crater lake: so pretty

There's not really, strictly speaking, all that much to *do* at Crater Lake, other than drive around and talk about how pretty it is. So that's what Kay Ray and I did. We stopped at almost every scenic overlook on the road that goes around the rim. That thing everyone says about Crater Lake, about how it's really pretty? That thing is true. Behold.

My first view of the lake:

Check it out, snow:

Freakishly pretty, see?

I think they were closing a bunch of roads the next day for the season. There weren't many people there, although this car kept following us:

Kay Ray figured out how we could take a picture of our feet with the lake. Note that I had changed into my hard-core hiking boots for this 1/2 mile walk, because dang it, I had carried them all the way to Oregon and they were going to get some use:

I was amused by these preparations for the winter. I'm familiar with the poles at the side of the road, I assume to guide the plow, but this was the first time I'd seen a bathroom with its own snow shed entrance thing.

new crafty obsession

Before I went out to Oregon, I decided I wanted Kay Ray to teach me how to knit. She was actually re-teaching me - my grandma taught me about 20 years ago, but I'd never learned how to cast on or actually made a project or anything, just kinda practiced with needles and yarn. So on the Friday I was there, on her lunch break, we went to this super-cute yarn store near her house and picked out yarn for me (she had needles I could borrow).

First I did a bit of practice knitting, which was semi-successful, on this random yarn Kay Ray had left over from something else:


Then, I started on my real project. Kay Ray cast on the first couple of stitches, I did the rest, and then I knitted and knitted and knitted and knitted. I knitted as we watched most of the Lord of the Rings movies (extended editions) on her apartment. I knitted in the car going to Crater Lake. I even knitted *at* Crater Lake, when I got cold waiting for Kay Ray to finish taking a picture:


And Sunday night, I finished the dang thing! It's a totally cute scarf! And I am so hooked! And ready to start something new!

mmmm, white food

I mentioned my stupid stomach? This is the kind of thing I ate while I was in Oregon:

Saturday night we went to the house of one of Kay Ray's friends, who is a fabulous cook and made beautiful food for everyone. Including some special boiled starches just for me. Sigh. (I'm back on normal food now, pretty much.)

feet by request

Ok, J.Bro, since you asked:


The only picture of Kay Ray's and my feet from the maze is this action shot. (That's me on the right.)

fall fun

This weekend I went to Oregon to visit Kay Ray. We had a four-day weekend at work, so I left Thursday afternoon and got home Monday afternoon. So, it was a lot of travel for three days in Oregon, but they were three nice days!

On Saturday we went to look at nature and to visit...a corn maze!! They don't really grow corn in this area, but someone thought it was worthwhile to grow it for the purposes of charging people to go through it. I took this picture from a bridge thing in the middle of the maze:


The bridge had one of those orange tube slides going down from it. Here's Kay Ray:


Also featured at this autumnal wonderland: pumpkin cannons. It was $2.50 a shot, which hardly seemed worth it to participate (since it would take a few shots just to figure out the aim), but it turned out to be a great spectator sport:


The right-hand cannon just shot out a pumpkin. It's the speck above that one guy's head, right at the tree line. Lesson of the day: pumpkins aren't very aerodynamic. And it was real windy.