Monday, January 26, 2009

Winter Drawing From the River House Log


Drawing by Adrienne Vincent
Christmas 2003

Green River

We're back from a quick weekend at the River House, and happy to report all is well. We spent Friday night eating pizza and watching movies. I'm happy to report that we spent both mornings in bed watching cartoons, eating cereal, and drinking tea.
On Saturday afternoon, Liz and Jeff joined us, along with Jeff's sweet old dog, Kai. It was weird not to have Wilson there with us - click-clacking across the hard wood floors and barking at the ice maker - so when Kai showed up, things felt more homey. Jeff was happy to visit for his first time, but disappointed that my dad wasn't there to fish with him. We all seconded that, except not in terms of fishing.

The river was clear as can be, green and lush like it is during the summer. You could tell the water had gone up quite a bit and then gone back down. We spent a lot of time staring at the river, and Jeff spent several hours fishing, but no fish were sighted.

This is a close-up of the log jam upstream. You can tell the water was up many, many more feet than it is now by the way all of the logs and debris were deposited up in the trees.

There was one casualty - A tree branch. More than just a branch, though. If you look at the tree from which the branch fell, you can see that the portion lying on the ground was about half of the tree branches. We left it there, not sure what Dad wanted to do with it. It didn't seem to be posing a problem, plus I'm a wuss for doing laborious things near the cliff.

Well, that's the report! Until next time...

Monday, January 19, 2009

Stairs Movie

There has been a fair amount of flooding in the Tillamook area recently, and none of us will be out to check on the house until this weekend when Val and I go. We're not super concerned because the house in on solid rock at the top of a tall canyon area of the river.

According to Dad and history, there are two things that flooding could impact. The first is the culvert across the highway, which could cause water to channel into the house. That is unlikely, but we'll still check it when we're there for debris. The second thing is the stairs - Flooding could cause the stairs to float away.

This makes me think back to the building of the last set of stairs, a joint project of Sam, Val, Sara, and Matthew, which inspired me to make a short movie of the endeavor. Enjoy, and more to come after we visit the house next weekend.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Snow at the River

With snow on the valley floor, the whole fam damily opted out of driving out to the River House for Christmas (observed) and instead stayed in Corvallis. Given the weather conditions, it was still necessary to check on the house - Make sure the pipes haven't frozen, the water system is working, etc. Sam drove there, his truck clad in chains, December 18 and returned the 19th with reports and photos of a winter wonderland at the Wilson River, plus no damage to the house to boot. He snapped these photos while there.









Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Christmas Weekend 2007

Bow-heads & Christmas Dinner








Shiny-faced River Daughters & Fishing Sam













Birthday party! For whom...? Gifts & River







This is what the river looks like in December.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Memorial Day Weekend

Hike to clear-cut across the street













Beaver Swimming in the River








Wilson being bathed after rolling in something disgusting on the hike


The cast of characters:

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Swinging by the River on Spring Break

Beware! (click to enlarge) Posted by Hello

originally posted March 22

Wilson poses (ferociously) by the "beware of dog" sign.

I spent Monday night at the River with Dad and Wilson. The weather was pretty nice, although there was some intermittent rain. We watched a couple of movies, made good food, and put together this blog while we were there. Also split up the bulbs of some plants in a bed along the river side of the garage, some of which I got to take home for outside planters.