Turn Right at the Totem Pole in Everyday Ramblings

This is from Sunday morning up on the hill behind my place looking back towards downtown. Later in the day we had enough clearing that one could see Mt. Hood. The fires are still burning but there was a break in the direction of the wind for a time.

Most Honorable and I have a history of having small adventures when we hike together. At the trailhead I handed him the map because I had been on the first part of our hike (or at least most of it) already and had a pretty good idea of where we were going. And I thought he would enjoy navigating, or at least having a picture of where we were.

By the time we got to the top and had a break in the secret little park up there for water and a snack I had close to 100 floors on my Fitbit. The neighbors with their dogs and children were keeping an eye on us and when one of the dogs wandered over his owner came to say hi and asked if we needed help getting anywhere.

We got out the map and talked about a broad overview of where we were and where we were going and he gave us a good suggestion for getting to the next trailhead for our descent and ultimate destination of the mosaic at the shelter I posted pictures of a few weeks back.

We went around the corner to look at this extraordinary Victorian house with period furniture that looks like it should be a museum or a B&B but isn’t. It was being painted. And then headed down the hill.

As we got to the main road we went to check the trail map and poor Most Honorable could not find it. We looked a number of times through his many and sundry pockets and it was just plain gone.

We had good cell coverage as we were quite close to the local cell tower and as we would stop to try to figure it out, we would ask someone working on her yard or actually these two guys in a car just stopped and asked us if we needed help.

And I wasn’t even wearing a Weight Watchers nametag!

I think it is the hurricane effect. We feel helpless watching so much damage and suffering and want to help and are doing what we can to help but are very far away and well, why not help the person in front of you that looks vaguely, umm, lost.

They gave us great directions, which included turning right at the totem pole. We had a bit of a scare because the trailhead sign said it was 7 miles to the shelter and we are like oh geez have we connected into some crazy big loop because I was thinking it was more like a mile down.

But I said in my most reassuring voice, “We’ll be able to connect to the trail we need” and off we went.

When we got a ways down the trail we saw another sign that said the shelter was .5 mile down. Point!!! The point was missing from the first sign. Whew. We were six miles or so in at this time and were getting a little hungry and tired.

Part of the trail looked familiar but part of it didn’t so we hiked blind for a while until a lovely woman greeting on the trail and just out of the blue said, “ I hope you had a nice hike!”

And there was the shelter. With a strange OCD guy doing a circuit of it that we were slightly interfering with by taking pictures and looking at the signage and secretly hoping we would find another, um, map.

After we got back to my place and fed the cats we drove across town to our favorite fish n’ chips place that used to be a restaurant but is now a food cart. They have the best fried salmon!

And yes, breaded fish has gluten. I only had one piece, k? It was so so good.

Then I took a long nap.

There seems to be a pattern developing here. :)

Last updated September 12, 2017