Snow...Finally!

I heard on the local news last night that this snow is our first measurable in almost 7 weeks. It snowed for about 26 hours straight without stopping yet didn't accumulate all that much. It is so dry hear that most of the snow we get is powder, very dry and slow to build up. We ended up with about 6 in. total and I have included a couple of pictures taken out the back window.
Tilley is the most happy to see the snow. Her first move out the door is to stick her nose down like a snow plow blade and run. Its the funniest sight. When she lifts her head up it looks as if she has taken a face plant.
Tomorrow, Friday, is suppose to be the only day in the next 5 or six that we don't get snow. Not a problem for the commute as it gets just above freezing in the afternoon, and with the traffic, the roads are pretty melted for the commute home which is the busier of the two commutes.
The houses on both sides of us have now sold and we had our new neighbors for about 5 days from E. Idaho stay for the first time in their new home. The houses across the street are all almost complete and new people are visiting Crescent Creek every weekend. We haven't had visitors overnight with us (except Kendra) since mid January when Rob and Cynthia were here. Know that you are always welcome.

Love Marty

Wacky Weather

January has been crazy as weather goes with rain early in the month, below 0 (-12) two weeks in and finishing with some freezing fog. The morning of this picture we had a birthday breakfast with our friends Lowell and Liz at the Trout House in Sunriver. This was taken from our table inside the restaurant and shows the Deschutes River still frozen. Note the trees on the far side where the freezing fog has them coated with ice from the day before.











These two are a couple of interesting photos Jane took. The cold dry weather does some strange things with water.


I took this one from in front of our house right before sunrise one morning and really liked it. Jane thought it looked like a forest fire.

We had the kids for Superbowl today so took some pictures and decided I would include some updates of the grandkids.

Of course Landon being youngest gets top billing and as you can see is feeling his oats.

He also gets two pictures. He seemed especially interested in my beard.

Lexy looks older by the day and Kendra will ham it up any chance she gets.

The last two of Landon I included because I liked them and I'm doing the post.

The wacky weather continues. Early Feb. at 4300 ft. in Central Oregon and on the north side of our house, the shady side where we still have ice and snow, at 2:30 p.m. today the thermometer read 62 degrees. I was in short sleeves!

I've been trying to get Jane to post but it has been like pulling teeth, not worth the pain. I'll try to get pictures up more often.

Love to all,

Marty

'07' Is Here!

New Years Eve was eventful. We started off at an afternoon BBQ at the neighbor's house complete with prawns (which I can't eat though Jane enjoyed) wrapped in bacon and marinated chicken. Jane contributed Chinese Chicken Salad and there were numerous other selections from bite sized crab cakes to the usual fare like macaroni salad. Oh, let's not forget Diane's espresso brownies.

Bob (my brother) and Molly arrived just in time for the start of the festivities and barely had time to settle in before the fun began.

Lowell, our neighbor, performed the chef duties and provided the Coronas for consumption. He was dressed in a leather apron which he wore all night and was asked at least once if it were part of a matching outfit he had on under his clothes. He and his wife Liz were gracious hosts. They had a nice fire pit blazing which kept us warm until the sun went down when it soon dropped below freezing.

The intent was to travel from house to house, seven couples in all, but we never got past the first house, ours! We really didn't mind and there was more than enough libation for everyone. We really had a great time meeting and talking with each couple. I know at one point Bob and Charlie (Diane's husband) were discussing being stationed in Europe concurrently, Bob in Germany and Charlie in Italy, and the various travels they experienced at the time. Lowell played piano enlisting others to participate in assisting him.

While our group was very eclectic by nature, originating from various parts of the country and differing professions, we had plenty in common with our love of the area here in La Pine and the surrounding area.

New Years Day, Bob and I took Tilley about 25 min. up to 10 mile snow park on the way to Paulina Lake. From there on the road is closed to automobiles and we xc skied up to about the 5500 foot level stopping on the way to take these photos.

Mid way down on the left in the picture of Bob you can see La Pine with some wood stove smoke hovering above it.

Obviously Tilley is very at home in the snow and had a great run down as we skied back to the truck.

Matt and family joined us for dinner and stayed to watch a wild Boise State overtime victory.