OOh what a fun weekend!!!
C planned a surprise birthday getaway trip for me. Of course, he told me about it before we went, so it wasn't a total surprise, but he planned it for me. For months. How cool is that?
The plan was that we went to spend the weekend with my best friend from college and her guy in their house in northern Oregon, just south of Hood River. We took the boat and played all day on the Columbia between The Dalles and Bonneville Dams Saturday and Sunday.
Saturday was a perfect day! We found two really cool beaches. We beached the boat for the first time. We swam and boated and C fished. We sun bathed and snacked and drank boatloads (!) of propel water.... Saturday evening we had a delicious, if somewhat sandy, bbq on the beach (which we named Bass Beach because C caught a small mouth bass off the back of the boat there). It was gorgeous.
We were put up at the house next door to my friends', owned by a Portland couple who lets my friends use it as a guest house in return for watching it. Very comfy, very convenient, and completely free accommodations always ROCK.
Sunday we had quite an adventure trying to get "the" bait that all the salmon were allegedly biting. After finally aquiring "the" bait, we deployed the anchor for the first time and fished for a little while. Saw salmon jumping all around us at the mouth of the Klickitat River, and other boats were catching... We got one nibble and that's it. The waves got big then and we moved on... missed out on Bass Beach by less than 2 minutes because we stopped to lollygag at another beach and a boat we had passed zoomed in and took it. (Too small for two boats.) We then found another beach, on the WA side, and had just set up all our fishing stuff on the beach when some woman came up and told me it was private property and we'd have to leave. I looked around and said, It's not posted - we couldn't know. To which she replied, "well now you do. you'll have to go." These were blonde people, ok? [Not a slur against blondes - I mean she wasn't native.] It was adjacent to the railroad tracks. None of us believed her. So we stayed at our anchor for a while in the river (which is not privately owned by anyone). She called her husband to come chase us away. It was ridiculous.
That put a bad taste in our mouths. Then we went to another beach and goofed around and then we tried to fish again at the Klickitat, where others were still catching, but the chop was huge. The river was filled with kite boarders. That looks SO fun and SO scary, but it is gorgeous to watch them all...
My friend has a cat. We played with her cat at the house and C said he wanted to get cats for my birthday present. That was a surprise because we had just agreed not to... Then we talked about when, and we have so much travel planned thru April that there is not a good window until after then to get kittens. Maybe we could get older cats before then, but kittens need so much supervision... So some cats might be in the works. We're getting a pair and we're naming them (if the names fit - subject to confirmation of the actual cat identities) Godzilla and the Green Manalishi. (Also like the name Lakshmi...)
Our drive to Oregon was miserable. Hit Seattle and Tacoma traffic and then got stopped for TWO WHOLE HOURS just north of Vancouver due to some poorly managed road cosntruction project. The drive home was perfect and speedy. Dropping the boat off at the yard was even easier this time. We're getting a routine.
It was so fun to have friends on the boat, so fun to see my bf from college and her guy (C and he get along really well!), and so cool to have had a trip planned by my husband for my birthday.
How cool!
I'm feeling the love, and I am grateful.
The plan was that we went to spend the weekend with my best friend from college and her guy in their house in northern Oregon, just south of Hood River. We took the boat and played all day on the Columbia between The Dalles and Bonneville Dams Saturday and Sunday.
Saturday was a perfect day! We found two really cool beaches. We beached the boat for the first time. We swam and boated and C fished. We sun bathed and snacked and drank boatloads (!) of propel water.... Saturday evening we had a delicious, if somewhat sandy, bbq on the beach (which we named Bass Beach because C caught a small mouth bass off the back of the boat there). It was gorgeous.
We were put up at the house next door to my friends', owned by a Portland couple who lets my friends use it as a guest house in return for watching it. Very comfy, very convenient, and completely free accommodations always ROCK.
Sunday we had quite an adventure trying to get "the" bait that all the salmon were allegedly biting. After finally aquiring "the" bait, we deployed the anchor for the first time and fished for a little while. Saw salmon jumping all around us at the mouth of the Klickitat River, and other boats were catching... We got one nibble and that's it. The waves got big then and we moved on... missed out on Bass Beach by less than 2 minutes because we stopped to lollygag at another beach and a boat we had passed zoomed in and took it. (Too small for two boats.) We then found another beach, on the WA side, and had just set up all our fishing stuff on the beach when some woman came up and told me it was private property and we'd have to leave. I looked around and said, It's not posted - we couldn't know. To which she replied, "well now you do. you'll have to go." These were blonde people, ok? [Not a slur against blondes - I mean she wasn't native.] It was adjacent to the railroad tracks. None of us believed her. So we stayed at our anchor for a while in the river (which is not privately owned by anyone). She called her husband to come chase us away. It was ridiculous.
That put a bad taste in our mouths. Then we went to another beach and goofed around and then we tried to fish again at the Klickitat, where others were still catching, but the chop was huge. The river was filled with kite boarders. That looks SO fun and SO scary, but it is gorgeous to watch them all...
My friend has a cat. We played with her cat at the house and C said he wanted to get cats for my birthday present. That was a surprise because we had just agreed not to... Then we talked about when, and we have so much travel planned thru April that there is not a good window until after then to get kittens. Maybe we could get older cats before then, but kittens need so much supervision... So some cats might be in the works. We're getting a pair and we're naming them (if the names fit - subject to confirmation of the actual cat identities) Godzilla and the Green Manalishi. (Also like the name Lakshmi...)
Our drive to Oregon was miserable. Hit Seattle and Tacoma traffic and then got stopped for TWO WHOLE HOURS just north of Vancouver due to some poorly managed road cosntruction project. The drive home was perfect and speedy. Dropping the boat off at the yard was even easier this time. We're getting a routine.
It was so fun to have friends on the boat, so fun to see my bf from college and her guy (C and he get along really well!), and so cool to have had a trip planned by my husband for my birthday.
How cool!
I'm feeling the love, and I am grateful.