Month: August 2017

This, largely hands-on, museum is mainly for kids but has many interesting and thought provoking exhibits for adults as well.  It is located the the city’s Washington Park.  It has lots of activities for kids as well as samples of petrified wood and facts about the forests and trees of the world.  There was a smokejumper firefighting exhibit and a full scale logging machine with a harvester attachment which explains how trees are efficiently turned into logs.  It is quite a place.

The wood quiz consisted of several large Kit-Kat candy bar-like blocks (or think large piano keys) of various woods which demonstrate the enormous difference in weight depending on what type of wood you were lifting.  Identically sized blocks ranged in weight from 8.7 to 82.7 pounds.

The Portland Japanese Garden, located in the city’s Washington Park, is said to be the most authentic Japanese garden outside of Japan.  If you visit at right time of year (which I didn’t) there would be much more color from the various cherry blossom trees, azalea and rhododendron plants, camelias and wisterias scattered throughout the property. While I was here it was mainly lush green, a nice proportion of water (ponds and small waterfalls), and elaborate stonework.  Nothing grandious, just a subtle, calm, relaxing place. It is a gorgeous garden, even without much color.  I did post the one lone bloom that was at it’s peak that I saw.  So in lieu of flowers I tried to post a cross section of other things in the park which represent Japanese culture and tradition.

With apologies to Sir-Mix-a-Lot….

This is Pilot Butte.  It is located in the city of Bend, Oregon.  That’s right… in the city.  Don’t believe me?

(Photo credit:JRCompton.com)

Pilot Butte rises over 500 feet above the city.  I took the top photo at the end of SE 15th Street, which is the street my Airbnb hostess lives on.  The butte is a little over a mile from her house.

The smoke from nearby wildfires cleared out overnight and I was able to get up on the butte before leaving Bend this morning.  This picture was taken from the top of the butte (I had to walk up, as the road doesn’t open until 10 AM.  Haven’t these people ever heard of dawn-to-dusk??).  The road going away from you is Route 20, which runs east to west through Bend (you are looking west). I took Route 20 to Salem, Oregon and then on to Portland right after taking this photo.  My trusty Route 97, which I have been using to get around the state all week, runs north to south and is located about a third of the way up from the bottom of the photo.  Today was the first day since arriving in Oregon a week ago that I did not travel on Route 97 (sorry old friend, you’ve been a great travel companion but I need to see other roads).

Oh, and if you ever need a good laugh check out the video on YouTube (or other places online) of Brian Williams, the then-anchor of NBC Nightly News (before his embellishment scandal) on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.  It is actually a video put together by some Tonight Show staff members by painstakingly going through his newcasts and extracting single words used in the song.  When shown together Williams appears to be rapping the song “Baby Got Back” (the big butt song).  It’s a hoot.  There is also a cameo by another NBC personality but I won’t ruin the surprise.  So go to YouTube and enter Brian Williams Back Got Back and you should find it.

After leaving Bend I headed northwest on another one of my scenic roads, Route 20 (a gorgeous drive).  This road took me very close to one of the wildfires currently burning out of control in Oregon, the Whitewater Fire.  This photo was taken shortly after passing through Detroit, Oregon.  Before taking this I drove through the little town of Idanha which is where I could smell the smoke, although today it was blowing away from the road so it wasn’t too bad.  The Whitewater Fire is now up to 5,200 acres.

The Spruce Lake Fire, down by Crater Lake, continues to grow and is now up to almost 4,700 acres.  Friday authorities closed West Rim Drive, which goes around the west side of the lake.  The fire is expected to reach the road by today.  That fire is still only 5% contained.

I have not found any more news about the Crescent Fire, which I came across about 3 hours after it started on Thursday afternoon.  Evidently they were able to get it under control will all the ground crews and air support which were used to fight it.

Lots of you have seen or been to indoor water parks, right?  A great place to take the kids on a hot day.  Well how many water parks have you been to with a real 747 parked on the roof?

This is Evergreen Waves & Wings, an aviation-themed water park about a half hour south of Portland, Oregon.  This was an actual, functional 747-132 aircraft used by Delta Airlines, China Airlines, and Pan Am before being used for most of it’s service life by Evergreen International.  It now sits on top of their water park at the Evergreen Museum complex across from the McMinnville airport.  The bottom photo shows the beginning of the four water slides (two on each side) which begin inside the aircraft!  Patrons take stairs up from inside the park to enter the airplane, then slide down through the white tubes, landing in the pool inside the building.  What an incredibly clever idea.

The most recent aircraft designation is N481EV if you want to look up the flight history of the plane.

A HUGE thank you to my friend Shawn, a frequent commenter on the blog, who told me about this place.  It wasn’t on my radar, although I did later see that it was listed in the AAA Travel Guide for Oregon.  I had skipped right past that entry when doing my research because I am not normally interested in water parks, so I would have missed this if Shawn hadn’t told me.

I want everyone seeing this to say out loud: “Thank you, Shawn”

 

This is the one and only Hughes H-4 Hercules seaplane, one of the largest aircraft ever flown.  It is more commonly known as the “Spruce Goose”, a nickname the designer of the plane, reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, despised.  A few years ago the plane, which had been on display inside a dome in Long Beach, California for many years, was purchased by Evergreen International and was moved to a permanent home here.

FUN FACTS:

The plane only actually flew one time, on November 2, 1947.  It was in the air for little over a mile reaching an altitude of 70 feet, and the flight lasted about a minute.

The plane cost $ 25 million to build. Most of it came from the government but Hughes also ponied up $ 7 million of his own money.

It has 8 propellers, 4 on each side.

There were beach balls placed at the bottom of the hull and in the wing floats to provide additional bouyancy in the event of an accident.

It is actually constructed mostly of birch, not spruce (although there was a little of bit of spruce used).  The material is called Duramold and was made by glueing together laminated layers of birch veneer.

When preparing the wood, millions of nails (weighing 7 tons) were used to hold the assemblies in place until the glue dried.  All those nails were then removed.

Crew members stood inside the wings (which are so big they could stand upright) to observe the 8 engines during the lone flight.

 

This is what I want my golf cart to look like when I retire.  Oh…. wait…. I am retired.

This modified golf cart is used to shuttle (get it?) patrons among the various buildings at the Evergreen Museum complex.  In addition to the water park and the large building housing the Spruce Goose and other airplanes, there is also a large building which has displays of spacecraft, military planes and drones, helicopters (lots of helicopters), and other aviation related items. And there is yet another building which shows movies (not sure if they are regular movies or IMAX, I didn’t watch any of them).  There are also various aircraft on display outside, scattered around the property.  It is a huge facility.

Before starting on today’s activity I want to revisit a post from a few days ago.  There are several venues within the Newberry Volcanic National Monument, one of which is the caldera, or area inside the rim, of the volcano itself. I posted pictures earlier in the week of the Big Obsidian Flow and explained that it was a huge lava field (approx one square mile).  Well today I saw a picture taken from overhead which clearly shows the size and scope of the Flow.  The photo I saw was on a travel kiosk along a nearby scenic road which highlighted many attractions featured in the area.  I found the picture online and it appears below.

(Photo credit: Robert Jensen)

The light colored area in the foreground is the Big Obsidian Flow (I told you it was big) and the two lakes in the background are Paulina and East.  Everything you see is located within the rim of the volcano (which is REALLY big).

This 500 foot tall butte is right along Route 97, just south of Bend.  I have passed it several times this week as I traveled down to Crater Lake.  It is part of the Newberry Volcanic National Monument.  Traffic was light the morning I took this so I was able to cross two lanes of the highway without becoming roadkill.

I found the picture below online which shows the butte from the air.  I think is an absolutely breathtaking photograph.

(Photo credit: WillhiteWeb.com)

I have another butte picture (I can hear y’all out there snickering) which I will post tomorrow.

On my last full day in Bend I decided to visit this cave, which is just south of the Lava Butte shown in the previous post.  The mile long cave maintains a constant temperature of around 40 degrees, cooler than most caves, I presume, because it is lava and not conventional rock.  Having learned a lesson when I visited Mammoth Cave in Kentucky last year I arrived at this cave before it opened at 9 o’clock.  (When I was at Mammoth the daily temperatures were up around 100 degrees and EVERYONE wanted to be down in the cave where it was a constant 54 degrees.  All the tours there were booked so I never saw the cave).

While I was waiting outside the gate I struck up a conversation with my new friend Erich, a fellow traveler who is also visiting the area.  I talked his ear off as we walked through the cave together on the self-guided tour and before we parted I told him about this blog.  About a hour after I started my next activity he sent me a message saying that not only had he looked at the blog but that it has inspired him to start one of his own!  That is the ultimate compliment.

I recommended that he go to the McKenzie Pass Scenic Byway (the Observatory, butterflies, etc) which I had seen earlier in the week, which he did.  He later sent me a message suggesting that I visit the Lava Cast Forest, which is where he went after touring the cave and before going to the Pass.  That wasn’t on my list but I did make it back to Bend in time to stop there about an hour before sunset.

My pictures from inside the cave aren’t worth a damn so I won’t bother posting them.  It was a neat cave, though.

And no, Erich is not the guy in the picture.