It Like It Might Be Official

Two things happened this week that make the move look like it is official. First, we had to renew the tags on the car. The Missouri tags expired in February so we had to title and tag in Oregon.

Second, it looks like we may have sold out house. We have a contract that we have agreed to and the buyer has agreed to. It is less than we wanted to take but it may be as good as it gets. The only issue concerns the roof but we have agreed to the resolution on that as well. The relocation company just needs to sign off on it and we don't see any reasons why they won't. We will know for sure by the end of the week. They want to take position on April 7th.

We have begun the search for a new house in earnest. We are in the apartment until May 1st so we have some time. We have seen several houses that look pretty good from the outside. There are a lot of good options so we shouldn't have a problem finding a new home.

Grandma Marcell and Zoey's New Tricks

My mother is doing okay and will probably go home this week. She has some vision loss and double vision. They expect that her brain will adjust and she will be able to compensate for the loss. She cannot read very well but she does try. She is now using a walker to get around and doing pretty well. She was very unstable earlier in the week but is much better now. She wants to go home now but understands she cannot until she is fully evaluated. She left Stormont Vail Hospital on Wednesday morning and went to the Kansas Rehabilition Hospital. She is there until she goes home. You can call her and she can talk very well now. I don't really notice any speech deficit at this point. Her phone number is 785-235-6600 and her room number is 211.

Since I was in KC and Topeka visiting my mom, I was able to visit Becky's family, Gabe's family and Nellie. Nellie was at the house on Thursday night I took the videos below of Zoey and her new tricks.

 

Mom's Version or Our Hiking Adventures

I think this picture might show better how steep the side of the mountain was at this point.You can see it pretty much drops straight down. What you can't see is the bottom about 400 feet below. Yikes! It wasn't scarey at the time but I dreamt about it that night. And in my dream I fell. Luckily it was only a dream and I woke up.

I am not such a daredevil either. Saturday where we crossed the stream on the log looked like you could stand up in the stream if you fell. The water was rushing pretty fast but there was a lot of debris in the water too. If I had really thought I might go over the edge of the falls I wouldn't have gone across. Also, we were quite aways from the falls.

When Dad slipped on the edge of the trail he was about 30 maybe 50 feet up not 100. He probably would have broken something but probably been okay otherwise. I still could have slapped him silly though. He scared me!

Where Does Water Go When It Falls?

The last two weekends we have gone to the Columbia River Gorge for hiking and viewing of the many waterfalls in the area. Last week we went to Eagle Creek Trail. It was fantastic. We hiked about 5 miles in total and saw three different waterfalls. The trail goes much further but we were running out of time. Dad carried the backpack and it was pretty heavy for a day hike, about 40 pounds. We need to get used to carrying the back packs for when we go on longer hikes or begin actual backpacking and camping. The trail was very muddy as it had been raining for weeks but had stopped raining on Friday. Initially we weren't going to go as they had forecasted rain. We drove over and since it didn't look like rain, we decided to go ahead and hike. After hiking for a short while, we came to an area where it was a straight drop down to the river and the trail was very narrow. There was a steel cable to hold onto. The footing was a little loose but we went ahead anyway. This is something that would normally scare mom to death but we went ahead regardless. The water was coming over the top and getting us wet, while we held onto the cable, in the mud and loose footing. For the section we were on, the elevation went up approximately 400 feet over the course of our hike.

Since we had the backpack, we took the peak stove and made beef stir fry from one of the freeze dried meals that mom got for dad for Christmas. It was so good. We found a secluded spot, overlooking a waterfall, and boiled our water. It took so long to cool that we didn't eat it all until about 30 minutes later.

Once we hiked beyond the cable area, the mud basically went away and gave way to rocks so the hiking was much cleaner from that point on. We kept going until we reached Punchbowl Falls. It was very impressive. We first hiked to the bottom, that was the easy part. When we went to hike back up, we weren't sure we were going to make it. (We did). We ate the rest of our lunch at the bottom so we had extra energy to hike back up.

On the way, we found a little snow, not much, but a little. This was the only snow we saw all day.

We have decided to get a day pack to take on the shorter hikes and then mom can carry it on longer hikes while dad uses the backpack. We had a great time and were totally worn out when the day was done. We slept very well that night.

The next weekend, we were going to go back and hike more of the same trail. Dad had been in Denver on Thursday and Friday and didn't get back until very late on Friday. We slept in a bit. It was supposed to not be raining but it was. We waited to see if it would clear and finally decided to go anyway. It basically drizzled all day. We wanted to go to Larch Mountain and hike but we couldn't get there. We drove up the mountain road for several miles but finllay, the road was closed due to snow. We decided to go back down and just do the waterfall route. We started at Latourell Falls and hiked two to three miles on it in the drizzel. It was great.

We took a daredevil shortcut across the raging river. Supprisingly, mom wanted to go across the log below with little to nothing to hold onto. If we fell in, and couldn't get out quickly, we would end up going over the falls. As stated earlier, it was raining and the log was kind of slick. There wasn't much to hold onto. We went anyway. It was very thrilling!

We then drove to the next falls, Shepherds Dell. We took several photos but the video is the best to show this falls. There wasn't much of a trail on this one, it was just a couple hundred feet. Mom is so cute in the photo so it had to be included as well.

From here we headed to Bridal Veil Falls. We hiked a couple of miles here. The first hike was to the falls and back and then we hiked to an overlook of the Columbia River. It was pretty foggy by the time we got to the river but this was a pretty good shot.

The next stop is Wahkeena Falls. It is very close to Multnomah Falls (the biggest of all) so we hiked from Wahkeena to Multnomah. We had a close call on the way back. Dad was in front of mom and got a little too close to the edge and the dirt gave way. We were about a hunderd feet above the road. He didn't fall but it was scary! Wahkeena is a great fall and Multnomah is the best known because of it's height and easy access. We got a little wet at Multonomah!

From there we headed to Horsetail Falls and ended there. Dad had hurt his ankle earlier and it was getting sore so we decided to stop after this. He took it out the window. We didn't even get out of the car!

All we had for lunch was a bag of trail mix so we decided to splurge and go to McGrath's Fish House for dinner. We ate lots of crab and shrimp. It was soooo good and we slept so well.

We love and miss all of you.