Along the way, we stopped at the Bonneville Dam and also the Fish Hatchery.
Friday, July 31, 2015
Road Trip Home, Part 2
We drove up the Columbia River Gorge. So beautiful!
Along the way, we stopped at the Bonneville Dam and also the Fish Hatchery.
Along the way, we stopped at the Bonneville Dam and also the Fish Hatchery.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Road Trip Home, Part 1
I picked up my Mom for a road trip from Oregon to the Great Northwoods on a Sunday afternoon at the train station in Vancouver, WA. (I was staying south of Portland, OR, but my Mom figured that Vancouver would be easier for me to negotiate, so went there. She was probably right, though I think I could have managed to find a train station in Portland, too.)
Anyway, the train track from the south into Vancouver comes over a swing bridge. That means it turns the track sideways to let vessels use the river freely, and then turns it 180 degrees when the train is coming to use it.
Pictures? Of course!
There's something wonderful about a good train station, a quiet excitement, maybe. I wish we'd put more money into encouraging people to commute by train, into high speed rail, and so on. (But there are areas where that's not practical because of the distances, I realize.)
I read an article recently arguing that we should turn the Interstate Highway system over to states, and encourage them to make toll roads and such so that people will commute by train or carpool instead. It read like the author hadn't ever seen the Midwest. I hate toll roads. I grew up in an area dominated by bridge traffic, and there's always a snarl. And the snarl is multiplied by the toll booths. Why would you add them just to add them?
How about, instead, we raise income taxes progressively and use the money for infrastructure, including, where possible, high speed rail? If people can get from point A to point B in half an hour by train instead of three hours by car, and they can afford it, and it runs at the times they need to commute, they'll take the train. (And the system needs to be designed so that it doesn't punish people who work night shifts.)
Enough ranting about transportation.
We drove up the Columbia River Gorge. My dog, but that's a beautiful area! More on that, tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I'm known as "The U Turn Queen." Mostly by myself. I just seem to need to make U turns fairly often. So I noticed when I saw this airplane contrail of a U turn! I wonder what that was about?
Anyway, the train track from the south into Vancouver comes over a swing bridge. That means it turns the track sideways to let vessels use the river freely, and then turns it 180 degrees when the train is coming to use it.
Pictures? Of course!
There's something wonderful about a good train station, a quiet excitement, maybe. I wish we'd put more money into encouraging people to commute by train, into high speed rail, and so on. (But there are areas where that's not practical because of the distances, I realize.)
I read an article recently arguing that we should turn the Interstate Highway system over to states, and encourage them to make toll roads and such so that people will commute by train or carpool instead. It read like the author hadn't ever seen the Midwest. I hate toll roads. I grew up in an area dominated by bridge traffic, and there's always a snarl. And the snarl is multiplied by the toll booths. Why would you add them just to add them?
How about, instead, we raise income taxes progressively and use the money for infrastructure, including, where possible, high speed rail? If people can get from point A to point B in half an hour by train instead of three hours by car, and they can afford it, and it runs at the times they need to commute, they'll take the train. (And the system needs to be designed so that it doesn't punish people who work night shifts.)
Enough ranting about transportation.
We drove up the Columbia River Gorge. My dog, but that's a beautiful area! More on that, tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I'm known as "The U Turn Queen." Mostly by myself. I just seem to need to make U turns fairly often. So I noticed when I saw this airplane contrail of a U turn! I wonder what that was about?
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Peace Corps Reunion
The primary reason for my trip across country was to go to my Peace Corps reunion. Entering groups in the Peace Corps get an Omnibus number. So, there will be a designation for people based on the country, and the omnibus number, and the job type. Ours was a forestry omnibus, and we entered training in Miami with a healthcare group and a special education group, all headed for the same country. We spent a week in Miami, and then flew to our country in South America. In Miami, we were all together, but in country, our training was by group. The forestry folks had our first seven weeks of language and cultural training at the local YMCA (which you don't spell out in Spanish, but pronounce with the Y making an I sound). During these first seven weeks, we mostly went to YMCA early in the morning, had language and cultural training all day, with occasional field trips on buses to the market or whatever, and then went back to our host families in the late afternoon. We had one weekend where we were sent to visit another volunteer in Forestry at their site.
After the seven weeks, we were sent down to our future site for a week (or maybe two?). My site was six hours by bus from the capital, and during the week, I stayed with my counterpart's family.
And then we had seven more weeks of job type training to teach us the specifics of what we needed to know, more or less. (We foresters trained at a national park in the Andes, but for those of us who worked in more tropical areas, the training wasn't that specifically useful.)
Anyway, that was a long way of saying that in my experience, PC volunteers identified with a smallish group (ours was 28 or so, I think), in my case the Forestry volunteers I trained with. While in service, I lived near volunteers in other fields much more, and got to know them, but I don't identify with them in quite the same way.
At our reunion, two nurses from the health group that came in with us were there, one because she was always part of our group, being married to a forester from our group, and one because she's close friends with one of the other foresters still.
The thing is, I don't know of any other omnibus group that has reunions the way we do.
Most of us got to the reunion on Wednesday afternoon, and on Thursday, we went to Mt. St. Helens and did a little hike. It was hot, and up and down (my fitbit said I walked 189 flights of stairs), but not even 5 miles. It felt like more.
On Saturday, we went wine tasting at a local winery, and got a tour of the vineyard.
Being forestry folks, we were especially interested in the grafting of the vines. Some vines have been grafted twice.
This vineyard also has amazing flowers (including lots of lavender) for the bees and to deter bad bugs.
So that was the Peace Corps reunion. In between our field trips, we made and shared a lot of food, laughed and reminisced together, and just had a great time. I'm reminded yet again what a great bunch of people I trained and served with.
After the seven weeks, we were sent down to our future site for a week (or maybe two?). My site was six hours by bus from the capital, and during the week, I stayed with my counterpart's family.
And then we had seven more weeks of job type training to teach us the specifics of what we needed to know, more or less. (We foresters trained at a national park in the Andes, but for those of us who worked in more tropical areas, the training wasn't that specifically useful.)
Anyway, that was a long way of saying that in my experience, PC volunteers identified with a smallish group (ours was 28 or so, I think), in my case the Forestry volunteers I trained with. While in service, I lived near volunteers in other fields much more, and got to know them, but I don't identify with them in quite the same way.
At our reunion, two nurses from the health group that came in with us were there, one because she was always part of our group, being married to a forester from our group, and one because she's close friends with one of the other foresters still.
The thing is, I don't know of any other omnibus group that has reunions the way we do.
Most of us got to the reunion on Wednesday afternoon, and on Thursday, we went to Mt. St. Helens and did a little hike. It was hot, and up and down (my fitbit said I walked 189 flights of stairs), but not even 5 miles. It felt like more.
The next day, we went to Latourelle Falls, and hiked again. This time it was much cooler, and we didn't hike quite as long. We went up not quite to the top here, and then we had an overview of the Columbia River.
On Saturday, we went wine tasting at a local winery, and got a tour of the vineyard.
Being forestry folks, we were especially interested in the grafting of the vines. Some vines have been grafted twice.
This vineyard also has amazing flowers (including lots of lavender) for the bees and to deter bad bugs.
So that was the Peace Corps reunion. In between our field trips, we made and shared a lot of food, laughed and reminisced together, and just had a great time. I'm reminded yet again what a great bunch of people I trained and served with.