That’s some impressive moss you’ve got there, Latourell Falls.
A very clenched-teeth self portrait.
I liked how this view split the falls.
It’s Cosmic Tripster Round Two! We have pledged to take five years to finish this time, getting our final stamp sometime in 2021.
Today’s task was to visit Grand Lodge to get all their stamps. We’ve stayed at Grand Lodge before (40th Birthday Vacation) and I love it. They’ve recently renovated the Attic and opened more rooms, which I was excited to see.
Here’s the background of how the new rooms came to be named after books. The Lavender Lady (the ghost immortalized in paint on the second floor) had a hand in the naming.
I loved these quiet nooks and crannies, perfect for curling up and reading.
The hallways are dark and cavernous, which is fun too.
All the hotel locations give you a clue and then you must go find the McMenamins thing (usually a painting or photograph). Once found, you take a picture, then show the picture to the front desk and collect your stamp.
This month’s clue stumped us:
A quiet space, no place to go
Softly lit by the mushroom’s glow
No place to sit, not a toad stool in view
Come find me, find me all of you
(This clue is even better when read in a dramatic fashion.)
Most of the clues aren’t terribly hard. This one was. We started at the top and worked our way down to the bottom and nothing jumped out as the answer. I took a second look at the clue and decided it must be on the third floor, because the rooms were new and they wanted people to know about them, hence the “come find me” repetition. So back up we went.
Two more trips the length of the hallway and we hadn’t found what we were looking for. Thank goodness we overheard a kid say to his dad, “and here’s the other secret room…”
Secret room!!!!!!!!!!
The walls move! There is a secret stairwell!
The stairwell is Lord of the Rings-themed and lit with blacklight.
In this terrible picture, Matt poses with Gollum, who is painted on the door that comes out on the second floor.
Okay! That was very cool. But it didn’t fit our clue. From the kid’s “other” comment we knew there was a second secret room. But we had to find it. It was tough. We walked up and down the hallway, pushing on the walls.
And we found it!
This was a small closet, painted with mushrooms. It was very cool.
Having found what we were looking for we collected our last stamp and our prize. We both chose the grab bags and were rewarded with a growler cozy, a wine glass and two postcards.This was a very fun passport page to complete. Thanks, Grand Lodge.
We’ve made it to “E” in our Z-A quest to play all our games. This brings us to Eggs and Empires, a game I enjoy because it’s quick to learn, has a strategy, and also isn’t called Exit Empires, like I originally thought when Matt was first talking about it.
In this game, you play cards attempting to capture “good” eggs, and avoiding “bad” eggs. I killed Matt in this contest, making this one of my few wins in this project.
One of the things I love about the digital photo area is that you can take photos of the map to refer to later in the hike.
We chose to do the big hike, seeing the maximum number of waterfalls.
Matt poses before a graphic warning sign.
Here we are at Upper North Falls. 65 feet.
The view from behind the falls.
Lots of rain means lots of white water.
That mass of white behind us is a waterfall. It was powerful stuff.
Another view of the water. We’ve done this hike in the summer and it’s fun, but it was a totally different experience in the winter.
Drake Falls says hello. All 27 feet of it.
A double layer of falls. Also: look at all that moss!
Matt looks at the sign for Lower North Falls.
There was a very large amount of stairs near the end.
This was the first hike with my trekking poles and I was pleased with how well they worked for me.
Let’s see what the kids are up to in the 4-H building.
They’ve been growing things. (The beans are wizened because we were visiting at the end of the fair’s run.)
A nicely dramatic cloak and fancy dress.
A denim shirt I found to be quite impressive. There were a lot of places where crisp results are tricky (collar, placket, sleeves, buttonholes, pocket flaps) and Kadi navigated those well.
This was an amazing jacket. I was very impressed. Good job, Mylene.
Becca did an amazing job on this coat. Too bad it’s covering up Ms. Folgate’s dress.
I really love looking at these informational posters. Things have improved since I used to make them. It’s much easier to reproduce pictures and use fun fonts.
Here you can read bios of the 4-H State Ambassadors. (The bios were filled with typos, which was hard for me.)
Here’s an informational poster that looks more like the ones from my youth.
I can’t remember where Matt was, but for some reason we were in two different places. I found the robotics area and summoned him over because this was very fun.
I’d heard this and that about robotics competitions, but had never seen anything in real life. This wasn’t an actual competition, but I learned how once per year the rules/goals/objectives for the current contest are released and then high school students form teams and design their robots to meet the objectives of the contests.
In this case, they were supposed to have their machines grab balls, carry them and then get them through the gates of the castle. There were things to navigate around. There were also bonus points awarded if the machine could hang from the bar of the castle for a specified amount of time (20 seconds or so).
Setting things up for competition. I didn’t get any good pictures of the obstacles, but the machines had to make their way over teeter-totters and other such things.
The machines seemed to need a good amount of tinkering.
Getting ready for battle. This machine lowered the back half to grab the ball, and then the yellow cords pulled the ball in the the middle of the machine for transport.
The names of the teams were very fun.
An example of one of the robots hanging. We watched a few rounds of competition. Once they got going, it was very fast paced and exciting.
One of the many different puzzles available to solve.
Perhaps you need your own Dalek?
I worked for a long time to get all 8 blocks in the box and Matt solved it in no time at all.
Apparently when not farming, Glen and Ruth are making puzzles.
We were interested in attending the Motorsports Championship. On our way in, we found my favorite fundraiser of the fair. FFA was selling earplugs for a dollar each. We bought.
And here we are in another microcosm I know nothing about, the monster truck world. It’s a world where not only they make the very big trucks, but also have aliases and paint the names on the very big trucks. The announcer told us the Scarlet Bandit was a big winner.
Before she entered the arena, the Scarlet Bandit chatted with this man and child.
The announcer was in the arena while people were coming in, but his eventual seat was near us. I ascertained that the winners got some sort of champagne. That box thing was linked to the sound system. To sing the National Anthem, they plugged in a phone and hit play.
Each monster truck was introduced and drove around the ring before coming to stop. We had this guy, Time Flys. I liked his truck and how there was a picture of a monster truck on his grill.
Some trucking through the arena.
The announcer and his assistant. We had a group of giggly young teenage girls sitting a few rows back. At one point they all yelled his name (“Justin!!!!) together. He turned around, scanned the stands and then smiled and waved while they all giggled. I love teenage girls.
Thus follow many pictures of very big trucks. It was breathtaking to watch them fly off the jumps. The hydraulics were incredible. It was very loud. I wondered how much one of those trucks costs and how much gas they use.
And then there were these two. What was their deal? So many things I don’t know.
No part of this very large truck is touching the earth at this moment. What does it feel like to drive them?
There was a break with the big trucks and they brought in other cars so we took our leave. We had to wait and not be run over by any cars though.
So I got to take a picture of this kid, whose face was unfortunately a little too flooded with light. It’s times like these I wish I had a bigger camera.
Now let’s see what kinds of things people made for the fair.
Cake decorating is going through a phase of fondant-everything. Fondant is not my favorite thing, but it was fun to see what creative things people are doing with the fondant.
Maybe you need a high-heeled shoe cake?
Or perhaps a Fair-themed cake?
As usual, I enjoyed reading the judges comments in the table decorating contest.
Let’s go on a quilting spectacular. Because there were a lot of good quilts.
I like the colors, and the many patterns contained in one quilt.
T-shirt quilt! Maybe when I get my t-shirt quilt done (in approximately 10-15 years) I will enter it in the fair.
These people, (Matt included) were all taking a picture of a quilt, because you needed to look at the picture to see the person the quilt depicted.
It’s Nick Offerman, that guy from the TV show Parks & Recreation. I’m interested in why someone would go to all this trouble, but there must be a backstory. Also, the quilt in the background is also a winner! Great colors!
Another fun quilt. Amazing quilting and really good skulls.
A 9/11 quilt done in understated colors.
We watched the Art of Cake Decorating on the creative living stage. Not for long though. She was sculpting with fondant. Impressive, but not good to eat. That bust of a woman sitting on the table is actually a cake she made.
I enjoyed looking at this collection of tiny felted objects.
This next item was the most memorable thing at the fair this year.
Here were ladies partaking in a variety of work.
I loved this Steampunk outfit.
Those pleats! So much pressing!
I also was a fan of this dress that was made to wear to her daughter’s wedding. (Not enough to take a full-length picture of it, though. Sorry.)
One thing I enjoy about the Oregon State Fair is that they have puzzles to solve. People of all ages were trying their hand.
The fair is a good place to show off your license plate collection.
There were a lot of Legos for people to build with. I love that woman in the purple shirt who seems to be tired of waiting around at the Lego table.
There were also many Legos on display.
As a counterpart to the handwork women, we have the wood turners.
I was intrigued and repelled by this US flag made out of Army men by a youth. I guess that makes it art.