Yesterday, a friend and I drove 50 miles north along the Oregon coast to Tillamook, to attempt to follow the "quilt trail," a series of single quilt squares painted large and hung on barns, businesses, and a few private homes near Tillamook. Here it is, mid-October, and we nearly wilted from the heat...79. You've got to understand that anything over 70 is a "heat wave" here on the coast at any time, but ordinarily October is in the 50s with rain during October. I cannot remember ever having this kind of abnormal hot weather this late. Still, we persisted in the "easter egg hunt" for several hours, getting photos for a program we'll do for Oregon Coast Learning, a group that meets weekly for lectures about a wide variety of things to keep our old minds clicking along. Doing the research in order to present a program for the group is the high point of the exercise!

Friday, I took my boat to Pacific City, to fish for fall Chinook on the lower Nestucca. It was so windy that we had little hope of getting our flies to where we wanted them...no luck with the fish. However, we harvested a couple of containers of ripe blackberries, which ordinarily are ripe in August, finished in September. The long, never-ending wet spring we had during April, May, and June meant that berries were either very late, or, in the case of blueberries, never really bloomed. No fresh local blueberries this past summer! We're supposed to get the first fall rain at the end of next week, which should move salmon upstream, followed by sea-run cutthroat. It also means the beginning of a very long winter where I won't be able to use my driveway, due to flooding of what used to be a pretty little creek in our front yard. I drive to where the driveway meets the road, unload groceries or whatever, put on my boots, and walk down to wade across the flood, then up the hill to the house. I've noticed that the hill gets steeper and longer every winter. <g> Then I drive up the road an eighth of a mile to a place where I can turn around, then back down to the group of mailboxes a quarter-mile west of our house, the closest wide spot that's solid enough for me to park my car. The flooding and marsh (instead of creek) are due to efforts of eight different would-be developers, all of whom went bankrupt, some of whom did illegal things to the creek, like channelizing it below our place, extending our one-lane road across the creek for a shortcut to the main road. To make matters worse, the school dist. purchased 58 acres that drain into our little creek, clear cut about 2/3rds of it, and then BULLDOZED the land...even though they have no definite plans to build there any time within the next decade or two! When we have a storm, all that loose dirt starts moving downhill, and I have a huge chocolate brown lake that covers much of the half-acre of front yard and over 100' of driveway. Then, I need waders instead of just boots to get out to the road. Yes, I really LOVE development!