Once again, I became too busy to keep up with my blogs.

As I started on my second job at Safeway back in June, I soon found that I had become too busy to do the things I had wanted to do during the summer. As for my other job at the mobile slaughter, I will probably leave before the year's end since it has become unreliable -- for one, it is hard to get a hold of my boss there; on the other hand, several bounced checks from the customers have made it so I am basically working without pay.

Aside from those two dilemmas, I will be going back to college starting tomorrow to begin on my degree in photojournalism. For my first term back, I decided to take a most likely easy, yet interesting course on the geography of Oregon. This serves two purposes - one, to get me back into the mindset of college and studying; and two, to get me to find out what classes would be best for me to achieve my goals. So on every Tuesday, I will be able to talk with instructors and advisers that would know the best classes to take.


Even though I was quite busy during the summer, I did manage to go to a few places. The Oregon Garden was one of those places, and I intend to go again several times next year. Here are a few pictures:

In late June, I checked out the 'World Beat Festival,' and on the 4th of July, I went to Independence's 'Western Days.' From the World Beat Festival, I snapped these pictures:

 These were African masks that were being sold

 I love Native American Dances.

This little guy is a descendent of the Aztecs...or did they say Mayans?

I also went to the Oregon State Fair just to view the quilts on display (they had double the number of participants that last year). Two of my favorite are below - unfortunately, most of my pictures came out blurry because I was in a hurry:

That about sums up the last three months. And thanks to the rain, there hasn't been much to go see for the past two weeks.

Red, White, and Blueberry Salad

Here's a recipe for a good summer dessert that I came up with a few days after July 4th. All you need are raspberries and strawberries for the 'red,' Cool Whip for the 'white,' blueberries, and a container to put them in. The amount of each ingredient is totally up to you. I actually didn't need this much raspberries.

 

Start off with a thin layer of Cool Whip on the bottom of the container. Next, add a layer of strawberries. Once you have enough for that layer, add another thin layer of Cool Whip.

 

Next, add a layer of blueberries and cover them with another thin layer of Cool Whip.

 

Add another layer of strawberries followed by another thin layer of Cool Whip. Finally decorate the top with blueberries and raspberries any way you like.

One last thing, don't forget to enjoy with others. Serves 6-8.

A trip to Roaring River County Park

After finding out what an undiscovered little gem of a park that the Aumsville Ponds were, I decided to check out Roaring River County Park in Linn County. As this county park will be featured next month on my other blog, Mid-Willamette Explorer, I will just post some of the photos I took. If there is no name below a flower, it is because I have yet to identify it. Many of the flowers in the park are ones that I have never seen before.

My favorite photo of the day

My second favorite photo of the day.

The forest is reclaiming the table.

My third favorite photo of the day.

This flower is not in my plant book.

 Himalayan Blackberry - Invasive Species

 I believe this is part of the carrot/parsnip family

 Oceanspray

 This might be a species of Forget-me-not

Mock-Orange

Fog across the field

This morning there was a small layer of fog at the back of the field behind my house, so I figured I would get a picture of it while I went about doing the morning chores.

1,000 views

I figured that I would put up a few statistics once this blog had 1,000 views.

My first blog (Beaver Country Ramblings)

15.5 months
70 posts
1,002 views

My second blog (Travels of Oregon)
5.5 months
62 posts
660 views

My third blog (Mid-Willamette Explorer)
1.5 months
9 articles
396 views

I would like to say thanks to all my readers, especially the ones who wait for me to post something new.

Trapper's Encampment at Champoeg State Park

After getting lunch yesterday at the Burning Boar BBQ, which will be featured on Mid-Willamette Explorer next moth, I headed to Champoeg State Park to check out the Fur Trapper's Encampment event. Those that hosted the event were clad in pioneer-era clothing and featured anything from old-style canvas tents to flintlocks. Out of all the items that were shown off, my favorite was the hand-mad birch bark canoe which used white cedar boards to line the inside. Below are some of the photos from the event.

 This guy is making sparks with flint

 

This guy is making round bullets the old way.

Rooster Rock Hike

In Oregon, we have two Rooster Rocks. One is in the Columbia River Gorge, the other is near Cascadia State Park. It is the one near Cascadia, that I went on with a group from Meetup.com earlier today. Living up to it's temperate rainforest status, is rained well over have the time on the trail, but us Pacific Northwesterners are used to the rain. If you love difficult hikes, this one is for you; but if you are like me, and have hip or knee pain after walking a few miles on flat ground, this is definitely not for you. Nor is this for hikers that normally hike less than 8 miles on relatively flat ground.

With the combination hip pain and steep ascent, the 6.6 mile trail was a real pain compared to Silver Falls State Park's Trail of Ten Falls. But at this time of year, there was enough flowering plants that madei t worthwhile to me. Some of the pictures are as follows:

Bear Grass

 Oregon Iris

Three-leaved Anemone

 Pacific Rhododendron

 False Solomon's Seal

Pacific Madone (the tree that sheds it's bark)

Rooster Rock through the trees

Linn County Lamb & Wool Festival

I first heard about this festival near the end of last summer, so I figured I'd give it a look-see this year. Each day, it has different events going on, such as a parade down the main street of Scio. I arrived shortly after the parade and parked in a church parking lot a few blocks away from all the action. My first target was the Junior High School gym that was where they had quilts, as I like to look at the geometrical ones.  Below are a few of my favorites:

 

The next stop was where the main part of the fair was held to look at the animals and check out the booths. Unfortunately, I didn't see any sheep at that time and the booths didn't carry anything of interest to me.

After moseying around for a while at this place and that, I went across the creek to see the wool show only to find out that they wouldn't start until 7:00 p.m. and it was entirely vacant. So no lambs or wool, save for the lamb burgers that a booth was selling. Some festival this turned out to be, I was under the impression that sheep and wool for sale were going to be there the whole 3 days. Before deciding to leave as it was raining, I went across the street to check out the old tractors next to the Scio Veterans Memmorial.