Smoke, Pinochle, and Eggs Benedict

 The rest of Dave and Gayle's visit we spent trying to avoid smoke, doing projects, playing pinochle, drinking cocktails made by Joshua, and generally enjoying each other's company.

Dave and Gayle spent some time over at the coast visiting Grandad, so we went over and joined them for a couple days. This was a beautiful foggy morning; a few days later it looked like this from the smoke in the air. We had terrible air quality off and on throughout their visit because of all the fires. Mostly we were getting smoke blowing up from Northern California, but there were fires around Oregon too.

Back at our house, Dave and Joshua made beef jerky together. It turned out really well.

Gayle and I trimmed the garlic harvest since it was done drying.

We headed back to the coast for Labor Day weekend. Saturday we painted Grandad's house, which went more quickly than expected.

Sunday morning we went to Lakeview Lodge for brunch. We had gone the week before too, but those Eggs Benedict sure sounded good again. After dinner, Joshua and I drove through the smoke to come home, and Dave and Gayle drove back to California the next morning.

Total Solar Eclipse

The total solar eclipse was this week.

The excitement began Friday when Dave and Gayle arrived. The next day, Matt and Grace stopped by to have dinner and spend the night. They left Sunday morning to drive the rest of the way to Salem. It was fun to have a full house and get to visit with everyone. 

Monday morning, we left the house just after five and drove northeast to the small town of Sweet Home. We arrived and claimed a spot just as the sun was coming up. It was beautiful there by the lake and we were fortunate enough to get one of the picnic tables.

There was also a firepit, so we got a little fire going and made tea and coffee. Both of those were much appreciated since it was chilly in the early morning there by the water.

It was a beautiful spot and a great sunrise. We were surprised that it wasn't more crowded, but glad we had gotten there early enough to enjoy the sunrise.

Jeff and Lauren were also there with their friends, John and Julia, so we all met up and hung out together.

Gotta take some group pictures while you wait. It was so weird to wear the solar eclipse glasses. They were very dark, of course, so everything was pitch black except the sun, which was a perfect yellow-orange circle. Until the eclipse started, then didn't look like a circle anymore. It was funny to take these pictures because we couldn't see anything while we did it.

The eclipse begin just after 9 am and the total eclipse was at 10:18 am, so we had just over an hour to watch the sun vanish. 

More people arrived by the lake as we got closer to the eclipse, but it never got full. It was strange to watch the sun gradually disappear. Because the glasses were so dark, the sun didn't look like the sun and it made the whole thing feel somewhat fake. But then it started to get darker and cooler. The atmosphere was really weird because it was getting dark like it would at sunset, but the color and the shadows were all wrong. It was disconcerting.

Here's a bad picture taken with an old cell phone through the glasses; the sun is much smaller than it looked for us, but the color is about right.

Finally, the moment we'd all been waiting for. The moon completely covered the sun and we could take off our glasses and look at it. We were supposed to have a minute, but it felt much shorter. It was incredible. It wasn't completely dark, but we could see a few stars and it got a lot colder. And the sun covered by the moon was stunning; it was unlike anything I've experienced before.

I had read about taking pictures of the eclipse on Nikon's website, so I had the camera all set up on the tripod, ready to go. But I was disappointed with the pictures I ended up getting because they were underexposed. You're supposed to start with a shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second and bracket exposures all the way to 1 second. That's over 30 different exposures to try to snap in one minute while watching the eclipse and I knew I wouldn't make it. So I started between the two, but was still underexposed and didn't get far enough through to get to the right exposure. I wasn't paying attention to the camera while I took them, so I didn't notice the problem until too late. Oh well, the point was to see the eclipse, not take great pictures. There are still a few cool ones. Dave got a great shot though:

All too soon, it ended and the sun started to reappear so we had to put back on our glasses to look at it. It was wild. I wasn't expecting the rush of emotions and adrenaline; I was shaking when it ended, although that might have partly been because I was cold. Anyway, it was amazing. We continued to relax by the water and watch the sun slowly reappear. 

After it was all over, we took a back route home and there were a lot more cars on the road, but it didn't slow us down. What an incredible experience. Matt and Grace stopped by and had dinner with us again on their way back to California and it was fun to share stories.

Breakfast Rounds

Joshua and I have been experimenting lately. Awhile ago, he learned about a meal replacement bar that sounded great. They are supposed to supply the right balance of carbs, protein, and fat with the recommended vitamins and minerals, but they are made out of whole foods, so should have all the good things we don't necessarily know about too. He really liked the idea and managed to track down an ingredient list, so we decided to try making them. Of course, they don't publish the recipe, but he wrote down the list of ingredients. I pulled out some granola bar and scone recipes and mixed up a first batch. We made a couple changes to the ingredient list, like using wheat flour instead of rice bran and adding a touch of honey. The first batch was surprisingly good. Then Joshua took the amounts that I used, plugged them into a nutrition calculator, and adjusted the amounts to get close to an ideal balance of carbs, protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals. I made a second batch with the new recipe and it was a bit dry because we had cut back on the oil. So we increased the oil to halfway between the first and second batches, cut back on the honey a touch, and made a third batch. This batch was a winner; good texture and taste with a reasonably well-balanced and complete nutritional content. Each one is about 400 calories. The flavor is pretty subtle, which is what we were going for, but they taste pleasant enough.

This was a fun project. I've never attempted to make up a baked goods recipe before and it was fun to work together on it and have such good results. Joshua loves eating them for breakfast and is looking forward to having something fast, easy, and healthy to take to school in the morning.

Feeling ambitious? Here's our ingredient list:

Whole grain oats

Eggs

Almond milk

Dark chocolate chips

Whey powder

Orange juice

Wheat flour

Sunflower seeds

Dates

Sweet potatoes

Apples

Chickpeas

Carrots

Olive oil

Iodized salt

Cinnamon

Baking powder

Honey

First Tomato

The long-awaited beginning of our tomato harvest; our first tomato was a Black Prince this year.

Buried Treasure

I found buried treasure in my yard.

This was the first year that we've tried growing potatoes, so it was pretty exciting to dig some up yesterday. I felt like I was digging for dinosaur bones.

Since I had the camera out to take pictures of the potatoes, I decided to take a few of the rest of the garden too. We have lots of beans coming up right now because I keep planting more as I take out other things that are done producing.

This volunteer vine came up by the compost pile and is quite happy back there. I'm not sure yet what it is, maybe pumpkin. It has lots of flowers, but hasn't set fruit. 

Our pole beans are doing great and looking pretty. I made two tepees for them to grow up and they connected at the top to make a little arbor over the German Green tomato.

We have lots of green tomatoes, but none that are ripe yet. The basil is also doing well.

Here's the result of the potato harvest. I dug half of my plants, so I was hoping for a little bit bigger harvest, but four of the plants were the smallest of the ten, so I'm hoping the second harvest will be a little better. It was still a lot of fun to dig them up though.

We had some of our freshly harvested blue potatoes with dinner last night and they were delicious, as were the hamburgers we made with freshly ground meat.

The Cosmos Flowers are Blooming

Downtown Doughnuts

I was given a few free bus passes, so we decided to take the bus downtown yesterday morning. Our first stop was Voodoo Doughnut. It seemed like it was about time to check them out. They certainly weren't Mr. T's, but it was fun to try them. We walked across the street to Starbucks for coffee and tea before walking to church. On our way back to the bus stop after the service, we stopped by the game store to get an expansion for Star Realms. Then we rode the bus home. It was fun to explore a little and enjoy the morning together.

Coastal Cruisers

We left Reedsport on Thursday early enough to meet up with Dave and Uncle Jimmy back in Eugene. They were on a road trip in Jimmy's Triumph. After driving up 101 along the coast, they were heading south again and stopped by to say hi. We went to Belly Taqueria for some tasty tacos and good conversation. It was sure fun to see them and hear about their exciting trip.

Camping by the Smith River

Joshua and I headed out for an adventure on Wednesday. We drove along small back roads, got a little lost, and arrived at the Smith River after a pretty drive. There are three free campgrounds along the river; the first was full with a possible campsite that only had a fire pit, the second was full too, but at the third we found the perfect spot. It was a great campsite by the river with a picnic table, a fire pit, and a path to the river.

There were lots of trees around our site, which was nice since we were in the middle of a heat wave and it was a hot day. It was supposed to hit 108 in Eugene that day; it was cooler by the river, but still hot.

After a picnic lunch, we took our chairs and waded across the river to the shady side. It was shallow enough that we could set up our chairs in the river and enjoy the coolness from the water.

It was also pretty and peaceful.

Back at our site, we had breakfast burritos and rhubarb ginger ale for dinner. As expected, the insects were bad by the river, but our bug repellent candle and bug spray kept them away. We enjoyed a little campfire as the evening cooled off, and made dessert hobo packs.

The next morning, we started the day by heating water for tea.

It was so pretty as the sun rose and shone around our campsite.

Back to my cup of tea. We had pancakes and sausage for breakfast that both seemed particularly good.

After tea and breakfast, we cleaned up our site and stopped by the falls.

Since we were close to Reedsport, we headed over to Grandad's at lunch time and spent the afternoon visiting with him. I picked some of the first blackberries of the season and we had barbecued hamburgers for dinner.