Jan 012010
 

This New Year just kind of rolled in quietly for me. My work schedule gets me up before 5 AM most days and it’s hard to break that ritual on my days off. I had New Years eve and today off this year but last night was sleeping on the couch by 9:30 pm. Amazingly I woke up at about a quarter to midnight and was able to wish my sweetie a Happy New Years and give him a kiss. It didn’t last long though. Listened to a bit of the requisite fireworks in the distance and watched the dropping of the ball in Time Square (the station said live but of course this was not the case). By 12:30 AM I was back in bed.

2009 was an interesting and historic year. Barack Hussein Obama II became the 44th president of the United States. Why, I don’t know and hopefully time and history will figure it out. He has been a total disappointment and I am sure a lot of the people that voted for him are asking themselves what they were thinking. His obsession with the nation crippling health insurance reform seems to have put the important issues like the economy, record high unemployment, the threat of terrorism and our current military activities on the side burner. The amount of money Mr. Obama has spent during his first year in office is uncompromisable. The $787,000,000,000 stimulus bill, which congress didn’t even read and most of which is still to be distributed has not been shown to do any good to our economy. Just lots of big business bail outs, many of which should have just been left to fail. I guess all that campaign money paid off.

We lost a lot of people this year. Some I will miss, some not so much. Walter Cronkite passed at 92, Karl Malden made it to 97. Paul Harvey left us at 90 and Ricardo Montalban at 88 years young. Farra Fawcett at 62 and Michael Jackson at 50 both died on the same day. No one really paid much attention to Farra’s death as Michael took the spotlight. Ed McMahon outlived Jonny Carson by a few years but he never showed up with my check from Publishers Clearing House. Patrick Swazy lost his battle with pancreatic cancer at age 57. Billy Mays died at 50, not from a bump on the head as a lot of people think, but from heart disease. And Ted Kennedy checked out at 77. Enough about him…..

Washington State suffered the loss of six police officers in only eight weeks. On November 1st, Officer Timothy Brenton with Seattle police was killed and his partner wounded as that sat in their patrol vehicles discussing a traffic stop. On November 29th, four Lakewood Police officers, Greg Richards, 42, Tina Griswold, 40, Ronald Owens, 37, and Mark Renninger, 39 were executed while sitting in a coffee shop working on their laptop computers. I was honored to attend the Memorial Service in Tacoma. On December 21st, two Pierce County deputies were shot while responding to a disturbance call. Deputy Kent Mundell died from his injuries on December 28th.

Some interesting sudden fame in 2009 included Susan Boyle’s beautiful singing voice. She amazed the world but the instant fame took it’s toll on her. Captain Chesley Sullenberger’s amazingly landed his jet in the water of the Hudson river saving all on board. Northwest flight 188 overshot Minneapolis airport while pilot Timothy Cheney and co-pilot Richard Cole claim they were discussing company schedules on their laptops and not asleep. And of course there is Bo the First Dog, a Portuguese water dog. I wonder if he could do a better job running the country than Obama.

As for my year, well it was not too bad. I traded in my old 5th wheel for a new Montana which was a very nice upgrade. We had a great boating year, we spending most of it at Detroit Lake and a great trip to Lake Billy Chinook. I purchased a new Dell Studio 16 XPS laptop (Christmas present to self) and i’m still working on getting it set up. My best friend got married in Bend, and I was honored to be his best man. And for the most part my health was good all year.

On the down side, I did lose a bit of my retirement savings due to the bad economy however by the end of the year most of it had rebounded. 2009 will not be the best year to look back on at my work. Our department had some public image problems and in the fall out we lost an officer, our Chief of Police and some officers were disciplined. We have finally hired a new Chief who will start soon so I hope things can get back to normal. On a good side note to all of this, our City Administrator was canned. It was about time for that as he handled this situation very badly.

All in all, 2009 has been an interesting year. A very tough one for the nation but I think there is hope on the horizon.

Oct 302009
 

I upgraded to WordPress 2.8.5 yesterday and I like the new interface. I did have a bit of a problem with the image uploads at first. I was getting an http error and did not have the option to create a thumbnail. The operation would upload the full size picture but would then hand with the word “crunching” in the status bar.

I finally located a fix after some time and now it is working. I had to add some code to the .htaccess file and away it went.

Here is a link to the page with the information for the fix.

Image Upload error fix.

Okay, now that’s taken care of, here are a few photos of our boat and Lake Billy Chinook. Lake Billy Chinook is located in central Oregon near Madras. It is in a deep canyon and fed by three rivers, The Metolius, The Crooked and The Deschutes.

The lake is surrounded by mostly public lands and the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. Lake Billy Chinook includes 72 miles of shoreline and a surface area of 4,000 acres. Its deepest point is 400 feet at Round Butte Dam. The reservoir stays full, or within one foot of full, from June 15-September 15th.

The boating is some of the best in the state (in my humble opinion). Even on busy weekends and holidays the lake is large enough to not be crowded. It does sometimes get a bit choppy in the afternoon as the wind picks up.

Launching the Chap

Launching the Chap

First day and getting the boat in the water.

Docked at The Island

Docked at The Island

There are a couple of Geocaches on the island that I found.

The old Laredo

The old Laredo

This is our old 5th wheel. These photos are from the 2008 trip.

Three Rivers Marina

Three Rivers Marina

Looking down on Three Rivers Marina. The road down to the marina is about a 1000 foot drop. The brakes really heat up on the boat trailer going down the hill.

Marina at Three Rivers

Marina at Three Rivers

Campground at Perry South

Campground at Perry South

Perry South Campground. It is a nice little campground. I hear it gets a little rowdy on some of the holidays.

Cove Palisade

Cove Palisade

The boat launch at Cove Palisades state park.

Lucky Brother in Arms

Lucky Brother in Arms

OSP (Oregon State Police) fish and game officer getting ready to launch. Now that is a job I would like.

Time to go....

Time to go....

All good things must come to an end. Time to pull the boat out and go home. Always too short.

Nov 022006
 

I got back from my little adventure with my friends Elk Hunting last Friday. I had a great time and the weather for the most part was good. The temperature dropped below freezing most nights but the days were great except for Tuesday. That day it did quickly get cold and even snowed for a bit. I got there on Monday and drove over in a caravan with four other guys. We had three vehicles one with a camper and cargo trailer, one with a truck and trailer and my 5th towed by my trusty F-250. We got on the road at 6am which is what we had planned but then we had some electrical problems with the lights on one of the guys rigs. We finally located the culprit fuse and after fueling up, got on our way.

Elk Camp

Elk Country Looking  SE

We stopped in The Dalles for breakfast and got to camp a little before noon. The first thing we did after setting up our camps was to go get firewood. As I said in my last post I have never been hunting before and when I go camping a few logs last me all night for a campfire so my friends idea of a fire was a little foreign to me. We collected about six cords of wood and as you can see from the photo the fires we had were a bit large but were sure nice for the cold nights. The other thing I found about these large fires was after we built them about sunset, they burned all night with very little attention.

Nightly Campfire

The season opened on Wednesday and I went out with the hunters. Duston, one of the guys in our group shot an Elk the first hour of the hunt. He named him Larry for some reason unknown to me. During the next few days I went out hunting with them each morning and a couple of time in the afternoon. We saw a lot of elk but no one was able to get a good shot at a legal “spike”, so Larry was the only one taken by our group. Our youngest hunter “AJ” did get a shot off and it is believed he hit the elk. Unfortunately it ran off and didn’t leave a blood trail. We looked for it most of the day but never found him.

Larry

Big Daddy

I spent the afternoon on Thursday driving around on the forest service roads of the area. It is some very beautiful country and I may have to go up there camping again sometime. My only complaint is that the roads are very wash boarded and it really bounces you around. When I first got up to camp and checked my 5th I found a lot of things bounced all over inside and a several loose screws.

Hunters

We all sure ate good up there. All of us had generators and one of the guys brought up his Treager Grill and we cooked on it most nights. I have a Treager which is a wood pellet grilling system and it is the best outdoor cooking grill I have ever owned. I don’t much care for cooking on gas or charcoal grills anymore.

I drove back on Friday but most of the guys stayed until Monday as the season closed on Sunday. I’m told they saw many more elk but still didn’t get another spike.

Elk hunting area map

Oct 222006
 

The fifth wheel is all cleaned and loaded. I have lots of extra propane, water and gas on board and plenty of eats. I am heading out tomorrow morning about 6am to go Elk Hunting with a friend from work and a couple of retired guys I use to work with. I’m not actually going to do any hunting, that’s just not that interesting to me although I have been giving some thought to trying bow hunting. I am just going for the camping and will probably tag a long a couple of times when they go out and try to take some photos.

We are going to the area out of Pilot Rock which I hear is very beautiful this time of year with the colors changing. I am prepared for the bad weather with two sets of chains for the Ford F-250 and a set for the 5th too. I am hoping for nice weather and so far it looks good but one of the guys who has been going for several years said it can get nasty. He said one year they went to bed with a couple of inches of snow on the ground and woke with about a foot and a half. They got out but had to stay a couple of extra days.

Rocky is not going with me, this is kind of a boys time out thing. I will be staying until next Saturday and hope to have some good photos which I will post when I get back. See ya then….

Sep 202006
 

Rocky and I just got back last Saturday from five great and relaxing days camping on the Metolius river. After I got back from Las Vegas we loaded up the RV and headed out to Candle Creek camp grounds. We actually didn’t stay in the camp grounds but at a site just outside the actual camping area. This is a little camp site I had seen on previous trips up there and it is much nicer than the ones in the camp grounds.Metolius Camp Site Rocky & Duke

Metolious River

It is more private, larger and has better access to the river and most important it is free. The little access road to get into it is a bit tricky to navigate with my 5th wheel but I managed to get in without any mishaps. I took my new Honda generator and put it to the test. It worked flawlessly and is so much quieter than my other cheep one. The fuel economy was amazing. I think we must have run it about 75 percent of the time we were there and only used about seven gallons of fuel.
Metolius River at our camp site

We took Duke of course and we were not there five minutes and he was totally covered with dirt. After about an hour his white fir was so grungy he just looked dull and he didn’t really seem that dirty anymore. His fir is so short and tight that you can just brush off any real thick dirt before he gets into the RV. Duke is turning out to be a very good traveling dog. He rides in the front of the truck and is fairly well behaved. I think he likes traveling.

We didn’t do to much other than lounge around and do some hiking around during the day. Rocky did drive into Sisters one afternoon and I took about a three hour drive around the area on the forest service roads. One afternoon I took Duke for a walk and we tried to cross over Candle Creek on a log. Duke slipped off the log and got stuck so I had to step into the creek to get him off. When I did he knocked me totally into the creek and I got soaked. All I could do was lay there and laugh. It was a bit cold but fortunately we were only about a quarter mile from camp and the sun was out.

Candle Creek CG

Well it was great fun and I am ready to go again. I am hoping to take the RV over to Central Oregon with some coworkers near the end of October when they go elk hunting. I don’t hunt but it will be a good excuse to go camping again. It should be interesting as they tell me the temperature often dips near zero degrees at night.

Jul 302006
 

I had lunch with a friend last Friday who is one of the few people that read my blog. He mentioned that I had never delivered on part two of RV’n in LaPine. Well the temperature is much cooler so I can’t use the weather as an excuse so here it is.

* * * * * * *

Friday my partner went into Bend with a couple of the girls to do some shopping. He’s a power shopper and I bet he wore them out. I went for a motorcycle ride and also went to Bend. I got a killer deal on a shirt and hat at an outlet store. Main reason I went into Bend was to look at a RV park I had seen on Wednesday when I was in town with the *M’s*. Friday afternoon the *I’s* arrived with their son and daughter.

Friday night we had a get together here at our camp which was very interesting. We got a little loud but only got one warning from the park Ranger. The bastards burned up half of my wood which was suppose to last for two weeks. Everyone got rather intoxicated and this lead to a lot of drama.
Continue reading »

Jul 162006
 

I wanted to post this a few days ago but wasn’t able to get connected to the camp hosts Wi-Fi setup. We just got home so I thought I would get this up. More to come..

RV in Site 21

I didn’t think I was going to be able to post before we got back from camping here in LaPine but one of the hosts has satellite internet on Wi-Fi and said I could use it. We came over on the 4th with three other families from work. For the purposes of this blog I will call them the M’s the C’s and the K’s. Their names have been changed to protect the guilty. C’s father also came over and on Friday the I’s came over. All of these families have kids so in total we had 20 people here: eleven adults and nine children. That’s quite a crew.

By now they have all returned to civility and we are here with just the other quite campers and the Chipmunks, but during the time they were here life was very interesting if not somewhat dramatic. Getting a bunch of cops and a fireman together, especially away from the work environment can be very interesting. Both jobs can be quite stressful as you can imagine and when we get in an environment where we can let loose sometimes things get a little weird.

I have know and worked with most of these people for almost twenty years so we are very comfortable together. I don’t know the guy from the fire department very well as I just met him recently. His future wife work for us and was just recently hired so that’s how they became part of the crew.

All of us from the PD had to work on the 4th and so after our shift we drove over together. We didn’t get in until late in the evening so night one was fairly quiet. It was a good drive over with very little traffic. After everyone got set up we all gathered (except the kids) at our place. We had eight people in our RV which is the largest group we have had here yet. Plenty of room though. I think everyone is envious of us as our rig is by far the nicest and most spacious. Sorry, just a little bragging rights here….

The next day was kind of a supply day. I went into Bend with the M’s to shop for food and other supplies and after we got back to camp I went into Sunriver with the officer C to get my bicycle tire repaired and so he could do some shopping. Later that night after dinner (I made a crab salad) we had a fire as well as the K’s. Everyone just kind of floated back and forth between the two camps.

Thursday the everyone kind of split up to do their own things. The C’s and K’s took off on their ATV’s and motorcycle to do some riding. My partner, *C* his dad went into Bend where C’s dad traded in his old boat and bought a new one. I’m not sure what everyone else did but I suspect they went into Bend I went for a little ride on my Honda Shadow. Earlier I repositioned the 5th wheel with the help of C’s wife so I could get the awning extended. There was a tree in the way so I had to angle the RV.

We all had reservations to eat dinner at this place out in the middle of nowhere called the Cowboy Dinner Tree. It is about fifty miles southeast of here near Silver Lake. Our reservations were for 5pm but *C* and his dad didn’t get back from Bend until almost 4pm. We quickly loaded up into three vehicles and after driving just a little over the posted speed limit, arrived at exactly 5pm.

The Cowboy Dinner Tree

The dinner there was great and the atmosphere very interesting. Dinner consisted of either a whole chicken or a steak which was more like a roast. First they served a salad with choice of ranch or honey mustard dressing. Then these wonderful hot rolls baked in a pie tin. Next they brought out two kinds of what they call soup but was more of a stew. One is a beef stew and the other they call cowboy bean. I had the beef stew but other people said the bean was very good. Finally they brought out the steaks and chicken with a baked potato. By then you are already quit full but I managed to eat a few bites of my steak (the remainder was consumed over the next couple of days). The drive back was much more relaxed and at a reasonable speed.

No camp fire or get togethers after dinner tonight and everyone just kind of went back to their camps and to bed early. We stayed up and watch TV until about midnight. I think everyone was kind of burned out after the drive and large dinner.

** Next the night of drama **

Jul 012006
 

I have been busy the last few days getting ready for our now annual 4th of July camping, well actually RV’ing trip to LaPine. We have been going for a few years to the State Park. At first we set up a tent then we stayed in their little cabins, and now after getting the 5th wheel last year we stay in it. Last year was the first time we went over on the 4th of July but now we are making it an annual event.

Some other people I work with are coming over, there will be three other families there. It should prove to be an interesting time. Getting four cops (and families) together camping can be dangerous. I have heard many horror stories over the years, exaggerated to some extent I’m sure.

LiPine State Park is in central Oregon on the Deschutes river a few miles south of Bend. From there the possibilities are endless. Miles of trails for hiking and biking, Mt. Bachelor for skiing in the winter and there are hundreds of lakes for what ever is your pleasure.

I have to work on the 4th so I wont get out of town until about 5pm. Two of the other guys work too so we are all meeting up about 5pm and driving over together. Fun Times……