ROAD TRIP! Oregon! Jewell! Mist! Natal! Fishawk Falls & Cemetery.

For a family with a handicap and two small kids, we get out more than families who are healthy and have no kids - of course.....if you had a handicap and 2 small kids you'd be climbing the wall to get out of the house too!

So, if you aren't so inclined to go running off like I do, you can live vicariously through me for now as I share some more photos from around the wet northwest.

Went for a drive, and on highway 26 there's a viewpoint on your way out to the coast.  As I saw it, I've driven by it a million times, but it cracked me up.  It's pouring rain, and YES - it DOES RAIN here like it's advertised - you will get a steady drizzle for WEEKS on end and can literally go well over a month without seeing blue skies.  But there's a viewpoint.  And it's grey.  It's wet.  And it's of wet trees.  I even snapped a picture of the sign to prove it's a viewpoint.  Of course this is not ANY OTHER SIGN in the U.S.

Quite the view, eh?  Rain.  Trees.  Clouds.  And the camera brightens the clouds.  There's NO WAY it's that bright here. Go about 2 shades darker and you'll get it.

Here's some logging....it's what we do in Oregon.  The two generations of my family that weren't in the military were loggers and cut down the original big old growth trees that cluttered up the landscape here so we could turn it into farmland.

And this is some farmland out by Mist Oregon

Just a wet forest path going up to Fishhawk Falls.  I found the place just driving back from Astoria to Vernonia the back way and saw a road and just took a right and all of a sudden there was a MASSIVE waterfall in front of us.  The photos I took don't do it justice but its pretty big when you get down there.

Wet Forest and Oregon Grey Skies

I was unable to get a photo that captured the size of the falls so this will have to do.  Multnomah Falls is bigger though...of course....only the largest waterfall this side of whatever they say when you get there.  But this one has less tourists....

This is a one-room school house from 1902 in Natal Oregon.  There are actually a lot of these and some still in use in some areas, though the tendency to home-school seems pretty strong here in Oregon (to fight the commie  socialist brainwashing that goes on in public education).  I took a photo of the inside but it didn't come out well through the window.  I've been in many of these now and they all have a picture of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington in them which is just interesting to me.  Today you'd think they were the public enemy and are forbidden to be discussed.....

This is Fishhawk Lake.....

And a sinkhole or glory hole as I'm told though I can only imagine what kind of hits my blogs going to get for putting that word in here....

Far up a forest road was Fishhawk Cemetery.  I examined all the headstones.  The most recent was a Vietnam veteran who passed in December 2009, but the earliest I could find was 1873.  The Cemetery had a lot of room in it though.  It was well kempt for being so isolated and far up in the mountains.  Where we were the town populations weren't even 20 and would have a convenience store and that's about it....there really isn't anything here in Oregon once you get outside Portland.  You'll get lost and wander back into the 1800's - I'd say 1700's but there'd be natives running around then and we don't have that anymore here.  Though the reservation land is quite interesting to visit, I'll have to post that another time.

And this was just some local very wet flora but no fauna.  The woods were alive with birds but I did have to crack off two shots with my super .38 1911 and....you'd think it'd be quiet after that and everything would shush...but no.  Scrub jays just yapping away....