May 2003
It's been a soggy few weeks here at the base of Mt. Hood. Rather than a heavy rain, we get a "misting" practically every day. This is not a problem though since we've been working hard getting ready for summer classes and workshops.
We hear that the Mt Hood volcano is scheduled to erupt over the next 20-50 years. Hopefully we'll be gone before it starts rumbling.
We're hoping to get out for a couple hikes before we leave. There are supposed to be some great waterfalls in the area this time of year. You'll notice that the mountain is still filled with snow. Many of the back roads are still closed because of deep snow that lasts until mid summer.
April 2003
It's
been a wild month for weather. We started with the heat of Utah and ended
with soggy Oregon. The advantage of all the rain here in Welches OR is
that the wildflowers are beautiful.
We've only had a couple days without rain. We took a morning and photographed Mt Hood and some deep woods trillium near the Lost Creek trail in Mt Hood National Forest.
April 2003
We've
had the strangest spring! We decided to stay in Verdi NV on the California/Nevada
border near Reno through Easter to get some work done. This is a busy
time of the semester with lots of student projects rolling in. The first
few days it was nice and warm. Then, we were hit by a huge snowstorm!
Needless to say, we haven't taken the bikes out this week!
We made chili and enjoyed being snowed in. Annette even got caught up with grading.
On the other hand, Larry had to go outside periodically and clean off the satellite dish so we could keep our Internet connection.
April 2003
For all of you who have been jealous of our lifestyle, I thought you'd enjoy seeing what happened to us on our way to across Nevada. We were on Highway 50 known as the "loneliest highway in America" from Stephen King novels. All of a sudden our motorhome died on the way up to Pinto Summit. Because we have an electronic transmission and we couldn't get it into neutral, we couldn't even get off the road. On the other hand, no one else was on the road, so it's didn't matter too much. We sat there three hours waiting for the tow truck. Luckily I have two batteries for my laptop, so I got some work done!
We were towed 150 miles to Elko, NV to have our alternator replaced. Oh well, that's "life on the road"... luckily there's cell phone access along the highway and our road insurance covered our tow bill. Below you'll see a photo of our "dead motorhome." We took our jeep down the hill to warn the "heavy traffic" about our breakdown.
March
2003
With our webserver problems, we were VERY stressed the weekend of March 22. Once we got the new website built, all we could do is wait until it propagated throughout the web. In other words, it takes 24 to 48 hours for the world to see a webserver after it has been moved. You can only take so many hours of staring at the "FILE NOT FOUND" message, so we decided it was time to take a break.
Here are a few photos from our day at "The Wave". This is a wilderness area on the Utah-Arizona border. Only 20 people are allowed to visit the area each day. It's almost 8 miles round trip, but well worth the hike.
