Walla Walla Sweet

ES and I headed to Walla Walla this weekend with friends to see the Walla Walla Sweet Onion Festival. We stopped along the way to Geochache at a location along the road to Walla Walla.  For those of you who don't know what Geochaching is, check out:  www.geocaching.com.

J&C geocaching near Walla Walla. They left a travel bug behind.


The festival included lots of Walla Walla Sweets in a variety of forms - rings, blooming onion, and on various grilled meats.  We didn't see any onion ice cream, thankfully.

Notice the sign - "Hot Pop" (name of local record shop) and the Hair Hut. This is the stage that later featured the man trying to get the Guinness book of World Records for peeling and eating an onion in under 1 min...It was being filmed by the Food Network Canada.

We took the Historic Homes of Walla Walla walking tour and saw some amazing houses.  We also found some sprinklers, and found that running through them helped keep us cool on our walk.

A Little Island Time

ES and I recently headed up to British Columbia, namely the Gulf Islands for some much needed R&R.

We boarded the ferry at Tswwassan, BC on a warm sunny afternoon.  The 2+ hr ferry ride was quite scenic, going across the Georgia and up through the Haro Straights to Salt Spring Island.

Ferry to Salt Spring Island, BC

Once we got to the island, we headed for Ganges (main town) and their weekly Farmer's Market.  Many vendors.  Mostly crafts, but some actual farmers.  ES and I found a painter that we really liked and bought a few of her prints.

The Ganges, Salt Spring Island Farmers Market

We toured the rest of the island, going to the highest peak (Mount Maxwell) and walked about Ganges Harbor.

Ganges Harbor

Mount Maxwell

The next day we found a local farm was having a Lavender Festival, complete with demos, foods, and tarot card readings.  The day started out a little gray and never really did improve, making it the only day on our trip where the weather was rather blah.  We spent several hours wandering among the flowers, learning how to propogate our lavender (we're going to try and make cuttings from ours in the garden) and about the 3 basic varieties in the states - English, French, and Spanish.  French is my favorite, but I like the "butterfly" like flowers on the Spanish variety.

Lavender Festival on Salt Spring Island

One our final night on Salt Spring, we decided to try a local favorite (and written up in Fodors, Wine Spectator, ect to name a few).  It was called House Piccolo.  It was amazing.   The first course (salad) had an amazing vinagrette (house speciality) that I'd love the recipe for, but they declined to share.  We next had crab cakes...amazing.  If I could have picked up the plate and licked the sauce (and wouldn't think ES would die from shame), I would have.  So good.  I had a seafood risotto and ES had salmon.  Both were amazing.  Dessert was a chocolate terrine for ES and a crepe with lingonberry sauce.   One of the best meals I've had for a really long time.  Made up for the crummy food (withholding names to protect the guilty....) we'd had to date on the island.  We were bemused by the $590 bottle of wine on the menu.  Our waiter called it "the lottery winner bottle."  We agreed.  

Dinner at House Piccolo

The next day we hopped about the ferry again and headed to Pender Island.  We took what we called a "peanut ferry."  It was very, very small.

Ferry to Pender Island

Pender Island was actually 2 islands, cut back in the 1920's by a barge to make a canal down the narrowest portion of the island.  The two smaller are joined by a 1 lane bridge.  South Pender was much more uninhabited.  We visited the farthest point south of the island (Gowlland Point) and headed to a local park to hike through the woods (Enchanted Forest Park).  We also visited the Mortimer Spit, close to the 1 lane bridge separating the islands before we headed back across the bridge and explored North Pender.

Gowlland Point

Enchanted Forest Park

Mortimer Spit and the 1-Lane Bridge

The sun came out after lunch and we took the opportunity to head to the 1 National Park on the island - at Roe Inlet and Roe Lake.

Roe Inlet

Roe Lake

We headed to our B&B for the night.  We found one online that purported amazing views and we weren't disappoint.  The views were amazing and 180 degrees of the Haro Straight.  

We decided on spur of the moment to head over to Vancouver Island the next day.  We'd been there before, but it was during the early months of spring when it wasn't quite time for flowers.  Therefore we'd missed Buchart Gardens last time.  We decided to head over for the day to see the blooms.  We weren't disappointed.  The flowers, smell, and overall gardens were amazing. We hopped on yet another ferry and headed over to Swartz Bay.

We headed back to Pender Island and had dinner at the Hope Bay Cafe (ended up eating there both nights).  Had some really yummy Fruit de Mer (night one) and Fish and Chips (night two).  ES had chicken and salmon, respectively.  Finished off with homemade mocha cake with chocolate ganache.  Yum. The view at the restaurant (literally hanging over the bay) was amazing.  

Hope Bay Cafe

We watched the sunset from our room and enjoyed the colors of the sky as they turned from blue to yellow to pink to black.  The stars came out in full force later in the evening.  Haven't seen such a view in a very long time. 

We headed home the day, and between getting to the ferry 1 hour early, a 2.5 hour ride, a 1+ hour wait at the border, it took a little over 11 hours to come 350 miles.  But worth every minute of it.  What a great trip.

"It was like our own episode of COPS, except I had my shirt on"

Direct quote taken from ES just hours after we'd had time to process our recent experience driving down the OR gorge highway.  We'd just come through some construction and traffic was reasonable heavy for this stretch of the highway.  We'd just moved to the left lane to pass and were heading around a curve.  I noticed multiple police caps on the side of the road and the next thing I hear is "what on earth...."

We both see the black strips down in the lane, but given the traffic to our right, we slowed as much as we could and were able to swerve to miss hitting the strip with the back tire.  However, the front wasn't so lucky.  As soon as we hit it, ES immediately noticed the "tire" light on the dash.  ES managed to get the car over to the side without too much trouble.   We'd just driven over a spike strip.

In the midst of standing outside the car, staring at the tire, and calling AAA, we saw a purplish flash.  Actually, we heard it before we saw it.  This, we surmised, was the actual target of the strip. Unfortunately, others had gotten pegged by the strip as well, their cars farther along the road than ours.  Flashers on and looking to change a tire (or two).

No sooner had I given AAA my info, when two deputies pulled up behind us.  They asked if we'd seen the strip and tried to get over.  Yes, we explained we'd seen it, but given its placement in the road and the amount of traffic, we weren't  able to safety avoid hitting it.  They'd apologized at that point and said they'd charge our tire.  Even pay for a replacement.  Fantastic, especially since neither ES or I had ever changed a tire on this car.  Took about 30 min and we were on our way.  As we pulled out and passed the other sorry folks who got caught up on the strip too, we also saw the purple flash.  Turned out this was a Dodge Charger which the deputies said was going in excess of 130 mph.  In other words, really, really fast.

The bottom line is...you can't just buy 1 tire.  Like other sets of things, they at least come in pairs.  For us, given our car is AWD, we had to replace all 4 given 2 new tires would still be out of tread depth with the two best remaining tires.  Sigh.   Plus they found damage to the rim in putting on the new tires.

Playing phone tag to get re-imbursed.  Hoping this will go smoothly and quickly.

Pokey Little Puppy

A friend recently came over to pick up a house key and get the run down of taking care of Oscar while we were gone over the Memorial Day holiday weekend.  In her arms was a mini Schnauzer.  I asked if she'd gotten a dog.  She said it had ran right up to her when she got out of her car.

The three of us knocked on neighbor's doors to no avail.  No one knew of the dog or her owner.  As luck would have it, however, ES came across a neighbor who is involved in the local animal rescue organization.

The dog didn't have a chip, but she said she'd had a network of people she could get the word out to as well as calling the local shelters.

We were glad that the dog, who was very sweet, had a place to go that knew already had to care/keep dogs.  Both my friend JH and myself/ES didn't have a way to keep the dog at the current time.

However, the more ES and I thought about it, we liked the idea of a dog.  She was so sweet and small enough that our lack of fence could be remedied by living the house and taking lots of walks.  We seriously considered keeping her if the owner couldn't be found.

This story had a happy ending, however. The owner was found the next morning.  He'd let the dog out off leash and she'd taken off.  She was from a neighborhood over so she'd wandered quite a bit to get to our house.

Little Greta (as we found out her name was) has given us pause to thought.  Perhaps a dog is soon in our future....