After a 72 year ban on self-serve gas, despite it passing unilaterally through the Oregon house and senate, and despite the governor waffling and ‘wanting further input from citizens’ before signing – as of today you can now pump your own gas in Oregon.
Don’t worry – local news is alway helping with instructions for scared residents that are sure this is what’s about to happen all over the state:
I ran across these guys in the park when I moved here 20 years ago. It looked like a Mad Hatter dinner party, so I pulled over. There were all these strange folks dressed in wacky clothes and playing croquet with bowling balls and sledgehammers. I watched for a bit and enjoyed talking and learning about these folks playing something they called Mondo Croquet.
Mondo Croquet is regular croquet, but with bowling balls and sledgehammers. I noticed that they had a small pile of cracked open bowling balls, so it’s definitely a contact sport. It is also carried out with players wearing costumes and stylings of a late 1800’s English lawn or mad hatter style party.
It was started by Stephen Peters in 1997. Read more here in The Oregonian.
Anyway, they’ll be having their FREE annual 2023 Mondo Croquet World Championships and Mad Hatter Picnic this Sunday, July 30, 2023 from noon–4pm in the north park blocks.
Pull on your British Lawn Whites, your Ham Sammmich costume, your Spock ears or perhaps just your sunglasses and get ready to smack some balls.
What to bring?
- something cold to drink
- a chair to set a spell
- a snack to share with the Mad Hatter Picnic
If you have one, a sledgehammer is handy, but we come equipped with enough hammers and bowling balls so no worries. In fact, you can just come and watch if you’d like.
We do suggest you can turbo-up your fun by dressing appropriately, or appropriately inappropriate. Need some suggestions? Check out past photos: https://mondocroquet.com/photos/
I wrote about a few remote and very primitive winter shelters in a previous post; but Travel Oregon seems to have come up with their own posting with a few new ones. I’ve collected those and also added a few others in this post.
As with all things, definitely call the ranger stations BEFORE planning a trip or you risk finding yourself at the end of a long day of travel only to be unable to access a shelter far, far from any accommodation. Forest fires, vandalism (very sadly), maintenance, and other reasons may have closed these particular shelters at any time. Calling the ranger stations before you go is mandatory as they can usually give you an update on conditions, risks in the area, etc. I know that Clear Lake Butte was closed for almost all of 2022 due to maintenance and damage. Some places have regular blacked-out days for volunteer work parties as well. Know before you go!
Emigrant Springs State Heritage Area, about 25 miles east of Pendleton, offers travelers a much warmer way to spend the night. Each of the six rustic log cabins — equipped with bunk beds, a table and an outdoor propane stove — can sleep from three to five people. Spend your days sledding or cross-country skiing at Meacham Divide Sno-Park a few miles east, one of the larger Nordic skiing areas, featuring more over 12 miles of groomed trails. Book here.
Clear Lake Butte Lookout – accessible from the Skyline Road Sno-Park. Book here.
Silcox Hut, is at 6,900 feet above Mt. Hood’s Timberline Lodge on the Palmer Snowfield. The hut sleeps up to two dozen people in six small bunk rooms. A fireplace warms a large room with hand-carved tables, where you’ll find buffet-style suppers of belly-warming fare and breakfasts with fruit and pastries. A special snow-going SUV or a snowcat can ferry you and your gear up to the hut, and groups must rent the entire building. Down in the main lodge, guests are free to use the sauna, spa and showers, too. Book here. The hut can sleep up to 24 people. Reservations can be made more than a year in advance.
Gold Lake Shelter, Bechtel, Westview and Maiden Peak shelters. Head to the Gold Lake Patrol Cabin at Gold Lake Sno-Park near the Willamette Pass resort and pop up to the cabin. It’s office and overnight quarters for the Willamette Backcountry Ski Patrol volunteers, where you can pick up maps as well as a hot drink (but not spend the night). From there you can make your way 2 miles to the Gold Lake Shelter, a three-sided warming hut with a sleeping loft, a wood stove and a picnic table. Other shelters in the area with sleeping lofts include the Bechtel, Westview and Maiden Peak shelters.
All of the huts are first-come, first-serve, although anyone wishing to spend the night must be accommodated. Open for overnight stays November 15 to April 30. Huts can comfortably sleep anywhere from four to a dozen or so people, and there’s no fee.
Here’s a hike/snowshoe route that hits a few of them.
There’s also a few other shelters listed here (South Waldo Shelter, Fuji Shelter) that can only really be reached by snowshoe or cross-country skiing in the winter.
Santiam pass area also has some warming huts/shelters – Mountain View Shelter and South Maxwell Snow Shelter are accessible from the Maxwell Sno-park.
Here’s a hike that hits both the Mountain View and South Maxwell shelters.
McCoy Snow Shelter is accessible via the McCoy Snowmobile Area.
Cornucopia Lodge & Packstation in the southern part of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. Book here. Reservations can be made more than a year in advance. Units sleep up to six people. Open year-round.
The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department announced they are looking for a new manager for an eight room historic hotel in the far southeast corner of Oregon after current concessionaires announced their retirement. Originally built in 1917, the eight-room hotel has earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The property also includes the four-room Drover’s Inn and a caretaker’s house.
I visited Frenchglen a few years back while staying at a cool ranch as well as spending time in the Steens Mountains, Alvord Desert, and visited Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (Go a little farther and you can also see Pueblo Mountains or Crane Hot Springs).
Saying it is remote and isolated is an understatement. The next city is almost an hour away. The ‘town’ of Frenchglen has a population of 12. It was absolutely beautiful open country though. It reminded me a lot of New Mexico. I even bought the mug. 😀
Officials said they’re looking for applicants with a business background who have experience in hotels and restaurants. They’re also looking for someone who can give the old hotel a modern touch, specifically with online reservations. The parks department is accepting proposals online until 2 p.m. on June 2, 2023.
The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department said it is seeking 5% of revenue and $2,400 a month to maintain the property. Last year, the hotel brought in $418,770 in revenue, officials said.
I ran across two beautiful horses that were bought from the folks at Big Horse Station in Sisters, OR. They raise and rescue draft and draft-cross horses.
I always loved riding big draft horses. My favorite time was a 2 hour sunset beach ride on a big Belgian named Waffle – that was also ridden by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was up in Astoria filming Kindergarten Cop.
Los Roast is a great local supplier of New Mexican green chilis. A La Machina makes these really awesome green chili propane grilling machines.
Mark Rober did a fairly scientific self-run experiment where he sent 200 wallets around the country to be dropped in various cities then collect data on who returned them (if possible). He controlled for age, big cities vs small city size, gender, poor/rich, etc.
Summary: 2/3 of the wallets were returned, and of those 96% still had the money inside. He got lots of other interesting data, but I thought his summary was the most impressive:
Lately it seems like so much of what you see online is meant to stoke outrage at some group of people versus ourselves because that’s what gets shared. That begins to warp our perception that the only good people out there are those within our own group. But this data shows that across any age or gender or socio-economic background, across the whole religious spectrum through middle America and along the coast there are lots of good people everywhere.
Not only that, but they constitute a [very clear] MAJORITY. They didn’t call for some reward or Facebook likes or because they knew someone was watching. They did it because it was simply the right thing to do and I think that’s pretty cool and something worth remembering.
Things that didn’t seem to make a difference:
Things that did make a difference to at least some degree:
Here’s the city results in order from best to worst:
Oregon is one of only 2 states that still has a 50’s era laws banning customers from pumping their own gas. This has been changing though. Several counties in sparsely populated areas of eastern Oregon have been allow you to pump your own gas for the last few years. During recent heat waves, snow storms, and COVID – residents have been increasingly able to pump their own gas.
That might become permanent as a repeal on the ban just passed the Oregon house. It now only has to pass the Oregon senate.
What will that day be like? Some have suggesting Oregonians are utterly doomed like this:
Or maybe this:
The Portland Winter Light festival has been going on for 8 years now. I love going to visit the amazing artistic light creations people create – as well some quality people watching of folks that dress up in their own light costume creations.
While it wasn’t quite as amazing as it has been in years past, there were noticeably fewer new displays, and crowds were dramatically down, it was still a lot of fun to enjoy.
I ran into this guy a few times on the Last Thursday Alberta street festivals around 2010. Part DJ, part spinner, he went by the moniker of Spinnaface. He had a good schtick going:
Sadly, he wasn’t exactly the best DJ and I never really saw him again in later years. Still, it was an interesting time in Portland’s history of good natured keeping it weird before the city’s sharp decline in the 2020’s.
