Detroit Oregon and the surrounding area was ravaged by wildfires in 2020. However, one of my favorite fire towers, Gold Butte, survived thanks to the inventive protection of wrapping the entire building.
Time to celebrate one of the best Christmas movies around – Die Hard.
Funhouse Lounge here in Portland has done a Die Hard musical parody show for several years now. This year is no different and all the shows almost immediately sold out. However, given the COVID situation, they also graciously provided a streaming option. I gave it a watch, and recommend you do too – but hurry – there are only a few streaming opportunities left.
Portland’s infrastructure is woefully behind. Despite 10 years and dozens of millions of dollars, there is still no I-5 bridge replacement plan.
Take an opportunity to answer their survey:
https://www.interstatebridge.org/november
Turns out my neighbor’s sister is the voice actress for Tekken’s Nina Williams. Who knew?
Polybius is a great urban legend that got its start in Portland. There’s lots of fodder thrown around about it, but The Polybius Conspiracy appeared to be a real investigation on the subject. They even have a lot of interviews from local people. It turns out, it was COMPLETELY FALSE and their main character was an actor.
None of that was disclosed. It is one more reason you should be very weary of documentaries as information sources. Evidence shows you should NOT be putting faith in documentaries any more than an editorial opinion piece.
If you want a little better coverage, this is also a good video about the urban legend:
Finding cool Halloween displays and house decorations in your area can be trial/error driving around or word of mouth. These folks at Northwest Haunters Association have an interactive map where people can share their setups for others to enjoy.
Hop on over there an start touring some great Halloween displays
Staying at remote fire watch towers in the Pacific Northwest is kind of a thing for me. Above are two of the ones I stayed at. After getting lucky enough to land a near-impossible reservation, they usually require you to hike in to remote locations at the top of mountains. No power, no plumbing, and sometimes no cell service. You have to hike your own food and water into these remote locations – making them amazing experiences in living off the grid. The views, solitude, quiet, and beauty can be jaw dropping experiences for the lucky.
Keeping track of which ones are closed for repairs, inaccessible due to landslides, fires, blowdowns, snow, learning about new regulations and seasons of operation has never been easy.
Fortunately I’ve found another person with the same passion and she posts updates on some of these towers as well as her progress on visiting every one before they are gone.
One of the more notable postings was of my favorite tower Gold Butte which was recently wrapped to protect it from wildfires that ravaged one side of the peak.
My favorite season is fall. The air turns cool, there are hay rides and pumpkin patches, one curls up with a good book in front of a fire, reading scary tales, and, of course, watching the leaves change.
Japan has some very good, live updating of fall colors on a few websites.
The folks over at this website have a nifty little tool that predicts when fall colors will change this year. How do they predict the trends this year? With a little bit of data (and possibly a touch of pretentiousness):
The company uses a model that ingests a multitude of data sources including historical precipitation, NOAA precipitation forecasts, elevation, actual temperatures, temperature forecasts, and average daylight exposure to develop a baseline fall date for each county in the continental United States. Next, the model consumes hundreds-of-thousands of additional data points from a variety of government and non-government sources and layers this data over its own historical data from past years and, finally, with a high degree of accuracy, the algorithm produces nearly 50,000 date outputs indicating the progression of fall for every county in a graphical presentation that is easy to digest.
As vaccination rates go up, the state also opens up. From makeshift drive-ins, piano concerts in the Oregon wilderness, dinner movies with some of the top restaurants in town.
Check out the whole list here.
Every year on the south Oregon coast, paths are made in the sand and you can walk through them.
You can pan around in this 360 video clip to get an idea of what it looks like.