HUCKLEBERRY FESTIVAL AND OREGON CITY

Except there were no Huckleberries!! The season was so late that the berries were not ripe in time or the annual festival that our RV park has. But that did not stop the vendors from coming in to sell their wares!! I even got caught up in that!!

From the vendors we sent on to the watermelon launch. They had everything from the mighty- mite that the kids launched cherry tomatoes from

to the long range launcher that the boys enjoyed testing there strength on

Then our boss, Dan, was co-erced into the hand launch with "Miss Huckleberry"

Now we watch Tony, one of our maintenance men!! What a design for a potato launcher!! The kids were delighted when he also launched some Mt. Hood t-shirts for them to scramble for.

Check out the engineering.

After these stressful fetes, we had to have nourishment. So we stopped for the Native American flat bread. It sure tasted like funnel cakes to me. YUM!

I just had to go back to one of the vendors for some smoked salmon dip to take home. Oh, so good!! Not that we needed that! But who is watching?

Now it is time to rest so we stopped by the Big Tent and watched and listened to the the Native American music played by all ages.

We called it a day and went home to enjoy the Salmon Dip with crackers.

On Saturday we woke to wonderful weather to travel a little south to Oregon City to meet up with our Ohio friends, Donna and Bob.

We joined up with them at the former End of the Oregon Trail Museum for a demonstration to the use of the woods of the area, especially Cedar. It was quite interesting and we left that to join in a Trolley tour of the city built on three tiers of the hillside. Oregon City was originally Willamette Falls an early site of an Indian Salmon village. The falls furnished the power over the years for mills for lumber, flour, wool and paper. The first long distance commercial electric power transmission was from Oregon City to Portland in 1889.

One of our stops on the Trolley ride was to check out the falls known to be the second largest man-made falls in the US, second only in size to Niagara Falls for the amount of water power generated.

After the Trolley we went back to take the ride down in the Passenger Elevator built to replace the original wooden elevator that accommodated people in what they call the vertical highway. It originally took care of human traffic that crossed over the railroad tracks to the next level of the city.

Our next stop was the Mexican restaurant, recommended by our Trolley driver, for lunch. After our re-fortification, Donna and Bob got out their GPS for Geo-cashing and we were off in another direction. It was time for them to introduce us to their hobby.

Donna found the first one at the front fence gate of the local cemetery. After recording our locating the camouflaged box and returning it for the next geo-casher, we moved on to look for another. We found it in the local city park and Bob and Donna explain the process.

They tell us the the fun is the recording of any tracked item, and watching it via computer records as it travels across the country or even around the world! They say they have also seen more interesting sights while traveling when geo-cashing. These sights were not on their traveling agenda. So maybe the bug will bite us too!! It was fun. Thanks Donna and Bob for a fun day!!

Sunday after church we drove in to Gresham to meet up with Gary's cousin, Robin, for dinner at Olive Garden.

Again we had such a wonderful visit! She is so nice and willing to share her research of the Belden side of the family. She had a flash drive with all of her finds and Gary was thrilled to get it. Hopefully, we will get to meet up with her again before we leave. And Marilee, we were sorry not to see you this time. We will still be in the area for another couple weeks, so maybe?? Take care!!